Socialist Alternative #99 - Dec/Jan 2023

SOCIALIST

ISSUE #99 l DEC/JAN 2023

ALTERNATIVE

WHAT WE STAND FOR

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No To War and Imperialism

a fighting labor movement.

• Unions should stop spending hundreds of • We need an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, millions of dollars on electing Democratic the end of all U.S. military aid to Israel, and Party politicians, and spend it instead on the building of an international movement efforts to unionize every job. to end the occupation.

• Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperial- No Trump - No Biden! We Need A ist movement linking up workers and youth across borders! Only socialist international- New Political Party For Working ism can end war and destruction and win People lasting peace and stability for the working • Republicans are resorting to divide-and-rule masses around the world. scapegoating because the GOP has no real • Socialist Alternative completely opposes answers to the questions facing working Russian imperialism’s brutal invasion of people, but the corporate Democratic Party Ukraine. We oppose military aid from Westoffers no solution to right-wing attacks ern imperialist countries; the shipments of against workers and marginalized people increasingly destructive weapons only serve and has repeatedly failed to use its majorito fuel the war which is a disaster for workties to protect our rights. ing people.

• We oppose the aggressive imperialist • Fight for the highest possible vote for Cornel West for president, an independent agenda of NATO and the US, which cynisocialist with roots in the movement as a cally views ordinary Ukrainians as a pawn step towards building a new, working-class, in the fight to weaken Putin, a key ally of multi-racial party that organizes and fights Chinese imperialism. for workers’ interests.

• De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and Mobilize Against Gender the withdrawal of all NATO troops from Oppression & Attacks On Bodily Eastern Europe.

Fight Inflation & Rebuild A Fighting Labor Movement • Unionize every job! Every worker needs a fighting union that is armed with clear demands, operates democratically, and is prepared to fight the dictatorship of the boss.

• Inflation, unaffordable healthcare, rising prices, and sky-high rents, plus a lack of basic respect on the job are pushing hundreds of thousands of workers to go on strike. We need effective strikes that hit the bosses where it hurts most – their pocketbooks – to win lasting victories.

• 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 as part of the struggle to rebuild

Autonomy

• The overturn of Roe v Wade opened the door for vicious attacks on bodily autonomy across the country. We need a mass movement against the reactionary right on the 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!

• Fight back against brutal anti-trans legislation and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people. Noncompliance with these bigoted laws should be organized by the labor movement among workers tasked with enforcing them.

• Full legal rights and equality for trans and queer people, including the right to self-identification!

• 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.

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• 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.

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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 highquality, universal childcare. No cuts to food stamps!

• Fully fund public education! End school privatization. Give educators an immediate 25% raise and increase staffing. Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free.

A Socialist Program For Environmental Disaster • We need fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from everincreasing storms, floods, and fires, and 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.

• We need a union jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure including a massive expansion of free, high quality, fast 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!

No Deportations And End Racist Policing • Biden and the Democrats have kept kids in

SUBSCRIBE TO SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE AND GET OUR MONTHLY PAPER DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR DOOR. cages, built more border wall than Trump did, increased deportations, and continued Title 42, which makes seeking asylum all but impossible. We need to abolish ICE, and rebuild a movement that unites immigrants and native born workers against their common enemy: the billionaire class.

• 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 new movement in the streets and new organizations to fight all forms of racism in our society, including segregationist housing and education policies.

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

CONFLICT IN MIDDLE EAST CREATES NEW CHALLENGES FOR US IMPERIALISM TOM CREAN & CHRIS GRAY At the time of writing, the Israeli Defense Forces’ brutal assault on Gaza, leading to 17,000 deaths and vast destruction, has received fulsome support from the Biden administration and US imperialism. This makes them complicit in the war crimes and mass ethnic cleansing being carried out in Gaza and increased killings on the West Bank. It is also completely in line with the longstanding position that Israel is the US’s key ally in the region which must be backed at all costs.

But that support has limits. The US does not want a regional war breaking out with Iran and its allied forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which back Hamas. This would have massive and hard-to-predict consequences.

The situation in the Middle East today also cannot be separated from the New Cold War between US imperialism and Chinese imperialism for global economic and military hegemony.

The reassertion of US power is indirectly pushing back against the increased Chinese role in the Middle East in the past period, through its Belt and Road investment program and increasing diplomatic efforts. But at the very same time that the US is asserting itself, its underlying strength is also waning.

Growing Attacks On US Forces US imperialism and the Iranian regime both want to use the crisis in Gaza to undermine the influence of the other. Neither side wants an all-out regional war across the Middle East, but the possibility is baked into the logic of the situation. The day after the IDF’s invasion of Gaza, Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon was skirmishing on Israel’s northern border, risking a repeat of the brutal 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon or possibly worse.

US imperialism can’t maintain its position without risking getting directly involved. A week into the conflict, militias under Iranian control began attacking US troops in Iraq and Syria. Biden also deployed two US aircraft carriers and 2,000 marines as a deterrence to Iran and its allies. On October 27, Biden ordered airstrikes on the bases of two

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DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

“Iranian-backed militias” in Syria in order to “protect and defend our personnel.”

A month later, the US military claims Iran and its allies have carried out 151 attacks against US troops. In one case, a drone ladened with explosives launched by an “Iranianbacked militia” crashed through the upper window of a US military barracks, but failed to detonate. Dozens of American troops could have been killed, guaranteeing some kind of escalation. A US defense official said “[Iran is] aiming to kill. We have just been lucky.”

At a press conference on November 15, a bipartisan group of US senators told reporters that the “US is lucky that no Americans have died from the attacks,” implying Biden isn’t doing enough to protect US military personnel. They introduced a resolution urging Biden to keep “all options on the table” to deal with Iran.

Crisis For Biden Biden wants to maintain focus on reining in China, not an escalating war with Iran and its proxy militias throughout the region.

Biden knows a war with Iran would be deeply unpopular. In 2019, only 18% of Americans, including only 25% of Republicans, supported military action to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, though this could change for a period if US troops are killed and a propaganda campaign were waged to support Israel by attacking Iran.

However, polls currently show Trump beating Biden in 2024. Only 14% of Americans believe Biden’s policies have made them better off. Biden’s weak political position can increase the pressure to “act decisively” against Iran in the next period depending on developments.

The Iranian military could cause lots of problems for US imperialism. Even a threat of missiles or mines could shut down the Straits of Hormuz, where Iran controls one side of this 30-mile-wide bottleneck at the end of the Persian Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil production moves on tankers.

Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen have also carried out drone attacks against “vital” Saudi Arabian oil facilities, recently seized a cargo ship in the Red Sea, and allegedly attacked

an Israeli-owned ship in the Indian Ocean.

Analysts predict that a wider escalation of the war along these lines could raise oil prices to $150 a barrel (almost twice as much as today’s prices). This would guarantee a new global economic downturn, with political implications all around the world. European warmongers would face renewed complications in justifying their support for the ongoing bloodbath in Ukraine, China would more firmly solidify its energy ties (and political ties) with Putin, and Biden would face even more challenges heading into a difficult election against Trump next year.

A Radically Changed Situation The US is locked in a global competition with China. Ukraine, the Middle East and the “Indo-Pacific” are all fronts in this conflict.

In the Middle East, China has sought to build its economic and diplomatic influence in the region. Iran is clearly part of its bloc. The Chinese helped reestablish relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, regional rivals, a diplomatic coup that helped to reduce Iran’s isolation. The US has pushed back on the Belt and Road economic partnerships by announcing a commitment to infrastructure

investment in the wider region at the recent G20 meeting.

The Israel/Palestine war has allowed the US to reassert its regional role in a very heavy handed way, moving two aircraft carrier groups to the Eastern Mediterranean as well as two thousand Marines. China has been reduced mostly to a spectator but it is certainly gaining indirectly from the collapse of US imperialism’s ideological “democracy vs autocracy” campaign and Beijing’s propaganda as a “peace maker.”

But in the end it is the situation in the Western Pacific that is most critical. The US will not lose sight of this but can indeed become bogged down and overstretched as it is arguably right now. The advantage in this conflict can shift as it has several times before. Both sides have serious problems with China, in particular, facing a profound economic crisis. But problems are also accumulating for US imperialism.

It can be argued that it is not in the “rational interests” of the US and Israel or Iran and China to see the war in the Middle East widen, and that would be true. But outcomes in a world dominated by conflicting imperialist interests are often far from rational. The only force that can end the madness that is fueling wars and global conflict is the international working class, because it has the power to end capitalism which is the root of modern imperialism. The international mass movement against the assault on Gaza is a very positive step and is already having effects. Socialist Alternative (part of International Socialist Alternative) has a consistent opposition to all imperialism. Join us in the fight for a socialist future! J

UKRAINE’S SECOND WINTER AT WAR NOEL JONES, MINNEAPOLIS

The Ukrainian counter-offensive has been unsuccessful and the conflict will continue to be a protracted one, rather than the quick one Zelensky insisted would be Ukraine’s best chance to defeat the Russian invasion. As it stands now, it’s hard to accept the narrative that Russian forces are on the verge of defeat.

There are cracks forming in US imperialism’s support. At the time of writing, Zelensky is in Washington DC pleading for a further $68 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but Republicans blocked the emergency funding bill, which also allotted military aid to Israel. Popular support in the US for a “blank check” for aid to Ukraine has also declined significantly.

Military aid from Western imperialist powers like the US and in lesser amounts the UK, is coming with increasing reluctance and delay, though the leaders of both countries insist it remains important.

Since the beginning of the war the ISA has opposed military aid from Western imperialist countries; the shipments of increasingly destructive weapons only serve to fuel the war which is a disaster for working people.

Now Ukrainians look ahead to another winter where Russian troops will attack vital infrastructure, energy and heating especially, and the conscripted members of their

families remain on the front lines with no scheduled end in sight. The bloody trench warfare, while a thorn in Russia’s side, is not going to see an end to the occupation.

Ukrainian people suffer, still under martial law from the start of the war that makes it illegal to demonstrate or go on strike, and the government is considering laws lowering the draft age for students who previously would have gotten an exception for education. Despite laws against it, there have been demonstrations of 50 to 100 people in Kyiv, and 25,000 people signed a petition demanding that military service not remain open-ended.

Corruption scandals have rocked Ukraine’s structure of draft officials, and Zelensky fired all the heads of regional recruitment offices this summer. People are paying between $500 and $10,000 for documents to avoid the draft and leave the country, some of these bribes taken by draft officials themselves.

US imperialism’s main goal in supporting Ukraine was to weaken China’s ally, Russia, and score a victory in the midst of the ongoing global conflict between US and Chinese capitalism. With no easy win in sight, support for Ukraine and the war is waning in the US, even amongst the leaders of the two mainstream parties. Support for the war is weakening in Ukraine as well, as the conflict wears on and on. J

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

SEATTLE: SOCIALIST-LED FIGHT WINS CEASEFIRE RESOLUTION KAILYN NICHOLSON, SEATTLE On the afternoon of Tuesday November 21, over 500 anti-war activists and working people, including Arab and Muslim American community members, crowded into Seattle City Hall to demand the City Council pass a resolution introduced by socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Socialist Alternative and Workers Strike Back members joined those who spoke in favor of Sawant’s resolution, which included demands for an end to US military funding for Israel and an end to the Israeli state’s occupation of Palestinian territories. These demands constitute the strongest ceasefire resolution introduced anywhere in the US. The resolution also condemned the deadly Hamas attack against Israeli civilians – Jewish, Arab, and other ethnicities – on October 7, and pointed towards united mass action by working-class people on both sides of the fence and internationally as the only way to achieve real, lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians.

Seattle City Hall became a sharp battleground between Councilmember Sawant and activists demanding the resolution be passed in its full form, and the Democratic Party politicians, who makeup the rest of the City Council, either outright opposing the resolution or attempting to water it down. The same Democrats refused to allow even a discussion on Sawant’s resolution at a Council meeting two weeks prior. While they banded together in removing some of the demands from the resolution’s text, faced with intense pressure from hundreds of angry anti-war activists, the majority of Democrats were ultimately forced to vote YES. By winning this major resolution, Sawant and Socialist Alternative along with hundreds of anti-war activists have made Seattle the largest US city to date to pass a ceasefire resolution.

A big reason why the Democrats felt emboldened to bring amendments to remove strong clauses from Sawant’s resolution was the cover they received from some

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self-appointed Muslim, Palestinian, and Jewish community and NGO leaders, who tried to insist Sawant withdraw her resolution and let their groups work with Democrats to come up with an alternative (weaker) version.

When she refused, these leaders had private meetings with the self-described “progressive” Democrats and made an agreement to support their amendments removing the demand to end US military funding to Israel and the occupation of Palestinian territory.

At best, the approach of trying to work behind the scenes with the Democrats is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how social change can be won. However, more often, it is based on careerist motives of not wanting to alienate elected Democrats in order to maintain funding for one’s own organization or personal career advancement. Such an approach inevitably leads to selling out working and oppressed people, regardless of professed good intentions on the part of leaders.

The fact that the Council Democrats chose to remove the crucial demands before passing the resolution makes it clear that they would rather protect the Biden Administration and their own positions within the party than be part of a real solution to the crisis. Restraining the demands of the movement to what Democrats are willing to pass is a recipe for stagnation, when what we urgently need is escalation. It’s clear that the mass protests across the US and around the world are having an impact. Without them, the temporary pause in fighting would never have happened. More and more elected officials and prominent individuals are being forces to come out in support of a permanent ceasefire.

Biden’s approval ratings heading into the 2024 election have never been lower. He can’t afford to lose any more support, which means the movement has real leverage it can use to try and force action towards a permanent ceasefire and against additional military funding for Israel. The launching of the #AbandonBiden campaign by a coalition of

Muslim community groups in swing states on the basis of Biden’s opposition to a ceasefire is a striking example of how this leverage can be wielded. But this brings up the question of a left, anti-war political alternative to both Biden and the Democrats, and Trump and the Republicans. Socialist Alternative urges the coalition to take a bold approach including fighting around the demands of ending US military funding to Israel and ending the occupation of Palestinian lands, organizing rallies and door-to-door canvassing so supporters can get involved, and more.

Some #AbandonBiden supporters have indicated openness to supporting an independent candidate. We strongly urge them to endorse and campaign for the strongest, independent left-wing challenger rather than a figure like RFK Jr. To grow the antiwar movement, we need a serious assessment of which strategies work and which don’t. Seattle’s

ceasefire victory clearly demonstrates that more can be won by organizing ordinary people in support of bold demands that maximize pressure on elected Democrats than by deferring to the leadership of members of the same party that has sent more money and arms to the Israeli military than any other worldwide. It also demonstrates the need for our movements and for working people to have our own political organizations, independent of the two parties of imperialism. J

New episodes air every Friday at 6pm EST!

On Strike is the video broadcast of Workers Strike Back, hosted by socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and Bia Lacombe. We’ve seen more protests and strikes than any time in a generation, but rarely do we hear about them from the perspective of working people and our movements. On Strike provides an independent socialist analysis and strategy to rebuild a fighting labor movement and campaign for a new mass party for workers and young people.

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

WA R O N G A Z A

FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CATASTROPHE IN GAZA 1. by the SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE EDITORIAL BOARD

What is happening in Gaza right now?

The Gaza Strip is an area roughly the size of the city of Philadelphia where over two million Palestinians live. It’s been occupied since 1967, and has lived under blockade conditions since 2007. There are only three exits in and out of Gaza, two controlled by Israel and one by Egypt.

What were already brutal conditions in Gaza have worsened beyond belief following Israel’s all-out assault which began after Hamas’ October 7 attack. Gaza is governed by Hamas, a pro-capitalist, right-wing, reactionary organization that was promoted by Israel as a counterweight to secular and left nationalist forces in the Palestinian population.

Following three weeks of deadly bombardment, Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip on October 27. Over 17,000 Palestinian deaths have been confirmed, 42% of whom are under the age of 18. Some Israeli military officials have admitted that probably twice as many people have been killed, many of their bodies lying under the rubble. In the first two weeks, supply trucks were completely prevented from entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, which was also bombed, and are still entering in small amounts.

The electricity and water shortages that have been acute for years in the Gaza Strip due to the military blockade have reached record levels. Residents are being forced to drink salty and polluted water in order to survive. Only nine hospitals in the Gaza Strip are still functioning after Israeli attacks, and those only partially.

The Israeli government has used Hamas’ attack as an excuse to speed up illegal settlements on Palestinian lands in the West Bank, where over three million Palestinians live.

Since October 7, the Netanyahu government has sent thousands of weapons to the “territorial defense forces” of the settlements, and far-right settlers are taking advantage of the war in Gaza to accelerate the creeping ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

2.

What happened on Oct. 7?

Hamas militants massacred 1,200 people from dozens of Israeli communities, including working-class towns like Sderot and Ofakim, as well as seizing control of Israeli military bases. It did not spare Jews and Arabs who worked or volunteered as part of medical and rescue teams that provided an initial response. It also targeted other oppressed nationalities like those living in impoverished Bedouin villages in the Western Negev desert. In the shadow of the massacre, the attack included the largest-ever kidnapping incident of Israeli citizens.

The mass slaughter in the various areas had an extremely DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

sadistic character and included, as it appears from the forensic autopsies, a pattern of acts of torture, sexual violence and rape, in addition to the mass execution of 364 people at the Nova music festival.

What has followed, however, has been a campaign of indiscriminate collective punishment on Gaza by the Israeli state which only serves to dramatically escalate the conflict and its death toll, while inducing a historic humanitarian disaster.

3.

Can the invasion root out those responsible for the October 7 attack?

The invasion is targeting Hamas forces which carried out the attack on October 7 but the Israeli forces don’t care how many civilians die. The right wing of the Israeli government wants to go much further, though they are not the ones primarily conducting the military attack. One member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said on November 5, “The Gaza Strip needs to be flattened and everyone has one sentence, and that is death... There are no innocents in the Gaza Strip.”

Opinion polls among Palestinians in Gaza showed Hamas was losing popularity before the October 7 attack, though they still have a significant base of support because of its anti-Israeli stance. The Israeli regime’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians have increased popular support for Hamas in Gaza but also in the West Bank. The invasion is more about collective punishment on a massive scale than it is actually rooting out Hamas, or support for the ideas Hamas stands for.

ISA members attend anti-war protest in Tel-Aviv, Nov. 20.

4.

Are there antiwar protests in Israel?

In early 2023, Netanyahu’s far right government was shaken by mass protests against his attempts to undermine Israeli democracy. While the October 7 attacks offered his regime an opportunity to distract away from his unpopularity by whipping-up Israeli nationalism, opinion polls show only 9% of the general public are “sure that the government has a clear plan of action” when it comes to Gaza.

These contradictions are reflected in the speech of Nir Oz, one of the grandchildren of the abductees, at a rally in Tel-Aviv on November 11. Although Oz did not condemn the invasion of Gaza, he did describe Netanyahu’s government as “without a solution or political horizon, only wars, military operations, rounds – rinse repeat.”

Any expression against the war has been quickly shut down by the Israeli state, especially against Arab-Palestinians living in Israel. Already, the police and the Shin Bet are conducting a

brutal nationalist witch hunt for posts by Arab-Palestinians on social media, which has resulted in dozens of arrests.

There is a real threat of vigilante violence. In Netanya, a mob of hundreds of extreme right-wing supporters chanting “Death to the Arabs” tried to attack Arab students who had to barricade themselves in their dormitory.

However, these vigilante attacks do not reflect the sentiment of most people. In October, in a poll among citizens of Israel, 90% of the Jewish population and 98% of the ArabPalestinian population tended to oppose violence against the other national group. But half of the respondents in each group thought the other group’s sentiments were exactly the opposite.

In the past, there have been mass movements for peace in Israel. The brutal siege of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank have not kept working class Israelis safe, as October 7 vividly shows. Such a movement can be rebuilt on the basis of class unity. Already, Palestinian unions have put out calls for class solidarity. While conservative union leaders in Israel have shamefully rejected these calls, members of Socialist Struggle Movement, the ISA in Israel/Palestine have taken them up.

5.

How can there be peace?

Genuine Marxists have always warned that the myth of Zionism – the idea that a capitalist state of Israel would supposedly be the safest place for Jews in the world – would lead to a cycle of bloodshed for working-class Jews and Palestinians. A real political solution cannot come as a result of more deals between the oligarchies in the region, but only as a result of a struggle against them and against their agendas, which have only ever brought more war and devastation.

The working class on both sides of the national divide and throughout the region can provide a way out. Their respective national ruling classes stand on the backs of millions of workers who, if they revolted against the murderous nationalist agendas perpetuating war, could topple the oppressive regimes and lead a campaign of fundamental social change.

The struggle to stop the war is part of the struggle to end the occupation and the siege. A program of socialist change, rooted in the standpoint of international struggle of the working class promotes resistance to imperialist aggression against nations, and defends the right of nations to exist on an equal basis without occupation or subjugation, and to realize their right for self-determination including for national independence.

Socialist Struggle Movement, Socialist Alternative’s sister section in Israel and Palestine, is as steadfast as ever in its determination to build a cross-border struggle for socialist change. These revolutionary activists are fighting for the establishment of a democratic, socialist, state of Palestine with full equal rights, alongside a democratic, socialist Israel, with two capitals in Jerusalem and full equality for minorities, as part of a socialist regional confederation. J

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US POLITICS

A few years ago, the United States was a country with staggering wealth inequality, everyday exploitation, and a corrupt political system rigged by the billionaire class. Thankfully, since Joe Biden took office, all of that’s been sorted out.

That’s what you might think if you got your understanding of US society solely from watching Bernie Sanders’ political career.

How did Sanders go from insurgent fighter against the establishment to, in the words of Cornel West, “window dressing, at worst” for the Democrats”?

And what, if anything, are we to make of the vacuum of leadership left behind?

How A Vermont Curmudgeon Became The Dark Horse Stalking The DNC That tens of thousands were showing up en masse to listen to a 70-year-old democratic socialist spout about a political revolution against the millionaires and billionaires caught much of the establishment by surprise back in 2015, and certainly Sanders himself. But it shouldn’t have.

Millennials’ upbringing had been defined by the US invasion of Iraq and by the Great Recession which, for many of us, spelled an end to aspirations of the economic stability enjoyed by much of our parents’ generation.

It was like the door was slammed in our face behind them.

What was left to look forward to? Renting with roommates, paying off mountains of student debt with precarious, low-wage, or gig work, all while avoiding the doctor’s office.

Obama’s promise of “hope and change” from the Bush years had started two new wars and bailed out the rich while failing to deliver any of his progressive promises, even with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

Between Occupy Wall Street in 2 0 1 1 spark-

ing a revolt against the 1% and the 2013 surprise election of Kshama Sawant to the Seattle City Council as an open Marxist, a political shake-up was coming no matter what.

Crucially, Bernie was a political outsider, as the longest-serving independent in the Senate, although still – mistakenly – caucusing with the Democrats and running in the party’s primary. Nevertheless, seeing Sanders face off against Hillary Clinton on the debate stage had an irreversible impact: someone was finally using a national platform to speak the truth about what ordinary people had been putting up with this whole time.

His challenge to Clinton brought out into the open just how forcefully the Democratic establishment would condemn ideas as obvious as the notion that the richest nation in the world should be able to afford healthcare, paid family leave, and education for its citizens.

We couldn’t unsee the enthusiasm aroused by demands like Medicare for All and free public college, nor could we unsee the rotten core of the Democratic Party that Sanders’ campaign shone a light on: the party stood firmly on the side of big business and would gladly use every nasty trick in the book, from disingenuous allegations of sexism to rigging with “superdelegates” to stamp out Bernie’s movement.

Still, even in a general election that Clinton had hand-picked by boosting Trump, anger at the status quo was bound to win out.

In November 2016, it was “drain the swamp” Trump that took the reins.

Second Wind Four years of Trump showed us firsthand what the Democrats’ strategy of lesser-evilism buys in this economy.

But Bernie’s second shot in 2020 was shaping up to be different. The aftermath of his 2016 campaign and the continued popularity of demands like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal had awoken a new layer of activists, expressed in the growth of DSA and the election of the “Squad” members like AOC to the US House. For the first time in decades,

BERNIE SANDERS BETRAYED A GENERATION

by GRACE FORS, CHICAGO

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w e could say there was something of a socialist movement in this country. The slogan “Billionaires should not exist” was Sanders’ most radical yet, and its impact was electric.

There’s no better way to describe the energy of Bernie’s 2 0 2 0 campaign t h a n

magic. One million people signed up to volunteer: they packed buses to New Hampshire and Iowa to knock doors in the snow. This campaign was the broadest national-level example in recent history of how truly invigorating class politics can be; we were not just volunteering for our favorite career politician for fun, but sacrificing our hard-earned money and our weekends off from work in the spirit of the slogan to “fight for someone you don’t know.” At certain points, even the most cynical among us started to think that maybe he – maybe we – could win this thing.

There was a big problem: just as 2016 and the ensuing years had shown the latent potential among working people to unite and mobilize behind Bernie’s pro-working class program, it had also shown the complete intolerance for these same politics within the Democratic Party. Another difference between 2016 and 2020 was that Trump was now in the White House, and in a selfserving way based on right-populism, Trump was also at war with the establishment, the “deep state,” “fake news,” and other political norms. His term had caused such chaos that the Democratic establishment’s promise of a return to normal had real appeal. This was especially true once the pandemic began in the US in earnest.

Going into 2020 it was clearer than ever that winning any part of Bernie’s program would require a mass movement – there would be no bringing the for-profit healthcare industry or the fossil fuel companies to heel without a fight. This is something Sanders’ campaign seemed to recognize, printing posters and buttons reading “Not Me, Us” and vowing to be the country’s first-ever “organizer-in-chief.”

However, building a new political party and mass organizations, the most impor tant step in materializing a movement to win Medicare f o r All whether under his presidency or not was the very step he was most hesitant to take.

It meant that when faced with sabotage, from the Democrats’ noholds-barred “Anyone But Bernie” flood of boring contenders for the nomination, to using the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out historic voter suppression, he would back down at the very moment the movement most needed his leadership.

In a pandemic devastating hospitals, with lockdowns financially ruining families, poorly-paid essential workers drafted to the frontlines of the chaos, and everything fundamentally wrong with the system on full display, Sanders’ program was more needed than ever. If Bernie had shown the nerve, he very well could have dramatically affected the situation advancing the struggle for Medicare for All, PPE for workers, paid sick leave, hazard pay, and so much more.

Instead, he caved. Sanders’ donor base of teachers, nurses, and low-wage workers were left to face hell on their own. Young people who had been caught up in the magic of his campaign were going to have the course of their lives changed by the pandemic, without

a rudder.

In dropping out of the race, Sanders promised, despite having surrendered his only leverage, to push Biden left – these were famous last words. By the time Sanders came out to attack Cornel West’s independent presidential campaign, his transition from threat to loyal opposition to just plain loyal was complete.

“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s time the working class won that war.”

Bernie may have made his peace, but for the rest of us there will never be any real peace with the billionaire class. In the vacuum left by Bernie, the rich have only gotten richer, the working class continues to carry the burdens of capitalist crisis, and US politics have been defined by divisive scapegoating culture wars and conspiracy theories that bring out the worst instincts of ordinary people.

That doesn’t mean there’s no path forward for united struggle. It is no coincidence that the loss of Bernie as a figurehead was followed by a wave of union organizing, with workers taking matters into their own hands and bringing the fight directly to the bosses for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. For his part, Sanders continues to use his platform to support union organizing. But without expression in the political sphere, the aspirations of a reinvigorated labor movement can’t fully be realized, and we won’t have any defense against the disaster of the growth of the right.

Movements, not individuals, make history.

But there are moments when individuals are thrust into a position of leadership, and they face tests that have much broader consequences for those movements. We should not mince words that Bernie’s concession to Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment was a criminal abandonment. He bears outsized responsibility for the absence of a left alternative in US politics today.

Bernie Sanders will be remembered for having introduced socialism to millions of workers and young people while offering a glimpse of what a working-class political alternative could look like, and then ripping it away, turning down a historic opportunity to launch a working-class party, leaving us on our own with no real vehicle to continue the political revolution.

Whether that can change depends on whether we can organize based on the lessons of the Bernie phenomenon: that a working-class program can galvanize huge numbers, that every failure of the left is a gift to the right, and that, as Sanders and the Squad have shown, the rat hole of the Democratic Party smears its filth on everyone who tries to clean it from the inside. We need a new party to pull together the millions who supported Sanders’ campaigns; the workers organizing in auto plants, Starbucks stores, and Amazon Air Hubs; communities of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community; youth, parents, and teachers; and the broadest possible banner of the multiracial working class to make our own collective mark on history. J

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

D E M O C R AT I C PA R T Y

WHY SOME BLACK VOTERS ARE ABANDONING THE DEMS

ERIN BRIGHTWELL, BAY AREA

You can practically hear the hands wringing all the way from Washington as Democratic Party strategists assess the latest round of poll data showing that Biden is in trouble with what has been his staunchest, most reliable base of support: Black voters.

An October New York Times poll of registered voters in six battleground states showed Trump gaining strength among Black voters, with 22% saying they planned to vote for Trump. This is a big increase from the 8% of Black voters who voted for Trump in 2020, and a major cause for concern for the Democrats with a Trump-Biden rematch the most likely scenario in November 2024.

Possibly even more of a problem for Biden is the generalized lack of enthusiasm for the incumbent. Ominously for the Democrats, Black voter turnout dropped by 10% in the 2022 midterms compared to 2018. News articles and podcasts are full of reports from focus groups of Black voters expressing frustration that they are being forced to choose between Biden and Trump.

For all the ink that’s been spilled on why Black voters are cooling on Biden, the answers, for the most part, aren’t that surprising. While it’s true that Bidenomics has been marked by high employment, it’s also true that the economy stinks for most ordinary people, and no amount of insisting otherwise by the Biden campaign can

change that. Inflation has cut into buying power, credit card debt is at record levels, and the crisis of affordable housing continues unabated.

Pandemic stimulus checks, which Trump made sure bore his signature, and the expanded child tax credit that Biden passed in 2021 helped bring poverty among Black families to record lows. Expectations were raised that the government could take real action to help working people. But it was under Biden that the checks stopped coming, and the rest of the pandemic protections ended. Most Black voters are probably under no illusions about Trump’s interest in helping working people. However, it’s Biden who’s most exposed himself as being unwilling to fight for the economic measures that ordinary people need and instead oversaw the unraveling of pandemic protections that made a real difference in people’s lives.

Undoubtedly, the Republicans in Congress are unified in their opposition to Democratic Party efforts to pass any progressive legislation, but it’s also clear that the Biden administration has taken a timid and defeatist approach even when polls show majorities in favor of student debt relief, a federal $15/hr minimum wage, and legal abortion access.

Despite being elected on the heels of the biggest protest movement in US history against the murder of George Floyd, Biden has no real record on reforming police violence. The Democrats offer nothing to

Muslim Americans Campaign To #AbandonBiden

Imam Imran Salha: “If I were to vote [for Biden], the ink that I would use to sign on that ballot would be through the blood of the innocent civilians of Palestine.”

JESADA JITPRAPHAKHAN, LOS ANGELES

this election,” said Hazim Nasaredden. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes in 2020.

Since Israel began its latest assault on Gaza over two months ago, it has enjoyed abundant political support from the United States. Against this, the call for a ceasefire rang out immediately – from hundreds of thousands marching in the streets, from Muslim and Arab American communities, and from high school and college students.

Perennially tone-deaf, the Biden administration has sluggishly tried to adjust its messaging, but its underlying policy backing Israel’s actions has clearly not changed.

Because of this, many Muslim and Arab Americans have reached a breaking point with Biden. Earlier this month, Muslim American community leaders from eight swing states assembled in Dearborn, Michigan to kick off the #AbandonBiden campaign. If the name of the campaign wasn’t clear enough, speakers at the conference certainly were: “There are over 25,000 Muslim voters in the state of Arizona. And I will work day and night to ensure that those voters abandon Biden

Rejecting Lesser-Evilism

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

Rhetorically, the #AbandonBiden campaign is pulling no punches. It is not just agitating in “safe states” like some pressure campaigns, but anchoring itself in the crucial swing states that will decide the election.

It intends to defeat Biden in these states by mobilizing Muslim Americans to vote against Biden – for a candidate to be determined.

After overwhelmingly supporting Biden in 2020, the campaign seeks to assert Muslim Americans as a voting bloc not to be taken for granted.

Proponents of #AbandonBiden have concluded that the only way to exert real pressure on the Democrats is by refusing to accept them as the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, this conclusion is seldom reached by other social movements, the labor movement, and forces on the left fighting for progressive change. As a result, the Democrats sweep their demands under the rug after

working people impacted by the overall leading candidates, Trump and Biden, supcrime rate, which has been higher since the port the Israeli regime’s murderous war of pandemic, and their policies leave massive revenge in Gaza and oppose a ceasefire. This economic inequality, a core driving cause, contrasts sharply with Black voters’ opinuntouched. Democratic mayors have hired ions: 77% support a ceasefire and the same more cops despite no clear evidence that this number oppose the prioritization of further actually reduces crime, though it contributes military funding for the Israeli regime. to increased repression Historically, the Most Black voters likely have no of young Black people Democratic Party has illusions about Trump’s interest in in particular. been seen as the party helping working people.

Biden’s push for of Black workers, but funding for not one, but that perception is now two foreign wars, fading fast, particularly However, it’s Biden who’s exposed is not likely to win him among younger voters. himself as unwilling to fight for the much support among The Democratic Party economic measures that ordinary the Black community. is increasingly seen people need and oversaw the It is not lost on Black for what it is by workunraveling of pandemic protections voters that Biden is ing people in general: going to bat for billions a party for the billionthat had made a real difference in for the Israeli regime aire class and a party people’s lives. while Black commustaunchly in support of nities are starved of funding for essential US imperialism and militarism. resources like education, housing, and infraBlack working class people and working structure – including, in some places, the class people in general need a new political most basic services like clean water. party that rejects Trump’s viciously bigoted Meanwhile, Trump is positioning himself rightwing politics and the pro-capitalist polias the main candidate opposing the Ukraine cies of both major parties. Building a new War, arguing against further funding and party for and of the working class that will be claiming, absurdly, that he would end the a potent political weapon for a pro-worker, war in one day. It’s a sign of the disastrously anti-oppression and anti-imperialist program weak position of the left that Trump is taking is no small task, but it’s a necessary one for space opposing war funding for Ukraine Black people to effectively and decisively instead of a genuinely anti-imperialist, anti- fight back against the American capitalist war candidate. system that is racist to its core. J Both parties of capitalism as well as their making half an effort and still get their votes every November. The Squad, for instance, acts within the Democratic Party as a loyal opposition to its establishment wing. Only Rashida Tlaib is threatening to withhold support for Biden, but even she stops short of considering leaving the party. #AbandonBiden supporters are opposed to Trump and the Republicans, but are fully aware that their campaign could lead to his election. If this is the necessary outcome of Biden’s loss, they accept that “short term pain” will be worth it to teach the Democrats a lesson.

However, it’s unlikely that the Democrats will change their underlying support for Israel, win or lose. Israel remains the most reliable representative for US interests in the Middle East, even with the liability it carries of potentially triggering regional conflict. The Democratic and Republican parties are both political organizations of the US capitalist class, whose needs are served

by US foreign policy. This is why Israel has enjoyed bipartisan support in the US over the decades. Dissent exists on the left of the Democratic Party but does not impact the party’s position. Republicans recently voted down a senate bill for aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, but this was largely a maneuver to extract right-wing border policy changes.

They even put forward their own “Israel-only” aid bill, financed through cuts to the IRS. Instead, the #AbandonBiden campaign has the potential to lay the foundation for a political vehicle that poses a sustained, organized challenge to the Democratic Party

beyond 2024.

Abandon Biden, For Whom?

Biden’s support has been crumbling, but not just because of the war in Gaza. He has steadily lost ground, especially among voters of color and young people who are unsatisfied with the supposed gains of “Bidenomics” and disappointed by his broken promises and inability to fight the right. #AbandonBiden should expand its focus – certainly not to diminish the importance of the war – but to strengthen the movement: it could draw links between Biden’s atrocious foreign policy with other social and economic issues, and develop the campaign into a robust, roundedout political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans.

The most effective form for such an alternative would be a broad-based party for, by, and of the working class. The common thread between Biden’s policy in Gaza and economic suffering at home is the deeply rooted function of the Democratic Party as a political tool of the US capitalist class. There is no mass workers party challenging Biden, but independent candidate Cornel West represents the strongest left force calling for a ceasefire and a reallocation of military spending towards much-needed social programs.

We think the aims of #AbandonBiden would be best achieved by mobilizing voters for West in 2024, but we should have no illusions that a Biden loss will change the Democrats. Instead, this campaign presents an opportunity to build a pathway to a lasting political alternative. J

7

un

what did our council office win?

DE

FEAT

ED

Kshama Sawant speaking at a rally against racist police violence in 2020. Through Kshama’s office and the activism of hundreds of working people, the movement in Seattle was able to win a first-in-the-nation ban on police use of chemical weapons like tear gas.

LESSONS FROM TEN YEARS OF A SOCIALIST IN OFFICE bia lacombe, seattle Long before Bernie Sanders and AOC were household names, Kshama Sawant was elected as the first open socialist in Seattle in nearly a century. Kshama has remained the lone socialist on the City Council for the past ten years – a single council seat with which she and Seattle’s working people have won historic victory after victory.

Nobody in Seattle has caused more headaches for big business, the billionaire class, and the political establishment than Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative, and the movements we have used this office to

8

build. Longtime corporate landlord lobbyist Jamie Durkan once said every dollar that corporate landlords had spent over the last decade lobbying the Seattle City Council was wasted because of “Sawant’s army” of rank-and-file renters mobilizing to win renters’ rights victories.

Kshama leaves office at the end of this month undefeated, having won four elections despite every attempt by the city’s wealthy, pro-corporate forces to unseat her and the class-struggle politics she represents.

It is undeniable that every time Kshama Authority to withdraw Stepping Forward.

Sawant and Socialist Alternative have said Over the past ten years, Kshama’s office has “When we fight, we can win,” we meant it. helped organize countless working-class and Just months after Kshama was elected, poor tenants in dozens of buildings across we built the 15 Now movement and won the the city to fight rent increases and against first $15/hour minimum wage in any major bad conditions, forcing corporate landlords to city. That was a watershed moment that concede. allowed the $15 minimum wage to break into We have won the first ban on caste disthe mainstream, with movements winning crimination in the world outside South Asia, the demand in cities across the country after a series of international resolutions including our victory in Seattle. The law we won was one in solidarity with the historic Indian farmalso tied to inflation, meaning Seattle’s mini- ers’ movement of 2020-21, unprecedented mum wage will be $19.97 starting in 2024, resolutions in solidarity with the labor moveat which point it will be the highest minimum ment and strikes, the replacement of Seattle’s wage in the entire country.

Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, We were able to win despite the attempts the nation’s first ban on police use of chemiof many local leaders to sell out the move- cal weapons as part of the Black Lives Matter ment, including a prominent labor leader movement in 2020, a law making Seattle an who at one point during the struggle said that abortion sanctuary and full public funding for $15/hour wasn’t realistic and we should just abortion services, a resolution making Seattle settle for $11. Kshama was the only one who the biggest city to so far call for a ceasefire spoke up, saying she would take this betrayal in Gaza. public if the leading committee watered This (extremely abbreviated) record of vicdown the demand. tories remains unparalleled anywhere in the Kshama’s office also spearheaded the country.

Tax Amazon movement, which won a $100 It is undeniable that million annual tax on big business in 2018 – this was then every time Kshama Sawant repealed by Democrats in an and Socialist Alternative illegally-organized City Counhave said When we fight, cil vote, in coordination with Amazon itself, who waged a fierce we can win, we meant it. campaign against the tax. In 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protests, the Tax Amazon movement returned and gathered over 20,000 signatures from working people on a ballot initiative to successfully pressure the City Council to pass the historic Amazon Tax. The Amazon Tax we won raises over $240 million annually by taxing Seattle’s wealthiest corporations, to fund affordable housing, social services, and Green New Deal projects.

By mobilizing renters and union members, Kshama’s office has also spearheaded Kshama Sawant (top left) on a Pride a whole series of landmark renters’ rights, parade float while campaigning for City such as requiring a six-month notice for rent Council and for a $15 minimum wage. increases, mandating landlords to pay relocation assistance of three months’ rent upon The rest of the City Council has been forcing tenants to leave due to rent increases made up of Democrats for as long as anyone over 10%, a ban on evictions in winter can remember, and those Democrats fought months, and a ban on evictions of school- against every single one of these victories. In children and public school workers during the 2018, the eight Democrats on the Council school year. These laws—while not enough colluded illegally behind the scenes to repeal to fully protect renters from the bottomless the first attempt at an Amazon Tax to appease greed of corporate landlords and the politi- billionaire Jeff Bezos. The Tax Amazon movecians who do their bidding without a move- ment came back in 2020 to force the Demoment to defend and enforce them—have crats to pass an even bigger tax than the one fundamentally altered the lives of millions of they had repealed. When Kshama and antiSeattle renters. war activists brought forward the resolution At the end of Kshama’s first year in office, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza last month, not we defeated the Stepping Forward program a single Democrat would second the motion alongside hundreds of low-income ten- to allow a vote on the resolution. It required ants. The program, if enacted, would have 500 workers and activists packing City Hall increased the rents of low-income tenants by to force the Democrats to vote on this urgent 400% over five years, which almost inevitably matter, though the Democrats made sure to would have led to homelessness for count- water down the resolution before passing it. less families. Tenants and housing activists Dozens of self-described socialists and organized a series of protests and demonstra- progressives have been elected in other cities tions, including packing the Mayor’s office to in the US, but none of them have accomdemand that City officials take decisive action plished anything approaching Kshama’s to protect low-income tenants. Together, we record. Instead, they’ve settled for a more or were able to force the City Council to send a less peaceful co-existence with the Demounanimous letter opposing the program, and cratic Party, which means death for any social succeeded in forcing the Seattle Housing movements that could win real victories.

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

What Makes Kshama Different?

Kshama takes only the average wage of a worker ir district, donating the rest of her City Council salary after taxes to a solidarity fund for social movements and worker organizing.

As far as we could find, there are no other elected officials in the country who have followed this example, whether in the labor movement or in government office. What makes her such a unique example of genuinely accountable leadership?

Some critics attempt to brush off what we have achieved with this council seat by saying that winning things at the local level is just easier. Some will also say all this was possible because Seattle is such a progressive city. If that’s the case, where are all the other local elected officials doing what Kshama has done with her office, in progressive cities or otherwise?

One peek behind the curtain of Seattle politics will show you exactly how “progressive” it really was before Kshama and our movements altered the political landscape of the city. Long before Kshama was elected, since 1987, Seattle City Council members attended yearly autumn retreats at the invitation of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce (whose corporate lobbyists work for behemoths like Boeing and Microsoft and Vulcan Real Estate). These expensive retreats were paid for with thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, where Councilmembers wined and dined with corporate lobbyists right before budget deliberations began each year.

After taking office in 2014, Kshama was invited to that year’s retreat. Instead of attending, her office publicly denounced it, broke the story to local media and launched the first People’s Budget campaign to fight for a budget that represented the needs of the majority, not the billionaires. Without a socialist representative there to expose the betrayals of even so-called “progressive” Democrats, it is very likely that these retreats would have continued unbeknownst to working people.

Through a decade of yearly People’s Budget campaigns, Kshama’s office alongside community members, union members, and activists have won hundreds of millions of dollars for transitional housing for homeless neighbors, new affordable housing, renter organizing, mental health services for workers and students, restorative justice programs, cultural programs, and more – most of which would have otherwise been cut from the city budget or never funded in the first place.

Winning serious working-class victories has little to do with whether an elected position is local or national, or whether there are more Democrats or Republicans in office. It’s also not about personality, although it is imperative for a serious working-class fighter to be courageous, principled, and unshakeable in the face of unrelenting pressure. These are not just individual traits. Most crucially, they flow from genuine socialist ideas and a crystal clear political analysis of the class forces involved.

Part of that political analysis is understanding that as a working-class representative, your task is not to help run the capitalist state alongside Democrats and Republicans, only in a slightly more humane way. Your task is to disrupt the status quo, to use that elected position to mobilize and organize working and young people into struggle around concrete demands. By exposing the parties of big business for what they are, that is, fundamentally unwilling to meet the real needs of the working DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

class, you explain the fightback needed to win working-class victories. Exposing sell-out politicians is especially crucial when it comes to Democrats who call themselves progressive or pro-labor, because at the end of the day they will do the bidding of the establishment, and working people need to know who is actually on their side.

Inevitably, this means that the day-to-day experience of genuine working-class representatives in the halls of government will be brutal.

Kshama has said that people often think it’s the bloated salaries and corporate cash that keep politicians in line and keep them selling out. And there’s truth to that, which is why Kshama takes home only the average worker’s wage – but it’s actually so much more insidious.

If you dare to break with the establishment even in a small way after they’ve tried unsuccessfully to sweet-talk you into submission, they will then make every part of your life hell. They will do everything in their power to make you miserable and wear you down, sit you down in your own office and tell you they run City Hall, ostracize and isolate you in the hallways, bully you, shout at you in the backrooms, malign you personally, harass and intimidate you, even threaten you in your home. In a moment of honesty, AOC alluded to this, when she said that if you defied the Democratic leadership, you faced “relational harm.” This is what she meant: that she was not going to fight for working people, because if she did, it would spoil her personal relations with the establishment politicians and other powerbrokers of her party.

If you are unable to understand that establishment politicians are not your colleagues but your class enemies, and that they will oppose you if you stand up for working people, you will end up selling out, despite the very best of intentions.

Overcoming this kind of pressure sounds like a Herculean feat, and in a lot of ways it is, which is why it can’t be done alone. It would be impossible for any one individual to withstand the onslaught of the establishment without an organization like Socialist Alternative, which has been the backbone of what Kshama’s office has accomplished alongside working people.

Socialist Alternative’s Marxist program is the first crucial thing that ensured Kshama and the entire organization were clear about how to use the council seat and what it would be necessary to do in order to never betray the working class. That meant understanding that mass movements of working people are absolutely crucial, when they are armed with a fighting strategy to win. This is how Marxists use elected office.

In Socialist Alternative, if our elected leaders refuse to fight in a principled way, members have the right and the responsibility to challenge them and vote to remove them if called for – this is a model for the kind of democratic accountability necessary in any new party for the working class.

What It Took To Elect A Principled Socialist We

campaigned

on

strong

concrete

demands that gave working people something not only to vote for, but to join us in fighting for.

Unlike progressives and so-called socialists who moderate their politics once in office for the sake of getting re-elected, we campaigned on issues like taxing the rich and rent control.

We built powerhouse campaigns with over a thousand volunteers who knocked every door in Kshama’s district multiple times, because they were willing to fight for an elected representative who was serious about winning demands that would materially improve working people’s lives.

We broke voter turnout records and fundraising records, and then broke our OWN

possible, and it is a pathway to capitulation. In fact, if you are not facing ferocious opposition from the establishment during your term in office, and if your reelection is a cakewalk, it’s a sign you’re failing working people, because the ruling class does not see you as a threat.”

The Fight Isn’t Over “I wear the badge of socialist with honor,” Kshama said in her 2014 inauguration speech.

“There will be no backroom deals with corporations or their political servants. There will be no rotten sell-out of the people I represent.”

Our socialist council office has kept that promise. But there are fights to be waged across the country as workers move into struggle in their workplaces and in the streets — they’re looking for the kind of class-struggle approach that Kshama’s office has shown can win. That’s why Kshama and Socialist Alternative launched Workers Strike Back earlier this year: an independent, rank-and-file campaign organizing against the bosses and their political servants. We’re building on the example of the past decade in Seattle on a national scale, to widen and strengthen the class struggle.

Workers Strike Back is already active in eleven cities across the country, and con-

“If you are unable to understand that establishment politicians are not your colleagues but your class enemies, and that they will oppose you if you stand up for working people, you will end up selling out, despite the very

best of intentions.”

records. In 2019, we defeated over $1.2 million in corporate PAC money from Amazon backing our opponent. In 2020, big business and the right wing launched a recall campaign against Kshama for standing with the George Floyd uprising, where they attempted to throw the movement out of office with a low-turnout special election in December 2021. They failed spectacularly when we mobilized voter turnout at 54% of eligible voters—which is striking when you consider that voter turnout was only 47% in the November general election in our district this year.

“Many progressive politicians want working people to believe that change can happen in some harmonious way,” said Kshama during the 2020-21 campaign to defend her seat against a right-wing recall. “This is simply not

tinues to grow (you can sign up to become a member here). Workers Strike Back has recently launched On Strike, a video broadcast co-hosted by Kshama that covers issues from the perspective of workers’ needs, not billionaire greed, with a socialist analysis and strategy to build working-class movements, fight against oppression, and for a new mass party for workers and young people.

The victories of Kshama’s City Council office are singular for this era of politics, and they have been at every moment powered by working-class people and steered by a Marxist method – Socialist Alternative’s method.

It is this approach that has allowed a small revolutionary organization to win victories not just in Seattle, but in city after city across the United States. If you believe in the methods of Kshama and our council office and want to fight for a socialist world, you should consider joining Socialist Alternative.

What Kshama has done did not come without enormous sacrifice, on her part, and on the part of the thousands of workers, young people, rank-and-file union members, renters, activists, and community members who fought alongside her office. Thank you to everyone who has been part of the past ten years of historic struggle – we showed that when we get organized, the working class can tip the balance of power in our favor. We resisted the agenda of the political establishment and big business in Seattle, and we can do it everywhere.

We have so much more to win. J

9

US VS. THEM

Activists rally outside of COP28 in Dubai. Like previous years, measures were taken to keep them far from the actual action of the conference.

In Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, renewable energy projects might become another financing scheme by which wealthy nations dominate less developed economies.

The foundational issue here isn’t fuel production, but capitalism forcing nations to compete with one another to avoid falling behind.

China’s new coal plants would generate emissions equal to Spain’s. Similarly, the Ukraine war gave the US a pretext for ramping up oil production. One effect of this is the Willow Oil project – an oil drilling venture in Alaska that will add 2 million cars’ worth of emissions to the atmosphere.

Hot & Cold Wars Driving Climate Destruction

Climate Is A Problem Only Workers Can Solve

War is a major driver of gas emissions.

The world’s militaries account for 5.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to best estimates. All researchers have are estimates because military greenhouse gas emissions were exempted from reporting for national security reasons by the 1992 Kyoto Protocol and reaffirmed by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The wars in Ukraine and Israel – both funded in large part by the US – are the result of heightened international tensions created by capitalist crisis.

The more capitalism convulses and flails, the more likely it becomes for military conflict to explode between competing nations. The logic of the New Cold War isn’t going away, and neither is the possibility of increased armed conflict that will further increase emissions.

But the largest effects of the New Cold War reach beyond military production. The US and China blocs of global capitalism have ramped up fossil fuel production to prevent the other from gaining a capital advantage. In 2022, China invested in coal plants to boost short-term profits to keep pace with the US.

COP28 was a failure, as was COP27, as was COP26. Sultan Al-Jaber’s brazen use of COP28’s credibility to win contracts for Adnoc weren’t anomalies so much as the natural outcome of bringing capitalist governments into a room together. Capitalism is incapable of putting aside short-sighted competition for the collective good; the profit motive inherent to capitalism, and the opportunity to secure a competitive advantage against everyone else, is always the higher priority.

We don’t need another trade show for oil executives to rub elbows with state officials.

What’s needed is an international workingclass climate movement who can lead the way toward rapid adaptation and replacement of fossil fuels with renewable sources.

It’s only workers – the people who actually produce, maintain, and manage the world’s production and resources – who are capable of taking decisive action on climate, who are capable of organizing production on an international scale for the benefit of all, not just a few. And it’s only under socialism that our collective ability to change the world and solve our problems can be fully realized.

Each successive COP shows us that capitalism doesn’t have the tools to solve climate problems. As workers, the solution to climate change is in our hands alone. J

OIL EXECUTIVES ACHIEVE TAKEOVER OF UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE DAVID RHOADES, LOS ANGELES

Given that the last nine years are the nine hottest years on record, one might expect COP, the “Conference of Parties” or the annual UN Climate Summit, to become increasingly urgent in its efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the gathering of world leaders now resembles an industry convention for greenwashing Big Oil. Nothing illustrates this better than the United Arab Emirates, a major petrostate, hosting COP28.

“Over the last decade, the climate talks have become a complete lobby fest,” said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, a nonprofit group that seeks to expose corporate influence on policymaking. “It doesn’t feel like climate talks.

It feels like a trade fair.”

UAE named Sultan Al-Jaber the COP28 president; Al-Jaber is CEO of UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc. While hundreds of oil industry lobbyists have been dispatched to COP for years, COP28 marked the first time that an oil executive was made president of the whole summit. The ties between Adnoc and COP28 were widely reported in the leadup to the conference, including: Adnoc representatives steering PR for COP28 at UN events, Adnoc employees consulting on how the summit should respond to media inquiries, and Adnoc adding talking points to COP28 briefing documents for meetings with foreign governments.

Activists Locked Outside While Lobbyists Sit At The Table These events, attended by the leaders and moguls of world capitalism, have recently become a lightning rod for activists as well.

COP26 in Glasgow was attended by tens of thousands of climate activists, including a contingent from International Socialist Alternative. The presence of so many protesters drew attention to the fact that COP26 was an anemic failure; the next year, COP27 was held in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt under the dictatorial al-Sisi regime where protesters were limited to an area far from the conference center.

COP28 continued that trend, treating

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activists with increasing hostility. With broad laws restricting speech, Dubai is not friendly to protesters even under normal circumstances. This year, activists were limited to an international “Blue Zone” and were barred from naming countries or corporations on their banners. Palestinian flags could not be flown or activists risked being kicked out; protests during lunch (the only time attendees would see activists at all) were barred apparently for ‘heat safety.’

Meanwhile, Al-Jaber has previously expressed how important it is for oil and gas industry leaders to “have a seat at the table” when discussing how to cut emissions.

Al-Jaber has never welcomed the millions of working people due to be displaced by oil and gas to the same table.

Another Failure To Move Forward The world’s most important climate summit ended with an agreement from 200+ countries to “phase out” fossil fuels, which has been lauded as a diplomatic victory by US and UAE capitalists. But these are the same leaders who agreed to “phase down” coal-fired plants in 2021 only for global coal usage to increase to profit from rising energy demand. Neither Biden nor Xi Jinping – representatives of the two largest greenhouse gas producers – even attended. COP28 might be the most well-attended climate summit in history, but most of its attendees were representing business interests, not human ones.

As it stands, if every pledge made by attendee nations was 100% fulfilled – an unprecedented event – it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions only by a third of what’s needed to meet the 1.5-degree Paris Agreement target. The agreement doesn’t even call for nations to stop the production of new coal plants, which China and India are currently expanding.

The agreement also fails to address the massive inequality between wealthy and poor nations. Nigeria’s environmental minister argued that without wealthy countries financing a transition out of fossil fuels, African nations would be forced to accelerate fossil fuel use to raise the capital to switch to green energy.

MASSIVE FRAUD OF COVID AID SHOWS WORKING PEOPLE WERE LEFT OUT TO DRY SAMMEE JOHNSON, HOUSTON

According to the US Justice Dept, 3,200 defendants have so far been charged with COVID-19 relief fraud. One was a Long Island physician who paid off malpractice lawsuits to free up funds to buy a private island, Rolex watches, and a yacht. The list goes on.

It’s hard to say yet how much of the COVID relief aid was stolen in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, but estimates are in the range of $280 billion, with an additional $123 billion wasted or misspent.

For comparison, it would cost about $58 billion per year to make public college free in the US. In actuality, only about one-quarter of the $4.5 trillion taxpayer dollars spent during COVID went directly to working people – $800 billion in stimulus checks and $600 billion in unemployment.

But that list of 3,200 defendants doesn’t include the ten richest men in the world who more than doubled their fortunes during the first two years of the pandemic. During the first two years of the pandemic, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Gates, and a handful of others collectively made over $1.3 billion per day and now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people

The $2.2 trillion CARES Act, promoted as a mechanism to combat working peoples’ suffering, ended up exacerbating it in the aftermath of COVID. A survey of Black and Latino business owners found that just 12% received the assistance they requested. But $54 billion of the CARES Act funds went to major airlines, like American Airlines, whose workers are still fighting to earn a living wage despite the company being given a huge federal bailout package.

The majority of working people breathed a huge sigh of relief upon receiving those stimulus checks, unemployment, and child tax credits. For the first time, we got a bailout of our own and a glimpse of the basic social welfare enjoyed by workers in other wealthy countries, but those days are long gone. Of the entire US working class, half of us don’t even have savings.

Regardless of which billionaire party “wins” the presidency, working people lose – every time. Our greatest leverage against this rigged system is on the shop floor and in the streets. Unions are at their highest support in decades; about a million Americans have received double-digits raises as a result, and that’s something we all deserve – a fighting union, living wages, affordable housing, Medicare for all, and a society free from oppression and exploitation. 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

HENRY KISSINGER’S IMPUNITY IN LIFE AND DEATH against North Vietnam as well as what they considered safe havens and staging areas for the Viet Cong in Cambodia and Laos. All of this was a result of tactical choices made by Kissinger to satisfy the slogan “Peace with Honor” – honor in the realpolitik sense – directed at the Soviet Union and China.

From that standpoint it was a total failure.

It wasn’t until 1973 that a new agreement was secured, ending in a humiliating American withdrawal in 1975 after the Viet Cong victory in Saigon. In the end, the terms of the agreement were exactly the same as what was brokered in 1968 but with millions more deaths.

Cambodia TEDDY SHIBABAW, MILWAUKEE As if to prove the old adage “The Good Die Young,” Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, died peacefully in his home at the age of 100. His millions of victims in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Cyprus, East Timor, Bangladesh, South Africa, Angola, the Kurdish people, and many more whose lives were unnaturally cut short in the service of US imperialism cannot say the same. To put a conservative number on it, the death count as a result of his policies reaches at least 3-4 million people.

Kissinger is directly or indirectly responsible for too-many-to-count gruesome acts of state sponsored mass murder, assassinations and anti-democratic coups, wiretaps against political enemies in the US government and the media (including Watergate), extortionate gunboat diplomacy and economic terrorism. Yet, Washington elites and the capitalist press are falling over themselves to mark Kissinger’s death as a solemn occasion. We are told to grieve the death of a so-called “elder statesman” and master geopolitical grand strategist for US imperialism, even though his life’s work was dedicated to undermining the interests of working-class people here and around the world.

The 1968 Elections, Vietnam And Nixon’s “Peace with Honor” Nixon was elected with a promise to end the war under the face-saving slogan of “Peace with Honor,” but he ran into some inconvenient developments. Accepting that the war was unwinnable, the Johnson Administration was preparing for American withdrawal based on a breakthrough in the Paris peace negotiations. Kissinger, as an influential Harvard national security intellectual, had access to these negotiations. Seeing his chance to win favor with whoever was going to win the election, Kissinger informed the Nixon campaign about this breakthrough.

He and Nixon secretly advised the South Vietnamese regime to refuse to end the war because they would give them a much better deal when Nixon became president.

What proceeded after Nixon and Kissinger took office was an immediate and dramatic acceleration of the bombing campaign DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.” - Anthony Bourdain The Kissinger-engineered massive and secret bombing of Cambodia not only resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and even more injuries, it laid waste to the country’s agricultural base by destroying a large portion of the arable land they had.

“It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” Kissinger told this to a deputy in 1970, according to declassified transcripts of his telephone conversations (BBC 12/2/23). The ensuing famine and social collapse from all of this laid the basis for the success of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, who carried out the genocidal campaign that ended millions of lives in the infamous “Killing Fields.”

Their engineering, supervision and support for General Pinochet’s assassination of leftist president Salvador Allende and overthrow of his government in 1973 resulted in the murder and torture of tens of thousands of workers and peasants at minimum. Pinochet’s Chile was then used as the laboratory of neoliberalism, in which brutal measures of austerity were tested on the country’s working-class population. This new model of capitalist political economy defined by ruthless union busting, cost cutting, outsourcing, deregulation and privatization was then replicated across the world for five decades.

Cambodia in 1973, as a result of a secret bombing campaign engineered by Kissinger called “Operation Menu.”

East Timor In 1975, the small island nation of East Timor was winning its independence from Portugal. The US-supported Indonesian dictator General Suharto decided to swoop in and take over where Portugal had left off.

He was met with stubborn resistance from the mass movement led by FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of East Timor). Although Kissinger would flatly deny it whenever publicly confronted about it by the rare impertinent journalist who managed to slip past the gatekeepers, Kissinger and Ford explicitly gave Suharto the proverbial green light to go ahead with his genocidal invasion of East Timor.

Far more than this green light, Ford and Kissinger continued to supply military, economic, and diplomatic aid to Suharto’s regime as these operations continued. As noted by former CIA Operative C. Philip Liecht, “Without continued heavy US logistical military support, the Indonesians might not have been able to pull it off” (Hitchens, Harper Magazine, Feb 2001). Later, even the so-called “dove” President Jimmy Carter continued to sustain Suharto’s Indonesia as a US client state.

Chile Kissinger and Nixon’s appetite for subverting the democratic will of millions of workers and poor farmers extended across the globe.

Kissinger greeting Augusto Pinochet (left) in 1970, shortly before Pinochet assumed power in Chile through a violent military coup.

Backed by a mass revolutionary movement of workers and peasants, Allende was threatening to nationalize business operations of US multinational corporations. Top executives from I.T.T, a US telecommunications corporation that was invested in Chile, as well as Pepsi Corporation directly lobbied the White House to intercede on their behalf.

In internal White House discussions that led to this, Kissinger underlined their orientation when he quipped, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” During these same White House meetings, CIA Director Helms’ handwritten notes on directives for coup in Chile included the following bullet points – “make economy scream,” “not concerned risks involved,” “$10,000,000 available, more if necessary.”

Who Will Make The Monsters Pay? Understanding why Kissinger managed to

get away with mass murder requires uncovering a basic truth about the society in which we live. Impunity for its violent bullies and armed thugs throughout the command and policy structure is a hallmark of statecraft in class society. Much like the vast majority of police abuse of power and racist murder goes unpunished, so is the case with its much more destructive mass murderers on an international scale.

In some ways, the laser-like focus on Kissinger as a unique evil, while true, runs the risk of letting US imperialism’s entire edifice off the hook. A figure like Kissinger was required

by US imperialism and the entire ruling class.

It was their response to the historical juncture birthed by humiliation at the hands of a guerilla-peasant army in Vietnam, the Black Freedom struggle of that era, and the antiwar movement in the US. Kissinger, in essence, represented a personification of the crisis US imperialism faced during the Cold War. This juncture was marked by the sharpest challenge to US imperial hegemony since the end of World War II. It threatened to tip the global balance of forces in East Asia to the USSR’s side of the Cold War and along with Soviet aid to popular movements, accelerate the anti-colonial revolution that was already happening in Africa and Asia. Even if the wars against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not automatically threaten US capitalism itself, the grand strategists of empire like Kissinger were committed to prevent what Noam Chomsky called “the threat of the good example,” especially from Vietnam.

Imperialists like Kissinger could not tolerate a thriving egalitarian society built from a social revolution which could serve as an example for all exploited and oppressed people.

Who will judge Kissinger’s legacy? The late journalist and author Chistopher Hitchens has perhaps done the most comprehensive labor to amass mountains of evidence condemning Kissinger’s legacy. His aim was to present the best possible case to prosecute Henry Kissinger either through institutions of International Law or in US courts. A cursory review of such past attempts in the 20th or 21st centuries shows the utter futility of looking to these venues for justice or accountability unless that is, it fits the interests and prerogative of victorious imperial powers. As Noam Chomsky once said, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

Only a mass working class based antiwar, anti-imperialist movement can bring the likes of Kissinger and the entire ruling class to book for its crimes against humanity. The ruling class has taught us the bitter truth that there is no justice without power and there is no neutral morality that applies equally to all in a deeply unequal world. So for the monsters of imperialism to face true accountability, and more importantly to stop any such crimes being committed in the future, a working class based revolutionary democracy must win power through a socialist transformation. J

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WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

NON UNA DI MENO: PROTESTS AGAINST FEMICIDE ROCK ITALY EVA METZ, SEATTLE On November 18, the high-profile, week-long search for 22 year-old Italian university student Giulia Cecchetin, missing since a meeting with her ex-boyfriend just days before she was set to graduate, culminated in an all-too-familiar ending with the discovery of her corpse, wrapped in black plastic and dumped by a lake, riddled with 26 stab wounds.

Violence against women was already top of mind in Italy. “C’è ancora domani” (There’s Still Tomorrow), a film telling the story of a woman’s abuse at the hands of her husband, was topping the Italian box office. Even though the movie was set in 1946, the story resonated with Italian women who saw the exploration of domestic abuse and sexism as far from old history.

Italian women had previously organized silent candlelight vigils to protest femicide, the murder of a woman or girl because of her gender, but this time, they flipped the script. Cecchettin’s sister Elena put out a call to action, saying, “For Giulia, don’t make a minute of silence. For Giulia, burn everything down.”

Anger Erupts While the Italian government moved quickly to pass legislation to expand protections against women and pledged to launch a campaign in schools to raise awareness about violence against women, it was not enough to stop the simmering fury of Italian women from erupting into the streets. Students across multiple universities organized “minutes of noise” in memory of Giulia, and

hundreds of thousands protested across Italy on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Under the banner of Non Una Di Meno (similar to Ni Una Menos in Latin America which means not one more woman lost), protesters chanted “end violence against women” and “we want to live.” Protesters demanded stricter laws against femicide and violence against women, more funding for resources to address violence against women, and an overall reckoning with Italy’s deep-seated chauvinism.

Rates of femicide are on the rise in Italy and across the world. According to a September 2022 report by the Violence Policy Center, femicide increased by 24 percent in the United States between 2014 and 2020.

A UN report surveying women from 13 countries found that 50% of women reported that either they or a woman they knew had

Biden Makes Risky Bet For Supreme Court To Defend Abortion Pill Use

experienced violence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the term “Shadow Pandemic” has been used to characterize the growing epidemic of domestic violence.

In an op-ed, Elena Cecchetin pointed to the systemic nature of her sister’s murder, writing that killers are “not sick, they are the healthy sons of patriarchy.” Italy is known for particularly machismo attitudes, bearing the legacy of Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship and the strong cultural influence of the Catholic church. However, sexism is not an isolated phenomenon but rather an essential aspect of capitalism. Femicide is a global crisis unveiling the deep social sickness of women’s oppression under capitalism, a crisis which is a matter of life and death for far too many.

Femicide has spurred mass movements against women’s oppression worldwide.

Sparked by the vicious murder of pregnant, 14-year old Chiara Paez in 2015, the Ni Una

The Biden administration is appealing to the highly-reactionary Supreme Court to overturn two decisions from anti-abortionactivist judges in the lower courts, which call on the FDA to stop approving mifepristone, a first step pill in the abortion pill regimen. This is the same Supreme Court that overturned Roe. Biden is making a reckless bet

12

Menos movement spread from Argentina across Latin America. Transitioning into the Green Wave movement for abortion rights, protestors won important steps forward for abortion rights in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Mexico. The start of 2022 saw mass protests in Ireland following the murder of Ashling Murphy, and the end of the year was rocked by an explosive protest movement in Iran following the murder of Mahsa Amini, beaten to death by the “Morality Police” for an “improper hijab.”

These protests offer a glimpse into the potential power of working-class feminist movements to shake the capitalist system to its core. Strengthening and expanding movements against gender-based violence to every country is absolutely imperative. From Hungary to Sweden, Bolsanaro to Trump to Le Pen, the rise of the sexist, racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant right wing has emboldened hate crimes and violence against the oppressed and marginalized. The repeal of women’s abortion rights in the US half a century after Roe v Wade prompted outrage, underscoring that women’s rights cannot simply advance steadily in a capitalist system dependent on oppression.

Band-aid solutions acceptable to the political establishment will never be enough to provide substantial, lasting change. This is particularly obvious in countries like Italy, whose anti-abortion Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni cannot even present a flimsy facade of GirlBoss feminism as she heads a far-right party literally called the “Brothers of Italy.” To truly end violence against women, once and for all, we need systemic change: we need to end capitalism. J

with people’s lives, but it’s a cynical win-win in an election year. On the campaign trail he can either say he defended abortion, or he can fear-monger about Republicanappointed judges hell bent on outlawing abortion.

We can’t forget that it was under Nixon’s presidency that a mass movement forced a conservative Supreme Court to pass Roe v Wade in the first place. Polls and recent defeats of anti-abortion ballot initiatives show there is a basis to rebuild such a movement.

When Roe was overturned,

nonprofits like NOW and NARAL and union leaders did next to nothing to build a fight back. They feared that a genuine mass movement for reproductive justice could take up popular demands that are actually a liability to their goal of electing as many Democrats as possible. We’re seeing this same timidity now, and it could have similarly devastating consequences.

A new mass feminist movement will have to be based on the needs and organization of working class and oppressed women, not those at the top. J

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

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

ARGENTINA’S FAR-RIGHT PRESIDENT TAKES OFFICE

by ELIN MILLER, NYC

Libertarian far-right “outsider” Javier Milei, of the right wing coalition La Libertad Avanza, has been elected president of Argentina. He defeated Sergio Massa of the “center-left” coalition Unión por la Patria by a 56% to 44% margin. This is a decisive defeat for the populist Peronist political forces that have dominated Argentinian politics for many decades.

As we wrote following his primary win, Milei is a virulently right-wing politician running on an anti-worker, anti-feminist, antiLGBTQ agenda. Milei’s victory is a major threat to ordinary Argentinians. His stated plans to close the central bank, abolish the peso, adopt the US dollar as the national currency, and institute a vicious austerity budget that involves slashing social services won’t solve crushing inflation, running at over 140% per year, nor massive indebtedness to foreign capital. Instead it will take resources away from those who are struggling most, and could very possibly lead to economic collapse rather than the promised renewal.

Milei wants to align Argentina more closely

with US imperialism in the New Cold War with Chinese imperialism and clearly hopes Trump will soon be back in power. His climate change denial ensures that environmental degradation and disaster will escalate and ultimately be paid for by working people.

His anti-abortion stance in alliance with the Catholic Church represents an existential threat to the gains of the Green Tide feminist movement, which swept Argentina in the late 2010s and 2020, and his victory will give the far right a mandate to attack those gains further.

What Happened?

The political establishment's defeat – a rightful rejection by Argentinians who see them as responsible for their economic woes – didn’t have to mean support for Milei’s reactionary politics. Without any real answers to the crises at hand, Massa attempted to make the election about lesser evilism but this failed to resonate with Argentinians who have experienced the betrayals of Peronist politics firsthand. In fact, many voters actually

saw Milei as the lesser evil compared to the establishment, not the other way around.

Milei appealed to young people, young men in particular, in part by waging a successful TikTok campaign that helped galvanize support among voters under 29, who in the run up to the first round were polling for Milei at nearly 50%, and he has consistently led polls of voters aged 16-35.

Where’s The Left?

Milei’s election has demonstrated again that lesser evilism is a losing game for anyone who wants to actually combat the evils of capitalism and the danger of the right and the far right. But unfortunately that hasn’t been reflected in the strategy of much of the electoral left in Argentina. The Unión por la Patria coalition that backed Massa was doomed from the start. This included not only a slew of reformist social democratic parties, but also various so-called “communist” parties, who willingly associated themselves with the betrayals of Peronism, and now too with the failure to stop Milei Standing against the current is the FIT-U (Workers Left Front – Unity) coalition, centered on four small Trotskyist parties. They correctly refused to bend to lesser evilist pressure and ran all the way through the general election with a presidential candidate of their own, the only one of five who put forward a genuine anti-capitalist, pro-worker, anti-imperialist program.

NETHERLANDS: POPULIST RIGHT WIN ELECTION PIETER BRANS, ISA NETHERLANDS In the current “Age of Disorder” the sorting of the global order into two rival imperialist camps has continued to prop up and create space for right-wing governments. From India to the US, autocratic right-wing populists gain or challenge for power. This process is happening not because right wing ideas offer any real way for working people to overcome the obstacles in front of them, but because the working class is disorganized and the left is discredited and cannot lead the working class toward socialist solutions at the present time.

In the Netherlands this process has continued as the far-right, formerly fringe “Party for Freedom” (PVV) has won the most seats – 37 out of 150 – in the November 22 parliamentary election.

Does this mean a shift to the right in Dutch society? No, rather a huge dissatisfaction with traditional politics, a lack of a left alternative and a clever game by PVV leader Geert Wilders to attract the anti-establishment vote.

On several occasions it has become clear that most workers and young people in the Netherlands are not rightwing. For example, a majority are in favor of increasing the DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

minimum wage, for a millionaire’s tax, for the abolition of subsidies for fossil fuels, etc. Recently there was the largest climate march ever in the Netherlands. The only question is: who will pay for the climate transition? Ordinary working people certainly can’t afford it and Wilders took advantage of that.

Wilders used concern about migration and declining wages to play on working class fears. PVV stoked fears that refugees will take away homes, permanent jobs, etc. They linked their anti-immigrant policies to progressive populist policies and social issues such as lowering the retirement age to 65, an increase in the minimum wage, and a higher rent allowance. In this way PVV and rightwing populists pit different sections of the working class against each other in the end for the benefit of the capitalist class.

Over the past decade, the crises in society has led to divisions in the Dutch ruling class. Roughly speaking, two groups have emerged.

More far-sighted layers of the ruling class want to use alternative energy sources, produce more sustainably and maintain expenditure on education and healthcare, especially to maintain the geostrategic position of Dutch big

However these can sound like empty promises without a class-struggle strategy to win. As we’ve previously said, the FIT-U has the critical task of becoming more than just an electoral engine – of becoming a genuine organizing home for the working class, youth, and oppressed – in order to win more than 3.31% of the vote and present a real threat to the establishment and a real alternative to the right.

Struggle For A Real Alternative!

The fight against Milei’s reactionary agenda and the right cannot be confined to the halls of power, where the establishment and anyone tied to them will oppose Milei only to the extent that it protects their own system. Such a movement will need a genuine left leadership in the form of a new party that fights in the streets, in the workplaces, in the schools and colleges, in working class communities and in electoral politics to organize the entire working class.

We can look to the experiences of Brazil, France, and right here in the US to see that no matter which capitalist politician is leading the country, nothing will be given to workers without a fight. What’s needed is a genuine alternative on the basis of the working class and oppressed fighting the right, and ultimately aiming to overthrow the whole capitalist system that produced both Massa and Milei, and the crises facing Argentinians. J

business. Others, whose profits are under more pressure, would prefer to return to the previous, neoliberal era, with as little state interference as possible. They want to continue making profits in the old-fashioned way, not spend money on other forms of energy. They prefer to solve the problems as much as possible within national borders.

They want to get rid of multinational institutions such as the EU (which costs money).

Before the PVV can rule, it would need to create a coalition with other parties. This seems unlikely to happen as the center-right parties seem intent on ignoring PVV. To counter this, Wilders is attempting to pose as “moderate” in the media. That is the “moderation” of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The PVV consistently stands up for the nationalism of the white, blonde, Christian, Netherlands, wants a referendum on a Nexit and is anti everything that comes from outside, for the removal of climate measures, wants no more subsidies for culture and public broadcasting and bases itself in its program on the exclusion of population groups on the basis of religion and origin.

International Socialist Alternative opposes the rightwing program of PVV and organizes for socialist policies in the Netherlands. Find more in depth analysis at InternationalSocialist.net. J

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YOUTH & STUDENTS

ONLINE ACTIVISM FROM THE SERVERS TO THE STREETS

by SAWYER SMITH, NYC

For the social movements that have defined Gen Z’s upbringing and political radicalization, social media has provided a platform for politically outspoken young people to connect and express widespread solidarity.

Those who feel compelled to speak up and get involved in organizing have more access than ever before to news, analysis, and likeminded people.

The growth of online political radicalization has had far-ranging consequences, both positive and negative. Several successful student walkouts have been organized primarily through Instagram and Snapchat, connecting

online work to the vital real-world organizing that is necessary for the cultivation of a mass movement against injustice.

Social media has also become a valuable tool for education, with trending TikTok sounds directing attention toward issues that have been under-reported by mainstream media.

The online coordination of protests, walkouts, and boycotts has great value, but online activism should be seen as a jumping-off point rather than an isolated mode of struggle. However, young people face real barriers in translating their online activity into the

collective in-person organizing that’s needed.

Online Solidarity With Palestine Recent months have seen an explosion of campus organizing, and at the same time, young antiwar organizers have been targeted by the right for their outspoken opposition to the assault on Gaza, on the basis of the false idea that criticism of Israel is equivalent to antisemitism. Retaliation campaigns – like the infamous “doxxing truck” that has stalked student organizers at Harvard, Columbia, and a number of other universities with a mobile digital billboard displaying the names and

faces of the supposed “antisemites” – have resulted in suspensions for students and firings for workers. This has gone hand-in-hand with harassment, especially of Palestinian students and workers.

We can’t lay the blame on young people struggling to find outlets for in-person political action. There is a palpable lack of ways to get organized, which serves as a significant obstacle not just for young activists but for everyone. The question then becomes this: how can the positive impulses motivating young people’s online activism be channeled into real, tangible victories?

IS IT ANTISEMITIC TO PROTEST ISRAEL? Jewish activist organizations demonstrate at the US Capitol building, Oct. 18.

Workers and young people have continued to take to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian masses, as the people of Gaza continue to suffer the catastrophic damage caused by the Israeli regime’s ground invasion which began in October. The Israel-Palestine conflict is a highly polarizing issue, particularly for Jews and Arabs in the US. There are widely varying views within both communities. Young people who are radicalizing around a program for peace and Palestinian liberation, often face vicious attacks from those who subscribe to the outright lies of the Zionist right wing.

One of the most used weapons by the Zionist right is rampant accusations of antisemitism against anyone critical of the Israeli state.

Republicans in Congress asserted the notion that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” in a dangerous resolution put forward to the House this month. But it is abundantly clear that students, workers, and ordinary people speaking out against Israel are moved to do so not by hatred of Jews but in horror at the indiscriminate mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. The buildings that people called home have been leveled, with unaccounted for civilians trapped under the rubble. It only seems the most rational response to view these acts as a horrific injustice that ordinary people should never be subject to.

Need For Clarity In The Movement There is of course, a section of the movement who put forward the idea that Hamas has played a progressive role in the conflict. “From the river to the sea” is a chant many have heard at demonstrations, but some may not understand that this can be seen to mean “driving out the settlers.” In other words, implying that ordinary Israelis are themselves colonizers who should be made into refugees. In the absence of a clear internationalist working class program, people can be pulled towards ideas that assert that the Jewish population are one reactionary mass.

With a general ramping up of reactionary ideas

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by HANNAH FITZGERALD, PITTSBURGH

in society it is reasonable for Jewish people to fear a growth of antisemitism, and putting forward a position that supports Hamas can push Jewish people out of the anti-war movement. In this sense it is crucial that the ongoing movement for Palestinian liberation makes crystal clear its rejection of antisemitism.

Many of the demonstrations in the US have been organized by Jewish groups alongside Palestinian groups and coalitions, such as Jewish Voice for Peace. This cuts across the reactionary lies of the Netanyahu regime that claims to act on behalf of all Jewish people, and seeks to stoke divisions between Jews and Arabs around the world. Regardless, taking part in protests and speaking out has put anti-war protestors in the crosshairs of not only the pro-Israel lobby, but also the whole of US imperialism which relies on Israel to protect its interests in the strategically important Middle East.

The political establishment seeks to portray this as between Jews and Arabs, in an attempt to blur the fundamental questions of war and occupation. While it attempts to posture as antioppression, there should be no mistake that the myth of Zionism, that a capitalist state of Israel would be the safest place in the world for Jews, creates a never-ending cycle of bloodshed between working class Jews and Arabs.

The reality is we can find no real liberation for the masses of Jewish people under capitalism, no escape from genuine antisemitism. This is understood by many young Jewish people, despite unavoidable and relentless propaganda claiming the contrary.

Activists Being Targeted Educators and students have been on the chopping block most recently for outspoken opposition to the Israeli state. Ivy League administrators have overseen the harassment of student protesters, like at Harvard University where Black and Arab organizers have had their faces and names plastered on campus trucks labeling

them as “antisemites.” At the same time, university leaders have come under ferocious fire from the right for “not doing enough” to weed out antisemitism on their campuses.

Yet figures like Elon Musk, who genuinely spread anti-Jewish sentiment and conspiracies, have been served no repercussions. Since Musk’s takeover of X (formerly Twitter) there has been a massive influx of hate speech on the platform. According to TIME, tweets referring to LGBTQ as slurs rose by 119%, and on average only 28% of antisemitic tweets reported to the ADL were removed from the site. Last month Musk personally agreed with a post defending the sentiment that “Hitler was right” and saying Jewish communities have been “pushing hatred against whites.” Shortly after, he was warmly welcomed and escorted by Netanyahu on his trip to Israel. The lesson here of course is that pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories to 166 million followers is okay, as long as you are sufficiently deferential to the Israeli regime afterwards.

The cynical attacks on anti-war activists make it harder to recognize, confront, and fight actual antisemitism, which we must be able to do. Of course, there is absolutely no place for genuine antisemitism in the antiwar movement, which is marginal but has reared its head in some instances. The narrative that ordinary Israelis are inherently “colonizers” is not only false, but will only act to throw disillusioned Jews into the arms of the reactionary right, which paves no path to a world free of anti-Jewish hate. Working people and educators who have illusions in the Israeli state should not be targeted either. The left should not be boxed into defending Hamas’ slaughter of ordinary Israelis – as this is playing into the hands of the Netanyahu regime. Socialists need to expose artificial divisions in the working class, which only obscure the real heart of any capitalist society. Israeli workers and Palestinian workers have far more in common with each other than either does with the capitalists of their countries. J

Exercising Power Offline One way to exercise real power is through the labor movement. Unions aren’t the only solution to the problem of weak activist infrastructure, but they play a vital role not just in improving working conditions, but in effecting political change on a larger scale. In the context of waning support for the war, a number of unions representing workers from a wide array of different industries have started making their stance against military support for Israel clear. Workers have inordinate leverage when it comes to taking action against injustice, as with bus drivers refusing to transport arrested protesters to jail during the BLM protests in the summer of 2020, or dockworkers halting the shipment of arms overseas.

Ultimately, though, many more people are looking for ways to affect change than are currently in unions, and protests, walkouts, and occupations need vehicles to be sustained and escalated. There is no way around the fact that to address the dire lack of working-class political infrastructure in US society, new mass organizations need to be built from the ground up.

It’s crucial that we build independent hubs for organizing, from unions to activist organizations to a mass party that represents the needs of working people, and provides a platform for young people seeking change that can be built outside the confines of online organizing. The internet is invaluable as a tool for education and for elevating consciousness, and as such must not be dismissed. The videos and images people see of violence all over the world have a real effect on their desire for change.

There is an instinctive draw to solidarity domestically and internationally, making an internationalist movement against war, poverty, climate change, and any number of issues that affect working people possible. Yes, social media and the internet writ large can play a valuable role in building such a movement, but real-world mobilization is the necessary component for making real strides toward victories.J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

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GET INVOLVED!

UAW ANNOUNCES BOLD CAMPAIGN TO UNIONIZE ENTIRE AUTO INDUSTRY CHRIS GRAY, MINNEAPOLIS The United Auto Workers won important victories resulting from their 40 day strike against the “Big Three” automakers, Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors. While many workers voted against the final deal because they knew more could have been won by escalating the strike, the gains in the new contract have raised expectations across the industry. On a livestream on December 11, UAW President Shawn Fain announced plans to move forward from the Big Three strike to unionize the entire US auto industry, calling it a “once in a generation opportunity.” This has the potential to be one of the most exciting moments in the US labor movement in many decades.

The UAW is offering electronic authorization cards (uaw.org/join) to autoworkers at any facility, and has published a simple guide to unionize your workplace. Crucially, they are emphasizing the importance of shop-floor organizing, clear demands, and a willingness to confront the injustices of the boss.

It’s a huge step forward that UAW is offering workers a simple, transparent process to join the union, which is quite different from the opaque, stafferdriven process of many unions. Fain even encouraged friends and family members watching the broadcast to text the link to sign a union card to any auto worker they know. This approach of mobilizing the entire weight of the working class was an essential part of building a fighting labor movement in the 1930s.

Workers at Honda in Indiana, Hyundai in Alabama, and Volkswagen in Tennessee have all filed Unfair Labor Practice lawsuits against management’s union-busting tactics with public support from the UAW. It seems clear UAW is responding to the initiative workers are taking on their own. At the Honda plant in Indiana, autoworkers made their own UAW stickers and stuck them on their hats (and other places around the factory).

Other workers set up their own prounion social media groups. Fain told viewers that more than 1,000 workers had signed up for the UAW at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN in less than a week.

Fain claimed thousands of workers at Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Nissan, Hyundai, Mazda, BMW, Mercedes,

Volkswagen, Volvo, Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid have contacted the UAW. While it’s excellent the UAW recognizes the unprecedented opportunities of the moment, and has thrown open the doors to workers taking the initiative, it will also take real resources to win.

Once 50% of the facility has signed cards, Fain has pledged to attend a rally at the facility. Mass rallies are an essential tool to mobilize the whole working class into the struggle. Building mass rallies requires real resources, and the wider labor movement needs to step up with neighborhood door knocks, faith community announcements, etc. Not only would mobilizing the wider working class help autoworkers, but it’s an excellent way to start unionizing the vast numbers of unorganized workers in the service sector, logistics, tech, and many other industries. To accomplish this, we need to build organizations in the community that can provide support to auto workers, like Workers Strike Back has done with national Weeks of Action to support unionizing Amazon workers at the KCVG air hub in Kentucky.

The last step of the “30/50/70” recipe is filing for a union election once 70% of the workplace has signed cards.

As workers at Volkswagen, Honda, and Hyundai have recently learned with failed union elections, these corporations will stop at nothing to defeat the union. It’s a positive thing that Shawn Fain is not building illusions in politicians or the legal system to protect workers.

He said “These workers won’t win because a lawyer filed paperwork... they will win because they’re ready to stand up and fight for what they deserve.” While “30/50/70” will not be able to be perfectly applied in every workplace situation, it is a very useful starting point for thousands of workers who want to unionize but don’t know how.

Shawn Fain was elected UAW President out of a reform caucus earlier this year, defeating a corrupt and conservative old guard that had presided over decades

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of defeats for autoworkers. He uses the language of class struggle politics. He does not claim workers and billionaires have a shared interest. He is clear about who the enemy is. In the livestream he said “These companies will lie, cheat and steal; and out of the other side of their mouth they claim we’re all family.”

He also regularly criticized politicians who “give lip-service to working people,” and the UAW has correctly withheld its endorsement for Biden thus far.

Fain’s open declaration of war against billionaires at the helm of the auto-industry could mark a turning point for the labor movement. Non-union auto workers have already shown they are willing to take the initiative, where a positive lead is provided. To win, UAW can’t hold back any punches, like they did during the Big Three strike. The stakes are bigger than simply unionizing workers. Fain’s framework of US society as a struggle between “workers and the billionaire class” cuts across the divisive polarization and ”culture wars” of US society, and offers a way to unite working class people into a common struggle to improve their lives. J

THE UAW’S 30/50/70 GUIDE TO ORGANIZING AUTO PLANTS 30% of workers sign union cards

CAMPAIGN GOES PUBLIC 50% sign union cards

UAW WILL JOIN RALLY AT FACILITY

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70% sign union cards

FILE FOR ELECTION

HOUSTON, TX............houstonsa@socialistalternative.org SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

Editor: Keely Mullen Editorial Board: George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Chris Gray, Josh Koritz, Calvin Priest, Greyson Van Arsdale, Tony Wilsdon Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023

15

SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

ISSUE #99 l DEC/JAN 2023

TAKING ON AMAZON Slide shown during anti-union meetings at KCVG.

Union-busting lawyers have been seen patrolling KCVG in high-vis vests.

KEELY MULLEN “$10 billion and zero sense.” These words, printed in size 284 font, spanned a fake sixfoot check which draped two folding tables in the parking lot of Amazon’s KCVG air hub.

The check, which represented Amazon’s most recent quarterly profits, was made out to “Our Billionaire Executives and Union Busters.”

Activists with the Amazon Labor UnionKCVG, who have spent the last 10 months collecting cards for a union election, asked their coworkers to vote on where they thought the profits should go (the clear winner was a $30/hour starting wage).

The check was first displayed on November 7, and over the following several days, union activists were subjected to a barrage of badge challenges and demands from management to take down their table. The workers stood their ground, asserting their legal rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Just five days later, 11 KCVG workers were delivered “final written warnings” from the facility’s top brass. Union activists had tabled in the facility’s parking lot for months without issue and these final writtens seemed to come out of nowhere. But this was just management’s warning shot. What has followed in the weeks since has been an all-out assault on the union campaign.

Defeating Amazon’s union-busting machine will require these worker activists to be crystal clear about what they’re up against,

steadfast in their commitment to fighting for their coworkers, and highly organized.

KCVG employees urging them not to sign union cards

What’s Disgusting? Union Busting!

Hosted more than a dozen anti-union meetings every day where they tell workers they can lose their benefits if they vote for the union

While the whiplash-inducing speed of Amazon’s new anti-union offensive may appear to have come out of nowhere, it’s very clear what triggered this new phase in their campaign. The union effort has developed in both breadth and depth. There are more union activists across the various shifts and schedules, and the activists’ commitment to fighting for $30/hr, translation, free onsite childcare, and so much more has deepened.

Amazon is not blind to this momentum, and they are doing whatever they have to do to head it off.

Legally, Amazon has covered its back by repeating that workers have the choice to join a union if they want. But what choice is it really, if the company sets all the rules for how that choice is made?

Here’s what Amazon’s offensive has looked like in just the last five weeks at KCVG:

Brought in managers from across the country to patrol the facility, holding one-on-one anti-union conversations with workers And before this ramping up, they hired 2,000 workers to try and flood the bargaining unit, hoping to prevent the union from reaching the 30% threshold of union cards needed for an election.

WHILE AMAZON’S CAMPAIGN IS SHOCKING TO SEE UP CLOSE, THEY ARE EXECUTING A RINSE-ANDREPEAT STRATEGY THAT MAJOR CORPORATIONS HAVE USED FOR DECADES TO CRUSH UNION CAMPAIGNS.

They deployed a team of millionaire anti-union lawyers to Kentucky, dressed up as managers in high-vis vests and work boots Issued threats of termination to 11 union activists Plastered the workplace in antiunion posters and TV screens Sent out mass texts and emails to all Massive posters have been put up around the facility with anti-union messages.

managers to drive the campaign forward; and bombard workers with texts, emails, meetings, posters, and one-on-ones. And once the election comes around – if the union gets that far – insist that voting “NO” is the only way to get back to normal.

What makes Amazon’s anti-union campaign different is the sheer scale of the company’s resources which are just shy of infinite.

Meanwhile, Amazon has erected barrier after barrier to prevent union activists from talking to their coworkers. Activists are not allowed to be on site unless they are actively working, but according to the NLRA they’re also not allowed to pass out union literature on shift. They’re harassed for setting up tables in the parking lot. They can’t be in the break rooms or the cafeteria outside their 15 or 30-minute break times, and if they talk about the union during their break, management accuses them of creating a hostile environment.

Amazon has covered the whole facility in a thick, exhausting campaign to crush workers’ struggle for higher wages and better working conditions. And yet, with the help of their million-dollar PR strategists, will attempt to convince workers that it’s actually the union that’s created all the tension.

Amazon Is Just Like The Other Guys While Amazon’s campaign is certainly shocking to see up close, they are in many ways executing a rinse-and-repeat strategy that major corporations have used for decades to crush union campaigns.

Marty Levitt, a career union-buster turned union advocate, detailed the industry’s strategy in his bombshell book, Confessions of a Union Buster.

He writes: “Union busting operates as a system of tactics designed to enforce behavior through manipulation, fear, insecurity, insolation, and in the end, the promise of a return to normal life.”

A cursory glance at Levitt’s “17 Elements of the Union-Busting System” and union activists will be shocked by how familiar it sounds. Frame the union as a third party; divide workers against each other; use trusted

Amazon has bombarded workers with anti-union messages on their internal chat portal, Amazon a to z.

How Can Workers Beat Amazon There is no question that it is in every single workers’ best interest to have a union at their workplace. Unionized workers make, on average, 18% more than non-union workers. Unionized workers have nearly 27% more vacation time. 14% more union workers have paid sick leave than non-union workers.

Union workplaces are safer, with 34% fewer OSHA violations.

Companies hate unions precisely because these gains eat into their profits, and collective action in the workplace threatens their power.

This simple truth is the best asset that union activists have, and ensuring that every coworker understands this truth requires a high degree of determination and organization. The most urgent task for union activists at KCVG is to guarantee that there’s at least one dedicated, well-respected, and convincing union activist on every single shift in every single department. Getting to this point will require that strong structures are built that can withstand Amazon’s blows.

Any worker organization needs structure, not just material issues to agitate around, not just charismatic leaders, not just public support. It needs an organizing committee comprising the organic leaders in each work area who have the strategic understanding, organizing skill, and the personal relationships to move a majority of workers into action. It doesn’t matter how deeply felt the workplace issues are or how righteous the fight is. If a tight organizing structure is not built, workers will lose 100% of contested fights.

If activists at KCVG can convince thousands of their coworkers that forming a union will only make their life better, there’ll be nothing Amazon’s elite lawyers and unionbusting consultants can do to stop them. J