The fourth module of our Socialist Night School study series on imperialism—“Imperialism Today: An Investigation of Study Series Concepts through Contemporary Case Studies”—focuses on contemporary manifestations of imperialism utilizing case studies that hit especially close to home. Alongside cases on the Greek Syriza movement and the European Union are cases addressing the US relationship with Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

There are many questions to ask, discuss, and answer. How does our understanding of national sovereignty, dispossession through debt, global financialization, and the triumph of neoliberalism inform our conception of imperialism today? Do conventional models of imperialism match contemporary reality — and if not, how do ongoing offenses against Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the periphery of the Eurozone challenge conventional theories? What can and should be done to combat US imperialism both within and beyond its borders? These are some of the questions we will work through this module.

Recommended Reading

To prepare for this session, we ask attendees to read through Module 4 (pp. 78-106) of the DSA-LA Imperialism Reader, which includes:

• Linda Backiel, “Puerto Rico: The Crisis Is About Colonialism, Not Debt” (pp. 79-83)
• Richard Seymour, “Syriza: the Denouement” (pp. 84-86)
• Panagiotis Sotiris and Spyros Sakellaropoulos, “European Union as Class Project and Imperialist Strategy” (pp. 87-96)
• Paul Krehbiel, “US Imperialism in Venezuela” (97-106)

Were you unable to attend the first three sessions? No problem! You can review the content from Module 1: Is Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism?, Module 2: America’s Ascent as an Imperial Power, and Module 3: The National Question.

Interested in attending our Socialist Night School sessions? Check our calendar for upcoming session dates.

“All we are trying to get at is where the Bible touches upon the questions at issue between the Socialist and the capitalist, on whose side does it stand?”

The Reverend George Washington Woodbey was born into slavery in 1854 in Johnson County, Tennessee. A mostly self-taught workingman, he was ordained in Kansas in 1874, after freedom came. By 1902, Reverend Woodbey was living in San Diego, pastoring Mt. Zion Baptist Church and serving on the executive board of the Socialist Party of California.

His first pamphlet, from 1903, carries this dedication: “By one who was once a chattel slave freed by the proclamation of Lincoln and now wishes to be free from the slavery of capitalism.”

He was part of the 1912 free speech fight against a San Diego city ordinance prohibiting streetcorner speeches. Targeted by police and right-wing vigilantes for speaking freely, jailed and beaten, he described the police as the new slave catchers.

His 1904 pamphlet The Bible and Socialism: A Conversation Between Two Preachers, comes from the point of view of someone who “believes all the Bible teaches”and aims “to set forth only what the Bible teaches on economics.” The pamphlet is written as a dialogue between two preachers, one a convinced socialist and the other skeptical of socialism. This format shows the importance of good faith dialogue among working-class people, building on common ground with mutual respect to come to a greater understanding.

Reverend Woodbey reads passages of the Bible that oppose exploitation in the form of rent, interest, and profits–the ways the rich get rich off of the toil and struggles of the rest of us. Speaking on the sin of exploitation, Woodbey says that both chattel slavery and capitalism “take the larger portion of what the poor produce,” which is “wrong” and “the work of the devil.” He shows how the struggle against slavery and the struggle for industrial democracy are part of the same big struggle of labor.

Woodbey’s message to the church was the message of Matthew 6:24: “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” In other words, “the class struggle … exists in the churches as well as in the factory.” In Matthew 19:16-24, Jesus tells a rich young man to sell his possessions because “a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Woodbey writes, “The preacher today is the representative of Christ, and when the rich young man comes to him seeking eternal life is he told to go and get right with the poor? … You tell him God has greatly blessed him, when, at the same time, the Bible denounces him as a spoiler of the poor. You tell him that he can hold on to his riches and get to heaven, while Christ says he cannot, and yet you claim to represent Christ.”

Woodbey: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ is one of these laws which, under capitalism, we are violating continually.” Basing himself on Acts 4:32-35, which says the members of the early church “had all things in common,” Woodbey sees the early church as a “cooperative institution” which over time succumbed to class differences: “So the early churches … were divided into different warring factions at last, by the wealthy class, who finally gained control, and thus … they lost their ideas of cooperation for a time.” Only the socialist “Cooperative Commonwealth” can bring about a world where people can really follow the Golden Rule.

Historian Philip Foner, editor of a collection of Woodbey’s writings and speeches titled Black Socialist Preacher, says, “Since the church was a dominant influence in the black community, more black Americans learned of socialism through the writings included in this volume [which also includes work from some of Woodbey’s predecessors and successors] than all the publications of the various socialist groups combined.”

The Reverend George Washington Woodbey has this message for the world: “Socialism is a part of what the Bible has been leading up to all this time.”

Black Socialist Preacher is available at the Appalachian Liberation Library: https://allibrary.org/.

As recent polls show that Americans have a higher distrust of media than ever before and factionalized varieties of social media have increasingly polarized people, nearly everyone has strong opinions about the media. If you’re interested in exploring and discussing this topic, the Coulee DSA Book Club is beginning Matt Taibbi’s recent book, “Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another,” an acclaimed analysis of how today’s mainstream media lies to people and divides them by manipulating us as news consumers. 

The book club meets Thursday nights at 7 pm and will begin discussing Hate Inc. on Thursday, February 10th. Email us at CouleeDSA@gmail.com to receive a link to the book club to join in.” 

The post Next DSA Book club read: Hate Inc. first appeared on Coulee DSA.

Yesterday two very different visions for the future of New York’s energy system were presented at a marathon 12+ hour long budget hearing on environmental conservation. On one hand, New York’s regulators argued to stay the course and continue to let the market and capital be the primary drivers of building renewable energy, despite the state having missed it’s renewable energy goals year after year and currently only 6% of New York’s energy comes from wind and solar. Community advocates and DSA-electeds had a different view - one where the future is a public good- and renewables are being built at the scale the climate crisis demands and are publicly-owned. 

Tonight we’ll continue our series of interviews with NYC-DSA’s 2022 slate and are joined live by Sarahana Shrestha a candidate for Assembly District 103 in the Mid-Hudson Valley and member of the NY Public Power Coalition who is running under the slogan - the future is a public good.

More info about Sarahana: www.sarahanaforassembly.com

More info about Public Power: www.publicpowerny.org

Who We Are & What We Do

We are the officially chartered local chapter in Charleston, SC, of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA believes that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few. We are a political and activist organization, not a party; through campus and community-based chapters, DSA members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people. Charleston DSA was founded in 2017, became an official DSA chapter in 2018, and incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)4 in 2021.

https://charlestondsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/chsdsa-logo-w-font-for-white-bg-2-e1730904763840.png

A better world is possible. Join the fight today!

The post Charleston SC Democratic Socialists of America appeared first on .

Jan 6, 2021

This January 6th, as congress proceeded with the count of the electoral college votes, a mob of armed white supremacists, neo-nazis, the alt-right and QAnon conspiracy theorists, stormed the U.S. capitol intending to forcibly stop the counting of the votes.  

While acknowledging the deeply undemocratic nature of the electoral college and the nation’s electoral system as a whole, the Ithaca chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America condemns in the strongest terms the attempt of the far right to stop the process that would ensure the end of Donald Trump’s tenure in office. No election was stolen, no fraud committed.

But this is not the main lesson we should be focusing on. As socialists, what is important to recognize is not so much the assault on procedure of a broken political system that can only offer duopoly so much as it is important to recognize the alarming ascendency and growth of white supremacist / nationalist violence in America.

It is critical to understand the complicity of law enforcement and public officials in this dangerous development whether it is the Republican Party, the two recently elected representatives who publicly support QAnon, or centrist Democrats who offer only an inadequate and lackluster response. The incompetency, unpreparedness and delay seen last night on the part of law enforcement or security is certainly curious to say the least. We have seen in videos of the police or security forces giving a half-hearted defense before letting a mob of white supremacists into the capitol, being vastly outnumbered, and at times taking photos with some individuals. This is not without precedent either. The ideological sympathy of law enforcement and right wing insurrectionists is now more abundantly clear than ever before. 

Many have noted that last night's events are an example of white privilege. This is true, but it may be more accurately described as a display of white power in American society. Figures and members from the fascist Proud Boys, European Heritage Association, Nationalist Social Club, Matthew Heimbach of the now defunct Traditionalist Workers Party, men with white supremacist tattoos dressed in garb glorifying “camp auschwitz”, and so on, were let into the capitol building with little to no resistance. 

Compare the response of law enforcement last night with the response given to anti-racist protesters that we saw this past summer which was met with disproportionate, swift and brutal force. Make no mistake, if this were Black Lives Matter or any anti-racist protest, the full force of the state would be used immediately. One only needs to recall the use of riot police, teargas, and beatings to clear Lafayette Square in Washington D.C., the illegal abduction and questioning of activists by unidentified federal agents, or any of the other police violence that happens everyday. 

The rise of this sort of white-supremacist violence did not happen in a vacuum and neither did it start with Trump. Rather, the phenomenon of Trumpism revealed and gave confidence to those tendencies that were always there in American society and they will certainly not disappear with the end of the Trump presidency. The events that took place on January 6th are a clear indication that an organized left and working class is needed that can defend against any instances of authoritarianism and bring a more humane future in a deeply fragmented society. This includes workplace organizing and growing a militant labor rank-and-file, mutual aid for the most vulnerable, protecting one another from evictions and homelessness, preventing the worst of the climate crisis, and what is perhaps most immediately needed: taking a principled stand against white supremacy, racism, and fascism.

Ithaca DSA Steering Committee

Starting late last year in Buffalo, NY, a union wave has spread all over the country as workers at an ever-increasing number of Starbucks coffee shops are getting organized and making demands on their boss and on the multi-national corporation that employs them. This movement is gaining speed every day - and to help us understand what’s going on from a worker perspective, we’re joined live in the studio by James, a worker-organizer with Starbucks Workers United in Buffalo.

Another national movement is mobilizing to defend access to abortion as the right-wing assault on this fundamental right continues to escalate. With landmark legislation Roe V. Wade on the verge of being rolled back, socialists are continuing to organize for grassroots solutions to this national crisis that center anti-racism, abolition, and a no-holds-barred approach to guaranteeing access to safe abortion. We’ll hear from Ali of Chicago DSA and Chicago for Abortion on this crucial struggle.

On this show, Jack makes a brief announcement about the New Deal for CUNY. Learn more and get involved at bit.ly/action-nd4c.

Find a local abortion fund to support if you can: https://abortionfunds.org/funds/

Follow along with James and the Starbucks partners at @SBWorkersUnited. Current Starbucks partners can email sbworkersunited@gmail.com to get connected to an organizer.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of our NYC-DSA comrade, Alex Z.