Socialist Alternative #109 - Dec/Jan 2025

SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE ISSUE #109 | DEC/JAN 2025

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ARI KOBLER, CINCINNATI

I first heard of Socialist Alternative during Covington Pride in 2023. I had recently moved to Northern Kentucky and was looking to become more politically

active. Socialist Alternative was petitioning against the wave of anti-trans bills attacking trans students and teachers— something that I was heavily invested in, since I am a transgender teacher, though closeted at work.

Socialist Alternative’s call for a worker’s party that was not backed by corporate interest felt especially relevant to me. When I got involved, Biden had been in office for a little under three years. I remembered being frustrated with his campaign promise of a “return to the status quo” after Trump. The status quo for many workers meant high healthcare costs, insecure housing, and abortion and queer rights constantly under attack.

I spent my first summer with Socialist Alternative tabling to support the union

drive at KCVG, Amazon’s largest Air Hub. We spoke to people from all walks of life, showing them how important it was to support KCVG’s fledgling union. Rebuilding the labor movement is more important than ever. My union, American Federation of Teachers, needs to play a pivotal role in protecting the rights of trans and minority students, as attacks on public education become more daring and dangerous.

I’m proud to be a member of Socialist Alternative. The work we do allows me to be part of something bigger than myself. Joining has really shown me that a socialist, egalitarian world is possible.

Now more than ever it is important to fight against capitalism.J

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run them under democratic workers’ control for the safety of staff and patients.

Housing is a human right. Pass strong rent control. End economic evictions. Fund high-quality, permanently affordable, socially-owned housing where renters are legally protected from discrimination.

Fully fund public education. End school privatization. Give educators an immediate 25% raise and increase staffing. Stop right-wing attacks on curriculum and ban standardized tests. Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free.

Fully fund addiction and mental health services and job programs. Big Pharma profits off of the suffering and misery of working-class people.

Corporations caused the fentanyl crisis, and untreated mental health is a massive problem.

Take Big Pharma into democratic public ownership.

Bring back the COVID-era child tax credit and make it permanent. No cuts to food stamps.

End Climate Catastrophe & Create Green, Union Jobs •

Rebuild Fighting Unions broad program for reproductive health. Resist all right-wing attempts to criminalize abortions.

• Take to the streets! We need big, organized • No trust in the Democrats, who campaign on abortion during elections but don’t make protests and walkouts for Inauguration Day to meaningful change when in power. fight Trump’s reactionary policies.

• No to both corporate parties. We need to • Fight back against Trump’s anti-trans legislation and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ build a new party that fights unapologetically people. Full legal rights for all queer people. for working-class and oppressed people, in Build a movement to fight for good jobs, affordwhich elected officials only take the median able housing, universal childcare, and genderwage of the workers they represent. affirming Medicare for All. • Solidarity is the most important tool to fight the boss. An effective resistance to Trump and • The labor movement needs to take a clear stand against these divide-and-rule tactics. his billionaire friends like Elon Musk can only Unionized workers like teachers should unite be built by fighting all forms of racism, sexism, with students to organize mass non-compliscapegoating immigrants, and fear-mongering ance, strikes, and walkouts. about trans people. An injury to one is an injury to all!

​​Fight Trump & The Far Right

Stop Xenophobic Attacks & Deportations

No To Imperialist Wars

• Build a massive anti-war, anti-imperialist movement demanding a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East; an end to US military aid to Israel; and an end to the occupation and siege of all Palestinian territories.

• No support for reactionary capitalist regimes like the Israeli state, Hamas, the Iranian state, and Hezbollah. For an international, independent, working-class movement to end imperialist war in the Middle East.

• End the war in Ukraine. No imperialist military aid to Ukraine, no support for Russian imperialism. Defend the right to self-determination for Ukraine and for national minorities in the Donbas and Crimean peninsula.

• No to military build-up between US and Chinese imperialism, which threatens working people everywhere. Rebuild an international, anti-war movement opposing all militarism.

• No to Trump’s plans for immigrant detentions and deportations! No border wall expansion!

Immediate citizenship rights for all undocumented immigrants.

• Build a movement that unites immigrants and US-born workers against the billionaire class to fight for good union jobs, social housing, and free high-quality education for all.

• Refuse to cooperate with Trump’s agenda—get organized to fight for real sanctuary cities and build emergency deportation defense committees in workplaces, unions, and neighborhoods.

• Unions should begin now to organize emergency deportation defense networks to shut down workplace raids by ICE and urgently respond to community raids.

• Build a movement against the destructive policies of US imperialism around the world that drive working class people to flee their home End Racist Policing countries. We need an international struggle for socialism to fight for a world that works for • Arrest and convict killer cops. End the militarization of police; ban the use of crowd control us, not the ruling elite. weapons and disarm police on patrol.

Defend Abortion & Stop Attacks • Put policing under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with the power On Women & Trans People to hire, fire, subpoena, and review budget priorities.

• Free, safe, legal abortion now. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a

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Fight for green, union jobs. We reject big business pitting the climate movement against the labor movement—we need a unionized jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure including a massive expansion of free, highquality, and fast public transit.

• We need fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from everincreasing storms, floods, and fires. Tax the rich to reimburse working people for their destroyed homes and livelihoods.

• Take real steps to address climate change.

Both parties fund the US military, one of the biggest polluters in the world. Addressing climate change means ending war and cutting military budgets.

• 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.

• Inflation, unaffordable healthcare, sky-high rents, and 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 wallets—to win lasting victories against inflation like Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA).

• Unionize every worker. Earlier this year, autoworkers launched a massive campaign to organize the South, a huge step toward building a united resistance to corporations and their political allies in both parties who profit most from keeping us divided.

• Demand union leaders stop rubbing elbows with corporate politicians and start laying the ground for a new independent worker’s party.

Union leaders should accept the average wage of workers in their industry. These leaders should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class.

• Unions need to fight all manifestations of The Whole System Is Guilty racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of oppression as part of the struggle to rebuild • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental destruca fighting labor movement. tion, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.

• Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. Working-class people know how to manage their schools, • Fight inflation with significant wage increases. workplaces, and communities better than outBillionaires keep getting richer while inflation of-touch executives and Wall Street investors. eats more and more out of every paycheck • For a socialist world. This means a democratic working people receive. socialist plan for the economy based on the • Universal healthcare now. Take for-profit common interests of working people and youth hospital chains out of the hands of greedy everywhere. investors and incompetent managers, and

Tax The Rich & Invest In Our Basic Needs

www.SocialistAlternative.org info@socialistalternative.org @Socialist_Alternative @SocialistAlt @socialistUS

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US ELECTIONS

called for a purge of dissenting government officials. During the George Floyd protests, Trump wanted to deploy the military to bloodily suppress protests but was blocked by his own generals. “I need the kind of generals Hitler had” was Trump’s response, and he will go to great lengths in his second term to install an unquestionably loyal military leadership. While the FBI, military and other arms of the state exist to be wielded against working people and our organizations, and we can’t have any illusions in their “independence,” we have nothing to gain whatsoever from an authoritarian and unconstrained Trump administration.

VARUN BELUR, PHILADELPHIA You’d be hard pressed to find a more abominable gang of billionaires, sex criminals and warmongers than Trump’s incoming cabinet. As a whole, they represent the dangerously rightwing and authoritarian agenda of Trump 2.0.

Trump campaigned as if he would represent regular working people against the “elites,” but it’s startling how directly and deeply involved the billionaire class is in Trump’s cabinet.

Seven billionaires have been nominated, and altogether, the group’s net worth tops $380 billion—higher than the GDP of most countries.

As we’ve previously warned, Trump’s second term will be marked by increased authoritarianism. Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, has warned that he will root out the “conspirators” in the government and the media. Trump will carry out attacks on basic democratic rights and institutions like the press, the right to protest, education and unions. He has promised to carry out “shock and awe” mass deportations that will rip apart families and communities.

But Trump’s attacks can be stopped. His ability to carry out his agenda is not just a question of who sits in his cabinet but of the class balance of forces in society. In other words, working people can and must get organized to fight back against Trump’s destructive plans.

History shows we can beat the far right when the working class takes action.

How Far Can Trump Go?

Cabinet Of Horrors Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two rightwing billionaires, have been tapped to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” From day one, Musk and Ramaswamy have pledged to carry out a union-busting crusade against federal workers and have promised mass layoffs. This would be a blow to all workers, but to Black workers in particular who make up a significant fraction of the public sector workforce. Billionaire interests will nakedly reign supreme in Trump’s government.

Matt Gaetz, who trafficked a minor for sex, was Trump’s initial choice to lead the Department of Justice. Under intense media and legal pressure, he was forced to withdraw from consideration. This was a dent to Trump’s ambitions to build an “Anti-MeToo” cabinet, and it shows that there is still deep, untapped anger in society at unchecked sexual abuse and harassment. But Trump himself and several more of his cabinet picks, including Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, are rapists and sexual abusers and it will take more than media pressure to defeat them. Mass protests and workplace action will be necessary to oppose Trump’s agenda as well as all sexism and misogyny, which is baked into the capitalist system.

Trump’s cabinet picks and inner circle is stocked with racists, sexists, transphobes and others with deeply toxic ideas. Stephen Miller, a senior advisor to Trump, is a white nationalist who is a proponent of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Trump’s administration will include transphobes like Elon Musk, who will lead attacks on LGBTQ people and

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women in order to reinforce sexist gender roles and distract from their inability to improve the quality of life for working people. It’s the task of the labor movement to reject all attempts at divide-and-rule politics and stand up boldly to protect oppressed coworkers and community members.

Project 2025 Trump’s cabinet picks give us a glimpse into the main priorities of his administration and the wing of the ruling class that backs him. On the campaign trail, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, but he’s ready to drop the charade. Trump will dangerously ramp up militarism, carry out vicious mass deportations and stoke hate and violence. He plans to demolish what little oversight the state imposes on big business and go after working people and unions. Trump will aim to accomplish this by concentrating power in the presidency to an unprecedented level.

The overriding priority of Trump and the ruling class is to win the fight for global supremacy with Chinese imperialism. Trump’s nomination of Marco Rubio, Hegseth, and others to his cabinet is a reflection of this. He will levy stiff tariffs against China that will upset a wing of Wall Street. But the US ruling class is trapped

by the logic of imperialist conflict. This means they will fight for every technological and military advantage against Chinese imperialism, and so trade restrictions and tariffs are on the order of the day.

The drive to deregulation and privatization is a core part of Trump’s agenda. Cutting back social services to the bone and dismantling public sector unions, especially teachers’ unions, is central to Project 2025. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, billionaire Linda McMahon, supports defunding the public school system as part of a campaign to fully privatize education.

Trump plans to bring key agencies that previously hindered his agenda to heel in his second term. Trump’s FBI director nominee has

While the ruling class seems invincible, it is the working class that creates the wealth on which their power rests. We stand in between the capitalists and their long-term goals. Trump’s cabinet selections are absolutely vile, and we can’t afford to underestimate the danger that they pose to working and oppressed people. But we also shouldn’t underestimate our own power to place limits on Trump’s agenda and even score victories.

He will almost certainly overreach with his attacks and provoke a backlash, and we should be ready to build on it.

The mass general strikes over the past year against Javier Milei, the right-wing authoritarian president of Argentina, provide an example for how the working class can halt attacks on our working and living conditions. A general strike that shut down huge swathes of the economy followed by four days of massive protests forced Milei to withdraw his first major austerity bill just weeks after it was introduced. But in the absence of continued mobilizations, he was ultimately able to pass substantial portions of it.

Although the passage of the “omnibus” bill was a major defeat, the Argentinian working class tasted victory and is more emboldened today to fight militantly against Milei’s agenda. In October, transportation workers went on a sectoral strike to protest layoffs, an action that could inspire broader sections of the working class to move into action once more to defeat Milei’s hated austerity. Likewise, unions have a key role to play in the fight against Trump’s agenda in the US. But we can’t limit our struggles to opposing individual aspects of Trump’s agenda.

Capitalism as a whole is the source of crisis, destruction and upheaval in our society, and we need to build powerful movements against the whole rotten system. That means that we can’t trust the Democrats, a warmongering, billionaire-backed party, with the keys to the capitalist state. They are not a “safe pair of hands” for the capitalist institutions that Trump now controls. We need to fight for working class control over the economy through our own institutions and organizations. We need to get active to build powerful unions and mass movements that can block Trump and plant a flag to inspire the wider working class into action. Fight back against Trump and capitalism—join the socialists!J

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HEALTHCARE

killing of millions not by outright violence, but the result of capitalist policies, in this case the profit-driven denial of the healthcare people need. All health insurance profits come from charging people more for premiums than gets paid out in healthcare. The purpose of any insurance is simply to spread unpredictable costs across a population, and so any profit collected is taken out of benefits and is directly parasitic towards the people insured.

Profit is what our capitalist society is built around maximizing. So every single healthcare decision in this country is first made by a doctor, but then second-guessed by a bureaucratic, profit-thirsty insurance company with no medical expertise or familiarity with the patient, whose direct incentive is to deny as much Mugshot of Luigi Mangione, charged with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. healthcare as they can. Every minute spent on this by healthcare providers, insurance industry workers, or frusa working-class revolution to end for-profit CHRIS BAKER, NC TRIANGLE healthcare and build a society that doesn’t trated patients is a counterproductive waste.

The entire health insurance industry should Early in the morning of December 4, in down- run on the profit motive at all. Taking down not exist. Everyone who works in it should be town Manhattan, a masked gunman fatally shot one CEO won’t end our suffering—we have to re-employed in a socially useful job, like actutake down their entire system.

50-year-old Brian Thompson. Thompson was ally providing healthcare, and a not-for-profit the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, America’s larggovernment program should insure everyone est private health insurance company, and his For-Profit Healthcare Runs On with minimal complexity at low cost. killer was waiting for him as he left his hotel Murder for a shareholders’ meeting. Five days later It’s not surprising that UnitedHealthcare on December 9, after a huge manhunt, the was targeted. The whole health insurance suspected killer was captured and identified industry is rotten, and UHC is the worst of the as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.

The health insurance industry is nothing worst, with a long track record of denying necmore than a parasite on society, with no pur- essary medical care. They are valued at $561 pose but to make billions of dollars for the billion and took in profits of $22 billion in 2023. already-wealthy by forcing working people to Brian Thompson took home compensation of pay huge sums for insurance that then refuses $10 million that year and has been sued for to cover much actual medical care. United insider trading. During his leadership of UnitHealthcare’s annual profits have shot up by edHealthCare, its valuation almost doubled as nearly 400 percent due to the company now it pioneered new ways to deny claims using AI, reportedly denying nearly one in three medi- waste patients’ and healthcare workers’ time, and destroy lives for profit. cal claims.

This event has sparked a massive telling and Thompson, as the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was a mass murderer who personally profited retelling of health insurance horror stories by from the deaths and suffering of sick and dying patients and doctors. A 20-year-old woman people and the crippling debt inflicted on them died from a sinus infection after her health and their families. But because capitalism insurance application was lost in red tape, values profit above all else, Thompson was delaying her treatment until she sought emerjust one monster in a house full of horrors, and gency care. A paralyzed stroke patient had her another soulless creep has already crawled in rehab cut off after only 20 days. A friend of this author was stuck with an $11,207.95 bill for a to “carry on his legacy” as UHC’s new CEO. Millions still feel abject desperation at rabies shot after her insurance was suddenly seeing no clear way to end the suffering we cut off when she left her university program. It and our loved ones face at the hands of the is in this context that United Healthcare’s offi- Take Down The Whole System rich and powerful. The outpouring of support cial Facebook announcement of Thompson’s This status quo is defended by both our for Mangione on social media shows that mil- death received upwards of 90,000 laugh reac- corporate political parties. Barack Obama tions and far fewer reactions of any other kind. lions of us are dreaming of a world without The health insurance industry runs on what campaigned for president on the issue of CEOs, but we can’t make that world a reality single-payer healthcare in 2008. After he through individual acts of violence. We need Friedrich Engels called “social murder”—the

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won, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of his term.

But Obama refused to implement the single-payer healthcare system he promised, which would have decimated the insurance industry that funds political campaigns on both sides of the aisle.

What passed instead was a meager reform known as Obamacare. When Trump later threatened to repeal Obamacare, working people flooded town hall meetings across the country to demand the law stay in place. Neither party will ever be willing to actually go after the profits of big insurance.

As a result of this circle of corruption and grift, the US spends far more on healthcare than any other country while achieving far worse outcomes than other rich countries. By suffocating any real left alternative and then pretending that everything is fine, both establishment political parties are just as responsible for this situation as the health insurance companies they work for.

This assassination reflects the justified anger of millions of working class people. However, it also reflects widespread disorganization and pessimism at the potential of mass movements to win change. Assassinations cannot solve our problems. They give the capitalist state the justification to increase surveillance and repression, and capitalism can always replace its servants. Individual political violence does more to encourage working-class people to wait for someone else to save them than it does to empower them to play an active role in collectively fighting back.

When Bernie Sanders was running for president, he called for universal healthcare under the banner of Medicare For All and mobilized millions to canvass for him. This showed how many people would take action if they saw a viable political alternative. Tragically, he refused to break with the Democratic Party, which immediately backstabbed him in service of its donors like the health insurance industry even though this caused them to lose to Donald Trump in 2016. In the vacuum left by a mass campaign for universal healthcare, it’s not surprising that some people will turn to desperate solutions like individual violence.

We need mass action and collective organization, but on a far more radical basis than Bernie’s Democratic Party campaigns. To stop all greedy CEOs, we need to end capitalism.

Right now, we need a bold party of the working class, independent from and opposed to all capitalist parties, using strikes and mass actions to win victories like free universal healthcare. It is these methods that have erased parasitic industries and even overthrown corrupt empires in the past. A party like this could recruit angry young people in the thousands or millions to a more effective, and less self-destructive, approach than assassinations. We owe it to ourselves and each other to build a socialist movement worthy of the burning desire for change felt by young and working-class people throughout America.J

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ABORTION RIGHTS

MEL MUSIE, PHILADELPHIA Since the tragic overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion rights have continued to be a major issue for working women and queer people. Abortion is banned in 13 states, with partial bans in 10 others. Two women have already died as a result of these laws—their deaths were entirely preventable, but abortion bans prevented doctors from performing lifesaving procedures.

After the Democratic Party’s failure over 50 years to codify Roe v. Wade into law, the incoming Trump administration and Republican-controlled House and Senate pose a heightened threat to reproductive rights.

Abortion remains consistently popular in the polls, causing some Republicans to moderate their messaging on the issue—including Trump—but we should be under no illusions that these sections of the right wing have any intention of lifting existing bans or preventing others from going into effect.

This past election, abortion rights were on the ballot in 10 states, including eight red states, with ballot measures to protect abortion rights on the state level. Working people in seven of these states voted to expand reproductive rights, and in every state, these ballot measures were more popular than either presidential candidate. In Florida, the amendment gained a majority of votes but narrowly fell 3% short of the undemocratic 60% required for the measure to pass.

These votes reflect how abortion is an important issue to ordinary people, and it is extremely positive that several referendums

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passed even in places where people also voted for Trump. They show how desperately we need a new party that will fight for abortion rights as part of a full working-class program to counter the pull of the right. The Democrats won’t save us, and have shown again and again that they won’t even put up a fight. We need to take the potential shown in these ballot initiatives and go even further with mass action in the streets, schools, and workplaces to defeat the right wing’s agenda.

Abortion Access Is Healthcare As Trump’s inauguration looms, it is urgent to defend against right-wing attacks on reproductive health. Lack of access to safe, legal and timely abortions is a class issue that affects the entire working class. Having the choice to terminate a pregnancy, having fundamental agency over your own body, is a fundamental human right, and denying that opens the door for further attacks on bodily autonomy. The poorest people are hurt the worst; healthcare access is not something the rich must contend with—they can tap into private, even international, health options with ease. The power to choose who lives or dies, should not belong to the ruling class.

Women in red states like Texas and Georgia are already dying due to abortion criminalization. Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old Black woman and single mom from Georgia, died after seeking an abortion in North Carolina due to Georgia’s “Heartbeat Bill.” She suffered a rare complication after taking the abortion pill, leading to a life-threatening infection. Doctors

delayed treatment until she was near death, even though a routine procedure called a dilation and curettage (D&C) could have saved her. Two women (both of them Black) have died so far from these abortion bans, but their stories are almost certainly not the only ones, according to ProPublica. Black people are disproportionately affected by these attacks, as institutionalized racism in America’s broken healthcare system already results in a pregnancy mortality rate three times higher for Black women than white women.

These tragic deaths also reflect how we can’t keep women and queer people safe by “adapting” to life after Roe and just trying to navigate around the bans. Having access to the abortion pill via mail or by traveling to another state is an important mitigation measure, but even that is under attack. Also, there will always be complications for some patients. We should not limit ourselves from demanding an end to the bans, plus full, free access to a doctor for all abortions. This is completely tied to the fight for free, universal healthcare for all Americans.

Who’s To Blame?

The Democratic Party must be held responsible for their major role in the breakdown of abortion rights. In 2022, and again in 2024, Democrats ran campaigns on protecting abortions, and conducted fundraisers claiming they would fight for it. The Democrats had nearly 50 years to write Roe into law, and at the time of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe, had control of the House and Senate. After Dobbs, with the newfound power given to state legislatures, numerous right-wing bills were introduced that made abortion inaccessible— including criminalizing pregnant people, doctors, and healthcare workers.

With Trump’s sweeping victory, and a complete lack of a fightback from the Democrats and the traditional women’s organizations aligned with them, the far right is increasingly emboldened. In November, a men’s rights antiabortion march in Boston highlighted rising tensions nationwide. For the far right, restricting abortion and curbing women’s autonomy are seen as ways to reinforce “traditional family values.”

The “nuclear” family model relies on access to free, unpaid labor: raising kids, household chores, and cleaning. Mothers are often expected to play this role, and suffer immensely as a result. This traditional nuclear family model relies on reproductive labor, such as cooking or child-rearing. A threat to the nuclear family structure, the building block of capitalism, is a threat to the system itself. Overseas, the billionaires are struggling to fund multiple

inter-imperialist wars, and reinforcing traditional family values is one tactic they believe can stabilize their profits. Capitalism relies on and perpetuates the systematic oppression of women, trans, and queer people in order to exploit and divide the working class and prevent us from uniting to fight back against their brutal, crisis-ridden system.

Trump, fearing backlash, has increasingly avoided taking a strong stance against abortion, diverting the issue to the states. But Trump won’t stop state legislators from taking away abortion rights, as seen in the passing of unpopular abortion measures, like in Texas, where 78% of voters support abortion but are denied access. This has drastically weakened abortion access stability, with states regularly updating their abortion policy or having it challenged (such as Georgia), the risk of loss always looms, perpetuating a state of fear, which is not sustainable.

What Is Needed?

To secure a safer future, we must permanently protect the right to choose, but we can’t stop there. We need Medicare For All, including full reproductive and trans healthcare, free childcare, and free public education to support working families. Unions everywhere should strike in support of abortion rights and to address harmful fear-mongering and sexism in the workplace. Union leaders, especially in unions of healthcare workers, should be leading the charge against abortion bans with protests and strikes, because these bans are also attacks on healthcare workers and their ability to provide the highest possible level of care for all patients.

As a result of this current period of rapid change and instability around the world, the ruling class is attempting to tighten its control on the working class through these inhumane attacks on bodily autonomy and human rights overall. The only way to fight this is with a socialist feminist approach that seeks to unite the working-class people against our common enemy—the billionaire class. Trump’s presidency is a threat to all, and waiting for the next election, or the Democrats, is not an option. We need a movement beyond ballot referendums and empty campaign promises. This movement needs to win back our national abortion rights, expand access, and protect funding by taking up a fighting approach separate from the Democrats, who have only betrayed our movements. We urgently need a new workingclass party, to fight for the bodily autonomy of all, and break from the exploitation of the ruling class, once and for all.J

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YOUTH & STUDENTS

ANDY MOXLEY, FORMER YAWR ACTIVIST World capitalism is embarking on an era of aggravated militarism, reflected not only in the increased number of bloody conflicts like Ukraine, the ever expanding slaughter in Gaza and others, but also the historic global increase in arms and military spending. In preparation for ever broadening conflict, many countries in Europe have begun to reintroduce conscription.

In the US, where there has been a historic low in military recruitment numbers with several branches of the military falling short of their goals, a renewed propaganda campaign targeting youth, especially working class youth, is underway to fill the gap. Workers and youth will be the ones paying the ultimate price, sacrificing their lives and livelihoods, for future wars. But there are lessons from anti-war movements of the past that show how we can resist the bloody agenda of the imperialist war machine.

US imperialism’s second invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a watershed moment in history.

Alongside the war in Afghanistan, it sparked the longest era of bloody US military conflict in history, initiating the so-called ‘Global War on Terror.’ It also saw the return of a mass anti-war movement for the first time since the end of the Vietnam war. Socialist Alternative, though a small force, played a unique role within the movement at the time—particularly through a campaigning initiative aimed at working class high school age youth directly affected by the militarist drive called Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR).

Roots Of The Iraq War A small clique of the ruling class around George W. Bush and former oil executive Dick Cheney, having captured the presidency through the very dubious 2000 election result, exploited the horror of the 9/11 tragedy to first invade Afghanistan and then pursue its decades-long agenda of regime change in Iraq.

We say ‘exploited’ because beyond Saddam Hussein having no connection to the 9/11 events, these military misadventures were not undertaken in the genuine interests of the millions of people oppressed by the reactionary regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein respectively. They were undertaken in the main to restore the significantly tarnished image of US imperialism and—through the occupation of Iraq—have a direct hand in control of the oil-rich region.

Saddam Hussein was indeed a brutal dictator. However, US imperialism, despite their subsequent protests, had no problem with this generally. Hussein had previously been a key US ally versus Iran and his regime also had alliances with several such repressive regimes across the Middle East.

To justify the invasion, the Bush regime relied on creating a big lie—saying both that

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Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda (rightwing Islamist terrorist network responsible for 9/11 attacks) and, even more egregiously, that the Iraqi government was harboring ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Both would be subsequently proven to be patently false. Despite the war drums being banged, there was still mass skepticism and opposition to an invasion among millions in the US and across the world.

Nonetheless, the invasion began in 2003, with the enthusiastic support of the overwhelming majority of both Republican and Democratic politicians.

Anti-War Movement & YAWR The day of the invasion—March 20, 2003, known as ‘Day X’—saw millions of people protesting in the US and around the world.

Going into the 2004 election, however, the big anti-war demonstrations were called off as organizers feared embarrassing the pro-war Democratic candidate John Kerry. In addition to big demonstrations, however, the anti-war movement saw direct actions, school walkouts and even some limited examples of workers’ action. When demoralization set in after Bush’s re-election, Socialist Alternative recognized these actions provided a way forward for those still eager to fight back. Out of this, YAWR was built.

Socialist Alternative recognized the important role of working-class youth in particular in building the anti-war movement. US imperialism has always relied on a big military recruitment apparatus to maintain itself. While the official draft had ended in 1973 due to the mass anti-war and liberation movements of the time, it substituted it with what we termed a ‘racist, poverty draft’—heavily targeting working-class youth, particularly those of color, for military service.

It did this largely on the basis of promised financial incentives—offering money for college or presenting a military career as an alternative to it entirely. The military embedded this mass recruitment apparatus in schools, where they would often be allowed to talk to students either en masse or pressure them individually about signing up.

Youth Against War and Racism was launched by Socialist Alternative in 2004 as a way for young people most targeted by this to organize in a fight back, drawing a political link between resisting the US militarist agenda and the broader struggle against racism, poverty and capitalism. YAWR became a small but recognized force in the anti-war movement, known for conducting successful counter-recruitment work but also linking its campaigns to political ideas like the need for mass working class and youth action against the war. YAWR also called for the need for the anti-war movement to break its ties to the Democratic Party which, despite actually supporting the war, had cynically tried to seize on the movement to help their election prospects, including demobilizing it in big election years.

YAWR had some key victories. A national student walk-out on November 2, 2005 brought out 2000 students in the Twin Cities, 1000 in Seattle and hundreds elsewhere. Subsequent walkouts followed. YAWR’s structures allowed it to organize national solidarity campaigns for students threatened with disciplinary action.

The scale of this solidarity often overwhelmed local school boards who weren’t expecting to be put in the national spotlight. In 2007, the campaign successfully saved the jobs of six teachers in the Tukwila, Washington school district who were threatened with termination for supporting walk-outs in their school.

In addition to targeting off-campus

recruitment centers with demonstrations often causing them to shut down for the day and YAWR supporters organizing student walkouts, perhaps its most important successes were its campaigns aimed at removing military recruiters from schools. In Seattle in 2007, the campaign pressured the school board to restrict military recruiters to two campus visits per year.

In Minneapolis in 2008, successful organizing led to the School Board having to end the ‘free roam’ policy towards military recruiters meaning they had to stay confined in the ‘career center.’ Additionally, wherever and whenever they set up, anti-recruitment groups must be able to set-up right next to them to expose their false promises. While it was not able to push military recruiters out of the schools entirely, this was a massive victory that effectively neutralized a part of the imperialist, militarist war machine in a major US city. A demonstration of its significance was the fact that it had the concrete effect of decreasing the number of visits by recruiters to the schools there after the campaign.

Building The Youth Fightback Today Part of the US drive towards militarism today will be once again stepping up its propaganda and recruitment machines aimed at working-class youth, particularly in Black and low-income communities, as record low levels of new military recruits hamper its preparedness for coming wars. Part of rebuilding a mass anti-war movement capable of resisting the agenda of imperialism will be organizing among workers and young people who will be the ones forced to fight the ruling class’s wars. Campaigns like YAWR give lessons on how we can organize against the imperialist march towards war today!J

Hundreds of Seattle students who walked out of class in 2007 to protest the Iraq war, as part of the Youth Against War and Racism campaign.

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US ELECTIONS

BRYAN KOULOURIS, SAINT PAUL Around the globe, incumbent parties are losing elections, and the right wing is gaining in many countries by posing as “anti-establishment.” People are looking for a change as the world plummets further into economic uncertainty, war, climate change, and various other types of unnerving chaos. Right-wingers like Trump cynically promise a return to the “good old days” while looking for scapegoats to blame for a miserable situation created by capitalism.

Unfortunately, much of the “left” responds to this by being apologists for the establishment Democrats instead of building an independent movement that fights in the interests of working class people.

The less money someone has, the more likely they were to vote for Trump. The more they were worried about inflation, the more likely they voted for Trump. The more someone has been impacted by economic insecurity, the more likely they voted for Trump. Trump gained from his 2020 vote in every demographic, whether it’s women, Black people, young people, Latinos (in record numbers for a Republican), or union members, though the majority of all these demographics still backed Harris. Ninety million people opted not to vote at all, repulsed by both choices. But among those who voted, for the first time in recent history the Republican candidate won the poorest voters while Democrats won the richest. This isn’t surprising: the Democrats have insisted to working people that the economy’s doing great while housing and other key needs grow more expensive every day.

Trump’s commercials across the country showed a clip from a Kamala Harris appearance on the TV show The View. Harris was asked what she would have done differently than Biden if she had been President the last four years, and she responded, “nothing…comes to mind.” This showed millions how out of touch rich Democrats are while wars continue to escalate worldwide, severe storms rock the country, and housing costs continue to skyrocket. In this context, Trump was given space to cynically pose as the anti-war, pro-worker candidate who could do something about the floundering economy. It worked, but Trump won’t be able to live up to expectations people have for him. How will the Democrats respond?

What Next For The Democrats?

Trump 2.0 will be an unpredictable administration, but we know there will be attempts to deport millions of migrant workers, attacks on trans people, and layoffs in the public sector. The far right racists are emboldened and will quite possibly take to the streets and carry out violent assaults on oppressed people over the coming years. The Democratic Party leadership won’t mobilize the mass protests, student walkouts, direct action, or strikes that could stop Trump and the far right’s agenda. Instead, they’ll only get involved in movements to derail them into the “safe” ineffective channels of letter-writing, polite lobbying, and voting for corporate-backed candidates.

After the Democrats’ resounding defeat in

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2025

November, the party is scrambling to pick itself up and decide how to remake itself. Dozens of Democratic pundits have said their party needs to shift even further to the right. Well, that didn’t work for Kamala Harris!

She lost every single “battleground state” despite not challenging Trump’s ridiculous antiimmigrant rhetoric and instead following him to the right with promises of harsh border crackdowns. She flipped from her 2019 position to declare a newfound love of fracking and dropped any mention of guaranteed health care. She was more pro-war than Trump and competed to try to be just as anti-China. The Democratic Party leadership won’t shift to the left and start representing ordinary people because they’re controlled by billionaires, and that’s in their DNA. On the other hand, Bernie Sanders finally “returned to form” and released a scathing statement saying, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” This sentiment is certainly right (though the idea that the Democrats genuinely once had workers’ backs is an illusion), and it had an important echo among the progressive left.

Better to say it than not, but unfortunately, this message is too little, too late.

Over the last decade, Bernie and The Squad had enormous momentum to transform the political landscape of the US, but following through would have required a break with the Democrats. Instead, they provided cover, and their potential has waned considerably. It is highly unlikely that this statement will move the needle towards any genuine left populism in the Democratic Party.

A few Democrats won their elections by pretending to stand for working people while echoing Republican talking points against trans people and immigrants, and some are pointing to them as the future of the Democratic Party. In one example, victorious Washington state Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said, “We need people

who are driving trucks and changing diapers and turning wrenches to run for office.” This is empty rhetoric from fake populists more likely to back aspects of Trump’s agenda than stand up to him.

The Democratic Party is a capitalist party.

They’ve just happened to lean on more progressive rhetoric when it suits them. In 2019, Democratic Party presidential candidates— including Kamala Harris—were talking about things like Medicare For All and an increase in the federal minimum wage. This is because the movement behind Bernie Sanders’ populist campaign forced the Democrats to mimic some of Bernie’s rhetoric. Now, in the absence of a mass movement of working people, events have pulled the curtain on the Democrats to show they’re just saying whatever they need to win votes and keep society running in the interest of their billionaire backers.

Bernie ended his statement by saying we should “stay tuned” for an announcement.

Socialist Alternative will participate in any serious mass organization that can forward the interests of workers and the oppressed, but without complete independence from the Democratic Party, such a project will not have the necessary foundation to overcome the corporate political system. Like dozens of attempts before them, Bernie and The Squad failed to change the Democrats, rather they were changed in the process, becoming far less combative against the injustices of capitalism. This shows the dead end of trying to make movements acceptable to the Democratic Party leadership by limiting our criticisms and demands.

We Need Fundamental Change Like Biden before him, Trump will oversee a capitalist economy in decay. If Trump implements the tariffs he keeps talking about, inflation will rise, deeply disappointing some

of his newfound base. Meanwhile, the far right thugs that are emboldened by Trump’s victory will embarrass him if we get organized to push them off the street with mass protests. The Democrats could make gains in the midterms in that situation, but that will likely be an even more right-wing version of “team blue,” and we can’t wait two years for elections to fight Trump.

We need to build coalitions now of union activists, climate justice organizations, student groups, welcoming all working-class and young people who want to fight against the far right.

Instead of trying to change the Democrats, we need to make steps towards a new party of working people that is connected to the labor movement and struggles to change society.

These movements against Trump and steps towards a new working-class party shouldn’t limit themselves to just socialists, but revolutionary ideas and organization will be necessary if we want to end the system that spawns monsters like Trump worldwide. The right wing looks strong now, but they can be defeated.

These two cynical parties, controlled by the ruling class, change what they stand for all the time. With that, new “coalitions” of voters are cobbled together, but this whole arrangement can be cut across quickly in times of crisis.

Make no mistake about it: we live in times of profound crisis. We need fundamental change by building a movement to take the top corporations into public ownership under control of working people. This democratic control of our everyday lives could lay the basis for building a world based on solidarity, free of war, poverty, and discrimination.

Even under Trump and the many other right-wing authoritarian governments around the world, people will fight to try to create a better society. Socialists will struggle shoulder-to-shoulder with them and aim to provide ideas that can both give leadership to movements today and blaze a path for overthrowing capitalism.J

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and right-wing militias have freely offered to assist in these deportations, underlying the urgent danger that immigrant workers will face when Trump is back in office. Just like when Trump attempted to implement what was known as the “Muslim ban” during his first administration, it will take concerted mass actions of immigrant and nativeborn workers and young people to prevent attacks on immigrants and get Trump to back down.

Organize The Unorganized

Socialist Alternative stands unequivocally against mass deportations.

The working class is international because capitalism is international. The economic and social crises caused by the ruling class forces workers to abandon their homes, risk their lives and split up their families in order to flee poverty and war, and to seek safety and employment. Bosses take advantage of the workers who do make it across the border with low wages and dangerous working conditions. Scapegoating immigrants is one of many divide-and-rule strategies used by the ruling class to force competition among different racial, ethnic and religious groups, which lowers the living standards for all. It is for the benefit of the entire international working class that we fight against deportations and stand in solidarity with all workers and immigrants, documented or undocumented. Socialist Alternative will stand alongside the wider working class to defend our neighbors and coworkers.

Capitalism’s Immigration Crisis Immigration was a top-three issue among voters leading up to the 2024 presidential election. When Donald Trump declared that Haitian immigrants were “eating cats and dogs” on the debate stage, Kamala Harris

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responded by arguing she was tougher on immigration.

The real crisis of immigration today isn’t one of jobs and crime, the way Donald Trump and the right wing claim.

Mass immigration is driven by capitalism, a system that runs on the gears of poverty and war. War and political violence are a direct cause of global migration, alongside economic conditions exacerbated by the lasting impacts of colonialism. The same right-wing forces that decry and scapegoat immigrants shamelessly aid and abet the current drive towards increased war for control over the world’s raw materials and the working class’s labor, which in turn causes further displacement and migration.

As of May 2024, at least 120 million people have been displaced, about half of whom crossed an international border in that process. In 2022, 5.1 million people immigrated to the EU, more than double the number from 2021. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” has stated that raids will begin on day one and implied that to keep families together they would deport legal resident children with their undocumented family members.

Trump promises to carry out the largest mass deportation in history starting on day one of his next term. He has confirmed that he plans to use the military to carry them out

Many immigrants work in traditionally unionized sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing and construction, though some studies point to immigrant workers having lower rates of unionization than native-born workers. A large percentage of workers in some of the most unorganized and exploitative workplaces are immigrants, like in agriculture and the service industry.

Immigrants make up 68% of agricultural workers in the US and experience an on-thejob death rate almost 6 times higher than the national average. While we’ve seen more unionization efforts in recent years, both the service industry and the agricultural sector rest at around a 1% unionization rate.

The bosses need immigrants as a cheaper, more easily exploited source of labor that brings down wages for all workers. Attacks on immigrant workers are used as downward pressure on wages for all workers, one of the many ways bosses create divisions in the workplace and exploit them for profit. Nonunion workplaces use immigrant labor to undercut unionized competitors, which underscores even more the importance of fighting to unionize every job.

In order to rebuild a fighting labor movement, a crucial task will be to wage an all-sided campaign to organize the unorganized, which must include immigrant workers. The bosses are working night and day to divide us, so the labor movement must be a powerful uniting force. We need labor leaders who reject right-wing rhetoric about immigrants “stealing jobs” and using up resources. The only ones with the power to pay workers less and make our lives worse, regardless of where we are born, are the bosses and the billionaires!

What Can Workers Do To Fight Deportations?

A key front in fighting against deportations will be at the point of attack: in the workplace and in our communities and schools. Unions should take the lead in setting up defense committees to mobilize and coordinate the wider working class to stop deportations. In schools where the district doesn’t already have an established policy not to release information or cooperate with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, all educators’ union locals should fight for it.

I’m a teacher in Seattle, where there is a protection written into the school district’s policy that we will not let ICE into the classroom or school, except in very rare circumstances. But even where protections exist, they can always be scaled back. We can’t rely on drawn-out legal battles or the goodwill of our administrators, especially when Trump is willing to withhold federal funding.

Calls to defend immigrants need to be linked to calls to tax billionaires to fund schools, jobs, housing and healthcare.

Educators have one of the highest unionization rates among professions in the US at 33%. Unions offer some protections for immigrants who work in schools, many of whom work in lower-paid positions as bilingual instructional assistants and custodians, but unions will still need to play an active role to defend these workers and their families from the myriad of potential attacks Trump can unleash, even in cities like Seattle.

Hospitals will be another target for ICE agents, camping out in Emergency Rooms and asking hospitals for records of patients who don’t have a Social Security number.

Healthcare workers can lead the way in taking direct action, for instance by refusing to report patients or share information with the authorities.

All unions should refuse to let ICE onto job sites where their members work and prepare their members to walk off the job if a detained immigrant coworker doesn’t show up, demanding they not be deported.

There were 14.4 million union members in the US in 2023, and they could leverage their power and organization against the bosses to stop ICE.

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Mass Action, Not Democrats, Will Lessons From The 2006 Day Stop Trump’s Attacks Without An Immigrant Strike Nonunion workers must also take action to push back ICE and defend immigrants too, while being aware of the unique dangers of organizing in an unorganized workplace and of their lack of protections without a union.

But there are ways to overcome these obstacles. For instance, workers greatly decrease the risk of retaliation if a large number of coworkers take action together. If a worker is retaliated against, a job defense action can be effective, especially with the support of the community. This kind of organizing, aimed at forging solidarity, can even prepare the ground for a union drive at a later stage.

Undocumented immigrants won’t be the only ones who will suffer at the hands of more militarized police forces, expanded private prisons, and an emboldened ICE agenda.

Those stuck at any stage of the byzantine immigration system, whether they have a visa, green card, or have gained citizenship, should join a collective fightback against these attacks.

The second Trump administration will be more emboldened than the first time; we could even see mass detention camps as ICE starts arresting people without anywhere for them to go. Should this take place, unions must link up to oppose these camps and lead mass protests against them. Protests can block entrances, unionized workers can refuse deliveries, and workers employed to build, maintain or run the camps should walk off the job.

We cannot be complacent and wait for Democratic politicians or their affiliated NGOs to protect immigrants. Obama and Biden deported millions, and Harris threw immigrants under the bus during the election. It will be up to working people to refuse to cooperate with ICE, take mass direct action, and go on strike when necessary.

Organizing actions like these can seem difficult, even impossible, but small successes fighting oppression in the workplace can set inspiring examples for other workers.

Just recently, a Socialist Alternative member and trans union letter carrier organized her coworkers to defend the right to use her restroom of choice (see p.10).

In Sweden, our sister section of International Socialist Alternative (ISA) has played a role in organizing against a new law that would mandate that Swedish workers act as whistleblowers on undocumented immigrants in the workplace. Although this attack was not completely defeated, it has been drastically scaled back since unions and workers have fought back with rallies and demonstrations. For example, “eight out of ten teachers believe that they would be prepared to defy the law regardless of the legal consequences,” according to a recent article from the section’s newspaper, Offensiv.

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We should take inspiration from the Day Without An Immigrant protests, a heroic one-day strike on May Day in 2006 when one million immigrant workers took to the streets in response to a wave of anti-immigrant attacks and mass deportations under G.W. Bush.

Millions of people staged walkouts and took to the streets after Congress introduced a bill that would make immigration a felony.

The law would have made aiding an undocumented worker a crime and threatened mass arrests of teachers offering English as a second language, doctors treating injured undocumented workers, community centers offering services to immigrants, and more.

The mass outrage over this bill came as, for the first time ever, undocumented immigrants were being sent to die in US uniforms in the US war for oil in Iraq, but not given basic rights like the ability to vote or access to many social services.

That bill did not become law, thanks in large part to the massive protests. But it was no thanks to the Democratic Party and organizations affiliated with it, who strongly opposed the call for the May 1 strike. The Democratic Party was busy supporting the war in Iraq and a large part of Bush’s viciously anti-working class domestic agenda. Had workers and young people listened to The Democratic Party and not taken action, more horrific attacks on immigrants and all workers could have followed. This is a crucial lesson for today: the immigrants’ rights movement will be run into the ground if it is bound hand and foot by the Democratic Party or its affiliates.

Native-born and immigrant workers alike need a new working-class party that fights for our interests against the billionaires and their wars around the world. We need a party that will fight for free universal healthcare, a much higher federal minimum wage, a massive expansion of quality affordable housing, and much more.

much higher standard of living for everyone, eliminating the very foundations for the oppression and scapegoating of minority groups, like immigrants.

In the coming months, the question of working-class solidarity with immigrant workers will become extremely concrete.

This question is existential for the future of the labor movement. If the unions and their leaderships fail to take up this fight in a decisive way—both through aggressive organizing drives and in worker defense campaigns—they risk reversing the relative gains they’ve made over the past several years and undermining the foundation of solidarity that will be necessary to reach new heights in the coming decade.

If asked directly about immigration, most labor leaders will express run-of-the-mill solidarity. But when the Teamsters’ president Sean O’Brien explicitly addresses his vision to the “American worker,” or when the ILA’s president Harold Daggett proclaims that ILA stands for “I love America,” they actively promote the very nationalism the ruling class uses to divide workers. By accepting the logic of “America first,” these labor leaders make no challenge to the flagrantly xenophobic rhetoric of Trump and his ilk who have the ear of many of the rank-and-file union members they represent.

Even less reactionary labor leaders will talk the talk, but are unlikely to take the kind of decisive action necessary, as outlined above, without pressure. The stakes for the next four years are high: the strength of the labor movement depends on its capacity for unity, and failure to fight back against attacks like those coming down against trans people and immigrants could mean a fracturing of the working class.

Labor leaders have set their sights far too low for the coming years, and we must soberly acknowledge that it will require pressure and initiative from below to build

the resistance we need. This means being ready to organize and mobilize community defense committees to respond to reports of attempted deportations, shut down worksites to prevent arrests, and sit in at homes to stop evictions.

The labor movement and the working class as a whole cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the attacks that are coming. We don’t know the form these deportations will take, so it’s crucial that unions and community organizations start making preparations now to fight back in a flexible and coordinated way. Trump is hoping to steamroll the opposition on day one, but we are here to say: when we fight, we can win!

Socialist Alternative says: • No to Trump’s plans for immigrant detentions and deportations! No border wall expansion! Immediate citizenship rights for all undocumented immigrants.

• Build a movement that unites immigrants and US-born workers against the billionaire class to fight for good union jobs, social housing, and free high quality education for all.

• Refuse to cooperate with Trump’s agenda – get organized to fight for real sanctuary cities and build emergency deportation defense committees in workplaces, unions, and neighborhoods.

• Unions should begin now to organize emergency deportation defense networks to shut down workplace raids by ICE and urgently respond to community raids as well.

• Build a movement against the destructive policies of US imperialism around the world that drive working class people to flee their home countries. We need an international struggle for socialism to fight for a world that works for us, not the ruling elite.J

Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks With Solidarity Ultimately, the ruling class is terrified that the working class will unite to fight back and take on this broken, corrupt system. Most of us barely scrape by while a few at the top get rich off of our hard work. Despite what you’ll hear on corporate media outlets, there is more than enough to go around for all of us—society’s wealth and resources are being hoarded by a tiny minority of the population. Under an internationallycoordinated, socialist planned economy, we could ensure a

Protest from the May 1, 2006

Day Without An Immigra nt

strike.

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WORKERS’ MOVEMENT

down business as usual by withholding our labor!

The current Tentative Agreement on the contract doesn’t even come close to this, which is why BFN is a part of a growing movement to vote down the sell-out offer and fight for a stronger contract.

KAI ELL HUIZENGA, PITTSBURGH Kai is a member of NALC Branch 84 and Build A Fighting NALC (personal capacity) I’m a trans woman letter carrier in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Local Branch 84, and a member of Socialist Alternative. Like many young trans workers today, I’ve been looking to the labor movement for stable, well-paying work, greater job protections, and trans-inclusive healthcare.

Trump blames immigrants and trans people for the problems with the economy, and it’s had a dangerous effect of normalizing transphobia. Just a couple days after the recent presidential election, my manager called me into his office after a long day of work. The first thing he told me was that I was not allowed to use the women’s restroom. This surprised me, since I knew that none of my coworkers were told which bathroom they could or couldn’t use. I tried to reason with the manager, but he insisted, and suggested that maybe they could get me a Porta-Potty to use.

I got mad, and I got organized. When I walked out of his office, my next step was to reach out to my union siblings and get in touch with the union steward at the station. The next morning, I walked into my manager’s office with my union brother and steward at my side.

We stood together and insisted that management respect my right to use the restroom of my choice. We won, and the manager backed down.

It is a dangerous and easily disproven slander that trans people pose any threat to cisgender (not trans) people in bathrooms and locker rooms. Trans people are far more likely to be victims of attacks in bathrooms or locker rooms than they are to attack anyone and are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be targeted for sexual violence or other forms of assault. Anti-trans bills like Rep. Mace’s, which would prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice in all federal buildings, only serve to increase this violence and intensify the discrimination already faced by transgender people.

End All Management Harassment!

Trans carriers are one of many targets for bullying managers on the shop floor.

One of the goals of the postal bosses, like all the big bosses and the billionaire class in general, is to pit workers against each other.

The frequent, almost everyday abuse and harassment that management piles on our heads isn’t just individual ‘bad managers’ or ‘the way it’s always been’—it’s the bosses’ strategy! So when that shitty supervisor tells our trans coworkers that they can’t use the restroom that is most comfortable for them, management isn’t looking out for our safety.

They’re looking for ways to divide the union, bully some of us and play favorites with others.

Because when workers are most divided, the bosses are strongest and can confidently levy discipline, enforce speedups, and starve

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Vote NO On This Insulting TA!

Nazareth, Pennsylvania

Waterford, Michigan workers with impunity.

If you hate bullies, then your only logical choice is to stand with workers against abusive management. Regardless of who their target is now, we know that if management gets away with treating any of us like shit, they’ll only get more confident and the pattern will continue.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is the classic motto of the labor movement because united we can win, and divided we can only lose.

This starts with building a union that’s actually prepared to fight the boss—something the

current leadership of NALC refuses to do. This culture of working with management permeates throughout our union. For example, at another station a trans worker was told she needed to use the men’s bathroom, and her shop steward sided with managers! That’s why I’m a member of Build A Fighting NALC (BFN), a growing rank and file movement to transform our union and win a strong contract. BFN is fighting for real gains for all letter carriers, including: • A $30/hr base wage because all workers deserve a living wage!

• An all-career workforce which eliminates the super-exploited CCA position.

• An end to mandatory overtime • Cutting the time to reach the top pay from 13 to 6 years • Full COLAs (cost of living adjustments), not diet COLAs which don’t keep up with inflation.

• Eliminating the no-strike clause from our contract and lifting the ban on federal workers striking. We must arm ourselves with the most important and effective tool of the workers’ movement, with our ability to shut

Carriers have been working nearly two years without a new contract since the last one expired. Yet this TA with its 1.3% raises is a slap in the face for the workforce that never stopped working during COVID and whose wages have been eaten by inflation. It doesn’t offer a living wage, it preserves mandatory overtime, and it would introduce a speedup by reducing fixed office time, at the cost of full-time jobs!

BFN has played a leading role in mobilizing a national Vote NO campaign on the current TA. We’re getting a big echo among carriers; at least 51 union branches have passed “Vote No” resolutions expressing their disgust with this rotten deal! Rank-and-file workers across the US have been sending in pictures of them and their coworkers holding “Vote No” signs.

Meanwhile, our national president, Brian Renfroe, is pushing hard for a “yes” vote.

He and his six figure salary rests on keeping things the same in the NALC. We wouldn’t be staring down a rotten TA if we had the right to strike, and our coworkers know it. We need an active, public campaign with rank and file mobilization to fight for and win the right to strike for all federal workers!

This will not be the last battle with the bosses, and we need to prepare the ground for us to stand on and fight more confidently, more united. That means voting NO on this TA and staying active in the union to link up with the reform effort to fundamentally restore our union to a dynamic fighting tool for workers aiming to win more.

Join Build A Fighting NALC & Transform Our Union!

BFN is made up of letter carriers actively organizing to build rank and file leadership in our union. We’re also gaining momentum, with hundreds of workers regularly attending virtual national meetings to discuss key issues facing the post office. These meetings include political discussions where members can openly discuss issues and how we can collectively take action to address them.

Discussions have opened up about how to defend our trans coworkers and why it is core to being a union that we defend against all attacks on workers!

The union is more than our elected leadership, it’s all of us, carriers organized across the nation. Building a fighting NALC means transforming our union from top to bottom.

If you’re ready to get involved in BFN, sign up on our website!J

socialistalternative.org

oppressed people, for fully-funded social programs, free high-quality healthcare, public education, and affordable housing.

We need mass investment to transition away from fossil fuel and into high-quality green energy, well-paid union jobs, and an end to the power of Wall Street.

Can you donate $25 or $50 to fight climate change, xenophobia and transphobia, and unite all working people to fight for all of us against the billionaires?

330,188,679—this is the number of days that the average American will need to work in order to make what Elon Musk earned the day after Donald Trump’s election victory. Trump’s new cabinet, including Musk, is estimated to be worth $474 billion, equal to what 59 million average Americans have in their savings combined.

Most of us continue to live paycheck to paycheck, our wages are eaten by inflation, and it seems like the whole system is working against us. Never before was the gap between the haves and have nots been so big.

Socialist Alternative organized protests across the country the day after Trump got elected. We are committed to help fight his right-wing attacks on working and oppressed people.

We don’t have Amazon’s $2.5 trillion dollars which they use to fight union efforts.

We rely on small donations to help organize in our workplaces against the billionaires.

Can you donate $250, $500, or $1,000 to help fight the Trump/Musk right-wing billionaire agenda?

Capitalism is in a global crisis. There are 56 military conflicts around the world today—more than at any time since World War II. Over a million people have died in the war in Ukraine and millions face starvation in Gaza, Sudan, and Haiti. The recent dramatic developments in Syria point towards a Middle East in complete crisis with no force pointing towards an end to the misery. $2,443,000,000,000 was spent on the military by world powers, led by the US, China, and Russia, increasing their spending for nine years in a row. This is about ten times over what it would take to end world hunger. It would take 2% of US spending on the military to end homelessness in the US, but no major political party is even pretending to care.

International Socialist Alternative took part in protests across the world against the horrendous wars in Gaza and Ukraine. We need mass movements to fight imperialism!

We do not have the US military $850 billion which they use to bomb people across the world. We need your help in organizing anti-war protests and combating militarization.

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2024

Can you donate $100 or $200 to help fight militarization and war?

9,363 natural disasters were recorded in the last 24 years, an average of 390 each year. And yet, the most polluting powers have not even bothered to pretend to seek a solution when they boycotted the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP29).

Those who did attend agreed on less than a third of the money required to start combating climate change.

The crisis in the US healthcare system was not mentioned by either presidential candidate. Private insurers profit by

AI to deny health claims. We face mounting debt while private healthcare companies make billions in profits and CEOs get millions in stock options. It is clear that we need a universal healthcare system, paid-for by taxing the rich.

Instead of confronting the biggest issues facing working people, right-wing forces around the globe are using mass anger to fuel hatred against migrants and asylum seekers, LGBTQ people, women, and other oppressed groups. It is clear that the dictatorship of the billionaires is holding humanity back from progress.

Faced with a reactionary Trump administration, backed by far-right forces and a rightwing Supreme Court, there’s a desperate need to rebuild a mass movement of working people to push back rightwing reaction. We need to pose a left-wing alternative to the thoroughly corporate Democratic Party and build a new political force fighting against war and imperialism, against attacks on immigrants and all

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The dire situation around the world might feel very demoralizing, but we need to remember that it is regular working people like us who produce Tesla’s wealth, oil Netanyahu’s tanks, process fossil fuels— and we can stop it too.

Across the world, working people are fighting back. Young people organized mass protests in Kenya and brought down the government in Bangladesh. Port workers in the US went on strike in East Coast and Gulf Coast ports; workers in South Korea went on the first ever Samsung strike and launched a general strike calling for the president’s resignation; Machinists at Boeing shut down production for two months; Tesla faced a strike in Sweden; and tens of thousands of postal workers are on strike in Canada. Earlier in the year, a general strike took place in Argentina to oppose right-wing Javier Milei’s anti-worker regime; a general strike took place in Israel against Netanyahu’s sabotage of a hostage deal; and general strikes took place in Guinea and Nigeria against austerity measures and arrests of trade union organizers.

Very few of us have any illusions that government officials, oil executives, or the courts will get us out of this crisis. Looking back at history, every major victory working people won took a mass struggle that challenged the whole system.

Socialist Alternative is committed to help build that struggle.

In 2024, our members were out protesting the Israeli genocidal war against the Palestinian masses; we organized an international campaign to release hundreds of people, including our member, jailed in Nigeria for protesting against government austerity; we worked alongside workers at Amazon and the US Post Office to fight for a strong union; we organized students to fight for LGBTQ rights; we protested against racist police brutality; and we organized a fight for full reproductive care and abortion rights.

We need your help in the fight against the bosses and their corporate right-wing representatives. Socialist Alternative is part of an international organization (ISA), carrying out a struggle against all forms of billionaire rule and oppression.

From China to Nigeria, Israel-Palestine to Quebec, from Sweden to Brazil—we are out on the streets organizing workers, students, and community members to win a world free from poverty and oppression, a world where regular people are in charge of their own lives, where we democratically decide on how to run society—a socialist world.

Make a donation today to help us build and broaden this struggle to every corner of the country and the world.J

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CLIMATE

The imperialist scramble for resources is incapable of getting us any closer to a green economy. We don’t need green-washed imperialism, we need socialism.

The capitalist system is incapable of the international coordination needed to actually solve the climate crisis, especially in the context of interimperialist conflict between the US and China. With an international planned economy under socialism, we could pour trillions into a rapid transition to green energy instead of war. We could retool weapons factories to produce trains and solar panels. Socialism is the climate solution we need. So how do we get there?

SAMMY ALBRIGHT, NEW HAVEN The climate crisis is raging and it’s easy to feel paralyzed. We had massive, international protests in 2019, yet we keep passing disastrous benchmarks: 2024 is set to surpass 1.5° of warming over pre-industrial temperatures.

Working class people are dying and losing their livelihoods in increasingly-occurring natural disasters, while the billionaires fly away in their private jets.

Capitalist leaders have stopped even pretending to fight climate change, despite the crisis only growing more urgent every year. Instead of investing the trillions of dollars necessary to fight climate change, capitalist governments are pouring trillions into beefing up their CO2-emitting militaries.

The Struggle To Save The Planet

War & Militarism The rising inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China is ramping up militarism across the world. Major global powers are already involved in multiple wars and many conflicts are threatening to explode into even bigger wars. That means capitalist governments are rapidly moving to invest in their militaries so that they aren’t caught unprepared and undefended.

Total global military spending reached $2.443 trillion in 2023, an increase of 6.8 per cent in real terms from 2022. In 2024, 23 out of 32 NATO member states will spend more than 2% of national GDP on the military, up from 10 in 2023. China is increasing expenditure by 7.6%.

Increased militarization is devastating for the climate. The $2.443 trillion going to global militaries is money not going into expanding renewable energy and public transportation.

In fact, the UN climate chief recently said that neo-colonial nations need $2.4 trillion annually in investment from rich countries to keep climate goals in reach. Imperialist countries have offered just 5% of that. I wonder where we could find the rest of the money? But that’s not the only problem—militaries run on fossil fuels and emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gases.

If the world’s militaries were a country, it would emit the fourth most CO2 of any country in the world. The US military alone emits as much CO2 as the entire country of Sweden.

The world is moving toward more war, and therefore drastically worsening the climate crisis, because imperialism is inherent to capitalism itself. Capitalism requires constant expansion, but infinite expansion is impossible on a finite planet. As they seek endless profit, capitalists need to secure ever more resources—raw materials such as fossil fuels,

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cheaper labor—and access to new markets.

The modern capitalist state was originally developed as a way for capitalists to have more control over markets concentrated in one area.

When national capitalists have saturated the market in their own country and used up the bulk of their country’s natural resources, conflict inevitably breaks out. They end up fighting with other capitalists from other countries over control of new markets and raw materials.

Right now, the US and China are fighting to be the dominant global superpower with control over key regions.

This imperialist conflict is driving the world to the brink of disaster, both through deadly war and the rapidlyworsening climate. To effectively fight climate change, we need international cooperation and planning; the current trajectory towards war shows that will never be possible under capitalism.

oil and gas drilling has increased, and global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record 37.4 billion metric tons this year. Capitalism isn’t going to stop burning fossil fuels anytime soon.

EVs are a small part of the solution, but even this meager solution is being undermined by imperialist conflict. China is the world leader in the production of solar panels (80%), electric

Imperialism’s “Solutions” Just a few years ago, capitalist governments were pretending like they would take coordinated global action on climate change. Although the 2015 Paris Climate Accords were toothless and non-binding, they set ambitious decarbonization goals and 174 countries signed on. Capitalist commentators argued that the market would develop more green energy and electric vehicles (EVs) because they represent new sources of profit for the capitalist class. But despite $2 trillion being invested globally in clean energy in 2024,

vehicles (62%) and EV batteries (77%), but instead of collaborating, the US is slapping tariff after tariff on Chinese products in order to undermine the Chinese economy.

Meanwhile, imperialist scramble for access to the raw materials needed for green technology is heating up. In Africa, the US and China are fighting over access to lithium and cobalt, two key elements for EVs. In Bolivia in 2020, the US backed a coup because of its lithium mines.

Popular revolt against the capitalist tendency toward constant expansion, connecting the climate movement to the antiwar movement, is the only way to save the planet.

The 1970 Earth Day protests offer us valuable lessons about how to fight. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire, and that blaze ignited a mood to fight for the environment. Inspired by tactics from the anti-war movement, on April 22, 1970, 12,000 events were organized in city centers and colleges. 20 million people attended events; the movement encompassed all layers of society, but the organized working class was its engine.

Unions—most notably the UAW— printed and mailed pamphlets at their own expense, donated money, and, crucially, turned out their members to the events. Following this, people got organized in Environmental Action Now (ENACT), and forced the creation of the EPA under Nixon.

Now under Trump, we need to learn from these movements. He threatens to gut the EPA; we need a mass movement to defend already-existing environmental protections. However, our fight can’t just be defensive: we need to fight for a massive green union jobs program, to take the top polluting corporations into democratic public ownership, and for government relief for climate disasters. We must combine that struggle with the fight against imperialist war, like Greta Thurnberg advocates for. Ultimately, hard-fought reforms under capitalism can be taken away like Trump threatens to with the EPA. To truly end wars and salvage as much of the planet as we can, we need socialism.J

socialistalternative.org

INTERNATIONAL

PER-ÅKE WESTERLUND, ISA SWEDEN Jubilant crowds on the streets of Damascus have been celebrating what until recently seemed unthinkable—the fall of Bashar alAssad’s hated regime in Syria. The Syrian army collapsed while the regime’s over-burdened allies in Russia and Iran could only look on, hanging their former ally out to dry. The lightning offensive was led by Turkish and USbacked right-wing Islamist forces. The success of their attack revealed the Assad dictatorship’s fundamental weakness: that it lacked any kind of meaningful support and anchorage amongst ordinary Syrians or its imperialist backers.

What will happen after the initial shock and celebration on the streets, which is echoed by Western media and governments alike? Neither the victorious Islamist ‘rebels’ nor the imperialist powers involved on both sides represent the interests of the region’s people. Workers, the poor, and the oppressed in Syria must build and organize their own way forward, independent of any imperialist power or reactionary Islamist groups.

It is not clear what kind of regime will be established. The right-wing Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) dominates now, but other armed militias will also vie for influence. The popular hope for change, to finally realise the seemingly impossible dream of getting rid of Assad, was crucial to the rapid development of events. The mood of liberation that exists today also means a new regime may behave cautiously for a while.

The Middle East has become a key theater of war in the broader inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China. The balance of power in the Middle East has now been fundamentally altered, with major international consequences. In the China bloc, Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’—Iran’s coalition to resist US and Israeli imperialism—is fatally undermined, as is Russia’s power base in the region. In the US bloc, Erdogan, the President of Turkey, and Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, have been strengthened, at least for now.

From Crushed Uprising To Bloody Civil War The Assad regime in Syria was already weak. The widespread hatred of his brutal dictatorship was on display in the initially peaceful and strong popular uprising in 2011, part of the revolutionary wave that swept the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. The powerful Syrian uprising grew, but unfortunately lacked “a unified leadership that could represent the protesters, speak for the revolution, control the pace and message of the protests, and develop a strategy for the overthrow of Bashar

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2025

al-Assad—or for the time afterwards,” summarised Aron Lund in his book Syria is Burning.

When Assad crushed the 2011 uprising with military force, Islamist militias seized on the opening to become the dominant opposition force, with mass recruitment of young people.

But these Islamist militias are not democratic, workers’ and youth-run opposition organizations that would actually represent the historic 2011 uprising. In the ensuing bloody civil war, more than half a million people were killed and 12 million were forced to flee their homes.

In 2020 a ceasefire in the civil war was negotiated by the regimes in Turkey and Russia. It was primarily about establishing a kind of independence for Turkey-backed Islamist groups in Idlib, in northwest Syria, while still keeping Assad’s regime intact. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham established a regime in Idlib under its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. HTS emerged from the Nusra Front, which differed from both alQaeda and ISIS by presenting itself as a Syrian (i. e. nationalist) organisation rather than an Islamist cross-border force.

Russia and Hezbollah (Assad’s primary backers) were already stretched thin by the war in Ukraine and the Israeli military’s attacks in Lebanon. The weakness of Assad’s allies left an opening for the Islamist militia Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, to go on the offensive.

Imperialist Influence in the Region Netanyahu and the IDF have attempted to capitalise further on the situation with major air strikes destroying Syrian military bases, including its naval fleet, as well as ground incursions by Israeli troops into Syrian territory in the Golan heights close to Damascus, an unprecedented move.

Turkey, along with Qatar, was the biggest sponsor of Islamist right-wing militias during the 9-year civil war in Syria. One of Turkey’s goals was to crush the Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party, a left-wing Kurdish party in Syria) in Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region in northeast Syria. The Kurds cannot rely on support from the US or other imperialist powers,

shown by how the Turkish army (an important NATO power) has repeatedly attacked Rojava.

The HTS was under Turkish patronage, but it is not directly controlled by Turkey. So while Turkey’s power has been strengthened, the real balance of power with the HTS is not clear.

On the surface, the fall of Assad is welcomed by governments and politicians in the West, but also reminds them of their own fragility. They now talk about the need to ‘stabilise’ Syria, which is the same reason they propped up Assad’s regime for so long. He was a very obedient follower of neoliberal capitalist policies and carried out major privatisations—some ten families benefited while ordinary people in Syria lived in extreme poverty.

Both Israel and the US have carried out massive bombing campaigns against Iranianbacked groups and remaining ISIS strongholds in the country. But despite stated goals of “defending democracy,” their actions are about demonstrating military power, thereby warning and continuing to repress workers and the oppressed in Syria and the entire region.

While the positions of Israel and Turkey have been strengthened in the short term, the main power in its bloc, US imperialism, will soon have a President Trump who recently said the US should not intervene in Syria. However, his tone could quickly change if, together with the Israeli government, he sees an opportunity for regime change in Iran. While much is still unclear, the likelihood of Trump pursuing an aggressive line against Iran, including harsher sanctions and threats, has now increased.

What Next For Struggle?

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, has made statements about religious tolerance and respect for minorities, but there is no reason to trust him. The HTS is an undemocratic army that has just taken power. Promises of rights and elections are textbook statements from coup-makers. After Assad’s fall, the HTS imposed a curfew and called on the regime’s police and civilian authorities to continue until further notice. Meanwhile, their allies in the Syrian National Army have launched new military attacks against the Kurds in Manbij and

Raqqa, on the unofficial border between Rojava and Turkish-controlled areas.

Workers and the oppressed need to organise as quickly as possible. Democratically organised cross-religious and cross-ethnic defence committees are necessary steps, as is workplace and neighbourhood organising, initiated by the working class as the most powerful collective force in the region. The 2011 revolt was strongest among young people, and made several attempts at organising with local coordination groups. But these focused more on social media and spreading information, rather than concrete organizing and a clear program.

Today, there is the danger of believing that any new regime will lead to steps forward. Dictatorships, crises, and wars in the Middle East and beyond are the result of the capitalist system. Military power and economic exploitation go hand in hand. The only force that can break this is mass struggle led by the working class, equipped with a revolutionary socialist program and our own independent organizations.

International Socialist Alternative says: • Mass struggle for democratic rights for workers, women, Kurds and all the oppressed.

• Democratic defense committees across religious and ethnic lines. Democratic control over arms and armed groups.

• Hold those responsible in the state, police and military to account.

• Opposition to all imperialist intervention.

Stop the bombings, withdraw all foreign troops.

• Stop all military attacks on Rojava.

• Bring natural resources and the key sectors of the economy under public ownership and democratic control.

• Reconstruction with housing and work for all. Raise minimum wages in line with the real cost of living.

• Build a revolutionary socialist party to fight for international socialism.

• For a socialist Syria, with the full right of selfdetermination for all peoples, in a socialist federation of the region.J

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ECONOMY

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Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity with revolutionary socialists around the world fighting in our workplaces, communities, and schools against the exploitation people face every day under the capitalist system.

We don’t just talk—we organize and fight to change the world. We build protests and walkouts, we organize unions and strikes.

We led struggles that won the country’s first $15/hr minimum wage, landmark renters’

rights and a tax on Amazon to fund affordable social housing.

Now our members are helping to lead fights of Amazon workers and USPS letter carriers to win a $30/hr starting wage.

Every week, we have branch meetings in cities across the country where we analyze events from a Marxist perspective and discuss our work. Trump, poverty, discrimination, war and environmental destruction are symptoms— capitalism is the disease. Join Socialist Alternative today!

STEPHEN THOMPSON, CHICAGO At first sight, the 2024 presidential election seemed to be in keeping with Trump’s image as an economic populist.

According to exit polls, he was opposed by most people from upper-income families, and was also overwhelmingly opposed by the CEOs of the largest hundred corporations. Nonetheless, a huge percentage (about a third) of Trump’s campaign funding came directly from billionaires. Who will benefit when he returns to office?

Trump Has Nothing To Offer Working People

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Trump has said he will deliver “the best jobs, the biggest paychecks and the brightest economic future this country has ever seen.” But his actual policies are unlikely to benefit the working class.

Consider Trump’s planned tariffs, which he says will help move more jobs to the US. In reality, when one country imposes tariffs, the affected countries generally retaliate by imposing tariffs of their own—the Mexican government and others have already said that they will do this if Trump follows through on his tariff threats. “Trade wars” like this tend to reduce economic growth on all sides.

Next, consider Trump’s plan for mass deportations. In addition to upending millions of lives, these deportations—if they are carried out—will have important ripple effects throughout the economy, as businesses close because their employees and/or customers are no longer around.

The likely result would be a net loss of jobs for US citizens.

What about the corporate tax cuts that Trump says will help to boost the economy? While these tax cuts would certainly boost corporate profits, corporations appear to already have more profits than they know what to do with; the windfall gains from Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts were largely distributed to shareholders, instead of being invested in new production. As a recent review of existing studies on the issue demonstrated, there is no reason to believe that corporate tax cuts stimulate economic growth.

Similarly, Trump has argued that he would save money on healthcare costs by banning coverage for gender-affirming care, but this was based on false claims that vastly overstated the actual costs. In reality, healthcare spending has rapidly increased in the US because we have a parasitic for-profit system that exists to squeeze as much money out of patients as possible.

Given the state of the US economy during the past four years, it is not surprising that many people remember Trump’s

first term as a comparatively better time.

But although inflation-adjusted income for the typical family grew by a total of 8% during Trump’s previous four years in office, this actually marked a significant slowdown from the 12% increase during the four years before that.

Dictatorship Of The Rich Trump failed to boost economic growth during his first term, but he did continue the upward redistribution of wealth that was already happening under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Such is the logic of a political system in which both of the major parties are controlled and funded by the ultra-rich.

In fact wealthy people dominate the US political system in a wide variety of ways.

For instance when new laws are passed, they are subject to “judicial review” by the courts. This gives veto power to judges who, besides being very well paid themselves, typically come from wealthy families and have adopted the basic worldview of the wealthy; a majority of current Supreme Court justices are millionaires, and the court frequently makes decisions that benefit the rich at the expense of ordinary people.

Similarly, the actual implementation of the law is generally the responsibility of unelected, highly paid government

officials who often hope to eventually work for the companies they are supposed to be regulating, thus creating a corrupt “revolving door” relationship.

The result is a system that is rigged in favor of the rich. For example, employers in the US are able to systematically violate labor law with virtual impunity, while small legal infractions by poor people are harshly policed.

Within this billionaire-dominated system, political differences can still exist.

For example, the battle over the debt ceiling in 2023 was essentially a fight between different factions of ultra-rich donors and the US Chamber of Commerce. Similarly, in the 2024 election, billionaires were split in their support between Trump and Harris. But this should not be confused with the idea that either group of billionaires, or their representatives, will fight for the working class—they won’t.

In short, despite his anti-establishment veneer, Trump’s approach fits squarely within a political system that has always functioned as a dictatorship of the rich.

Socialists call for the overthrow of this system; we fight for a new society in which the economy is put under public control, and all public officials are elected, recallable and paid the average workers’ wage.J

socialistalternative.org

INTERNATIONAL

What Response For The Left?

GEORGE BROWN, MADISON As the results of November’s presidential election came in, many workingclass and marginalized people all around the world watched in horror as Donald Trump secured a second victory. But not everybody had the same reaction.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, notorious for championing “Christian illiberal democracy” and declaring in speeches that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” was jubilant over Trump’s victory.

Also celebrating was Argentina’s selfproclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei. Following Trump’s victory, Milei took a break from gutting social services and workers’ rights to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the first foreign leader to do so since the election.

In spite of Trump’s nationalist “America first” rhetoric, the growth of the far right is a global phenomenon. Trump, alongside figures like Orbán and Milei, are the product of a broken international capitalist system. Trump’s victory is emboldening the global far right, opening the door for ramped up attacks on workers, women, immigrants, and queer people the world over.

Mass struggle across national lines is needed to beat back not only Trump, but his international band of admirers.

Rise Of The Global Far Right The rise of the right came alongside growth in left-wing ideas and movements as the neoliberal order was thrown into crisis around the financial collapse of 2008, when the global capitalist system was deeply delegitimized. Donald Trump’s first election came in 2016, the same election that saw Bernie Sanders come to prominence unapologetically championing the label “socialist” and

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2025

calling for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.”

The same polarization occurred internationally: Britain saw the rise of both leftwing Jeremy Corbyn and nationalist Nigel Farage while France saw the rise of both anti-corporate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and far-right Marine Le Pen. In spite of the electoral gains of the left, the workers’ movement is still in the early stages of recovery following decades of neoliberal cuts, privatizations, and antiunion attacks. Despite the mass movements since the financial crisis of 2008, the working class has not yet scored a decisive victory.

What gains the left did make were often squandered, allowing reaction to gain the upper hand. We saw this when Trump ended up being the main beneficiary of Bernie’s capitulation to the Democratic Party.

Argentina and Brazil have proud traditions of working-class struggle. But when nominally left and populist forces like Lula in Brazil or the Argentinian Peronists oversaw capitalist rule that could not fix the problems faced by workers and the poor, it opened the door for right-wing reactionaries like Milei and Jair Bolsonaro to present themselves as the anti-establishment outsiders.

While the far-right will continue to carry out major attacks against the working class, so far they have not won a decisive victory like the fascists did in the 1930s. Workers are and will continue to resist attacks from right-wing governments through protests, occupations and strikes. However, a major defeat that demoralizes the working class and normalizes the right-wing agenda would be a huge setback. This makes an appropriate response to the right all the more important.

For much of the social democratic establishment, the response has been to lean away from class struggle and towards strengthening the capitalist state. The capitalist state isn’t a reliable force to defend against the far right.

Empowering the state to take on the far right will backfire on workers, as seen when Boston police not only protected, but actively led, the “Men’s March” following Trump’s election.

When Britain was shaken by racist riots last summer, tens of thousands of anti-racists came out to oppose them.

The response from the Labour Party, however, was to champion the police as the force to beat back the far right. Labour MP Stella Creasy went so far as to campaign for people not to attend the counter-protest and to “let the police handle it.”

In Brazil, with its long history of military rule, the stakes are much higher. When Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections, Bolsonaro’s supporters staged their own analog of the US’s January 6 riots, posing a real danger of a military coup. But Lula’s response was to rely on the army and the courts, steeped with Bolsonaro supporters, to suppress the riots, rather than appeal to the working masses.

Relying on the capitalist state isn’t the only mistake the left can make. Some have chosen to pander to the far right.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland has been on the rise and the left is in crisis.

Symptomatic of this crisis is Sahra Wagenknecht, formerly a firebrand on the German left. She has now actively embraced transphobia and anti-immigrant xenophobia, railing that leftists “focus attention on ever smaller and ever more bizarre minorities” at the expense of German workers. Rather than winning back workers who are attracted to the far right, this approach only serves to legitimize the right.

The anti-racist protests in Britain and the strike wave that greeted Milei’s attacks in Argentina show the type of working-class solidarity that’s necessary to actually challenge the right. Struggle on its own, however, is not enough. To decisively turn the tide against the right, we need to rebuild powerful organizations of the working class, learning the lessons of recent struggles, and waging a struggle against the whole capitalist system.

Trump’s victory is part of a broader international trend and the fight against him requires an international struggle.

Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative, which is trying to do just that, from Brazil to Britain to Nigeria. Join us!J

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SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

ISSUE #109 | DECEMBER/JANUARY 2025

the passage of state bans on care.

Trump does not care about children. He cares about slashing federal spending that benefits working people. Trans youth are his pathway to cuts on Medicare and also public schools as seen with the threats to school funding for schools that teach an undefined “gender ideology.”

H

ouse Speaker Mike Johnson’s office could hear chants echoing down the halls of the U.S. Capitol building. That’s not totally unusual in Washington, but where the chants were coming from may have been: the women’s toilets. A dozen people organized

by Gender Liberation Movement, including prominent trans activists Raquel Willis and Chelsea Manning, crowded the room with signs reading “Flush Bathroom Bigotry.” The scene turned into a standoff with arrests and sitting Republican Representative Nancy Mace calling them “t****y protesters”—a phrase this writer wants on a shirt.

People in most bathrooms just deal with their business and avoid eye contact. So how did this one become contested territory? The incitement came from a bill proposed by Mace that would force people to use the bathroom corresponding to their assigned gender at birth in all federal buildings. Speaker Johnson already signed off on enforcing this specifically within the Capitol building. Nancy Mace has a sick obsession with trans people’s toilet habits, having tweeted about us 362 times within 72 hours! Mace is the poster child for a Republican Party that is on the offensive leading into the new Trump administration.

What’s Behind These Attacks?

Over 1,000 anti-trans bills have been considered in state legislatures over the past couple of years targeting bathroom access, gender-affirming care especially for minors, self-identification rules, and access to appropriate sports teams.

Alongside attacks on immigrants and threats to our unions, the incoming Trump administration has set these attacks as a major priority. The Trump campaign spent millions of dollars on ads airing in every swing state saying “Kamala Harris is for they/them,

not you” and is already making bold promises on how he will crack down on the transgender menace.

Trans people of all ages are waiting with bated breath for what new headlines each day might bring. Health care bans are already forcing trans youth around the country into unwanted and irreversible pubertal changes to their bodies. Men’s bathrooms are not a safe place for transgender women and the policies against trans bathroom access are reminiscent of segregation. Even when these bills do not pass they have an effect of whipping up transphobia and increasing the threat of hate crimes.

Issues relating to transgender people can be incredibly polarizing, which is what the right-wing’s rhetoric looks to capitalize on. For example, there is an almost equal one-third split between people who feel acceptance of trans people has gone too far, not far enough, or somewhere in between.

A 2022 survey demonstrated an even division between people who believe gender is based on sex assigned at birth and people who believe the two are different.

Socialist Alternative stands unequivocally with the rights of trans people to self identify their gender, to use the bathroom corresponding to that identity, to play on the appropriate sports team, and to have full access to genderaffirming care including for trans youth. For the significant percentage of people in our schools, healthcare facilities, and workplaces who oppose these rights, it needs to be made clear that attacks on trans people are intended to drive down the resources and strength of all working class people.

For example, Trump has said that he will withdraw Medicare and Medicaid funding from any doctor who performs gender-affirming care on trans youth. By playing on fears of harm to children, the administration has been able to drive polarization on the issue of gender-affirming care for minors. The truth is that suicide attempts for trans minors shot up by 72% in years following

The Working Class Needs To Take Up The Fight For Trans Rights By far the number one issue on the minds of voters this election was the economy. If not outright supporting transphobia, racism, and misogyny, many people were willing to look the other way on these issues out of frustration with the inflation we have seen throughout the Biden administration.

What does it say about the Republicans that they won on economic concerns, but their biggest initial priorities are attacking immigrants and keeping trans people out of the bathroom? These are tactics meant to carry out a divide-and-rule strategy that will weaken our unions and slash our services.

The emboldened right-wing is hoping that some strong blows in these areas will demoralize large sections of working people and open the space for their agenda free from the social movements that slowed them down in the first administration.

What does it say about the Democrats that they are willing to blame their losses on being “too woke”? They never ran on trans rights to begin with! The Harris campaign drove itself into the ground by gaslighting people about the state of the economy and aiming to be a continuation of a Biden administration entrenched in genocidal warfare. The truth is working people of all identities have more in common and at stake with each other than we do with anyone in the two parties of the billionaires.

Our class can not afford to be soft on these issues. Trans people and immigrants are not the ones reducing women’s resources or cutting across our jobs. That blame lies with the bosses and billionaires who are looking to shore up their system and hoard their profits. Our unions need to stand up against all attacks on union members. Teachers’ unions need to take up organized noncompliance against laws targeting trans youth and faculty.

Nurses’ unions need to take a stand against policies intended to harm trans patients and our health care system as a whole.

Escalate The Fight!

The shit-in outside of Speaker Johnson’s office was a small but important display of what will be needed to stand up against the wave of attacks. To really stoke fear, the protestors were threatened with sexual misconduct charges which dropped to trespassing. To strike blows against the right requires that we call them on their threats. The courageous actions of the Capitol building protesters should be met with a wave of escalation that unions and the left should be at the front of.

If the ban on federal building bathroom access passes, then similar direct actions should be organized across the country, but the biggest challenge to the Trump agenda will need to come from broadening that fight out.

Change will come from organized, class-based, mass action. In 1979 the gay rights movement had 100,000 people march on Washington, which was only possible through broad organizing efforts.

Socialist Alternative is calling for student walkouts against Trump around inauguration day. Looking beyond inauguration day, the Supreme Court decision on gender-affirming care bans for minors should arrive around early summer. Mass protests against these bans need to be a part of a fighting Pride month, though we also don’t need to wait!

The scapegoating of trans people by both the Republican and Democratic parties demonstrates how desperately this system requires division to maintain itself. Transphobia is an essential tool of a capitalist system in crisis like all other forms of oppression. It is essential and urgent that we resist these transphobic laws.

And our fight must be linked up to other struggles of oppressed people especially immigrants facing the threat of wide scale deportations.

A broad struggle against oppression that linked up with far-reaching demands for working people like permanently affordable housing, good union jobs, and public health care could shake the foundations of this system. If that type of movement took on a socialist character we could radically transform our society and remove the profit-driven basis for transphobia and all forms of oppression to exist.J