CW: sexual assault, rape, abuse, state-sponsored violence, descriptions of incarceration

Ten years ago this month, the Syrian Revolution began.

The spark was graffiti. The wildfire of the Arab Spring spread across the region in 2011, embers igniting from Tunisia to Egypt. Meanwhile, the city of Daraa was gripped in the iron fist of the corrupt cousin of the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. He forbade people from selling land without a security clearance but granted clearance only to his chosen favorites (Wendy Pearlman, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, 64). Then, in a local schoolyard, graffiti appeared: “you’re next, Bashar.” That was the first sign that the wildfire had reached Syria.

Immediately, school children younger than sixteen years old – chosen with no proof as to their involvement in the graffiti – were detained and tortured until they told officials everything they wanted to hear (Pearlman, 64). Ahmed, an activist in Daraa, described what happened next. Families assembled to demand the government release their children. The assembly grew, and the demands grew louder in Daraa. A security official responded to the shouts with resounding defiance, “forget your children. Go home to your wives and make more children. And if you don’t know how, bring your wives and we’ll show you how” (Pearlman, 62).

Patriarchal rape culture is not the only strand of fascism deeply baked into the DNA of the Syrian regime. The regime is constructed from an exclusionary nationalism that manifests in militarism, paranoia, and surveillance: “the private property of a dynasty” (Yassin al-Haj Saleh, The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, 152). The government’s ideology, a doctrine instilled in every student in Syrian schools since Hafez al-Assad’s consolidation of control in the 1960s, erases all diversity within Arab culture and sociopolitical beliefs to uphold the specific brand of Arabness that permits conflation of the Syrian nation with its government. Under this nationalism, any criticism of the government is naturally also a criticism of the nation, which is also the military, which is also the motherland. These are all the trademarks of fascism. It’s no wonder that slogans like “Syria First,” pre-empting Donald Trump’s use of the same phrase years later, and “Syria Is Above All,” which is explicitly inspired by the Nazi equivalent, were common in pro-government counterprotests (Saleh 118).

The enforcement of this ideology, and thus the reality of the Syria in which the movement began, was enabled by ethnic cleansings of Indigenous people – the Kurds – in the 1960s. The government adopted the “Arab Belt” policy to, in the words of activist Qamishli Mesud, “alter the demographics of Kurdish areas. [The policy] aimed to Arabize the population and change cities’ Kurdish names to Arabic names” (Pearlman 45). Shortly after the ethnic cleansings, dissent from Sunni Muslims also began to organize into a formidable movement. That movement was crushed in 1983. Tens of thousands of residents of the city of Hama, the nucleus of dissent, were massacred by the government’s military. The Hama massacre was mentioned in whispers ten years ago, described in code as just “the events,” since the language of Assad’s Syria is sealed and locked in euphemism.

Any dissent, however strong or faint, was incarcerated or killed in Syria. The legitimacy of the regime was carved above the corpses of dissenters and Indigenous people.

The regime relies on both security forces and brownshirts to enforce its existence. The fascist foot-soldiers of the regime, similar to Proud Boys and Border Patrol militias in the empire’s heartland, are the shabiha. They would routinely threaten to seize property, rape young women, arbitrarily humiliate cafe-goers, and kill people who objected to their insults throughout Syria (Saleh, 47). Much like Trump-supporting militants in the United States, the shabiha are weaponized by the regime to maintain its own power: “the poor and disadvantaged can be deployed as fanatical defenders of a wealthy political elite who disrespect them and care nothing for their well-being” (Saleh 53). These authoritarian militias expanded when the Revolution began.

Salah, a landscaper in rural Daraa, described Syria best: “we don’t have a government. We have a mafia. And if you speak out against this, it’s off with you to bayt khaltu [“your aunt’s house”]. That’s an expression that means to take someone to prison. It means, forget about this person, he’ll be tortured, disappeared. You’ll never hear from him again” (Pearlman 17).

One such dissenter who went to his aunt’s house was Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a leftist organizer who joined the Syrian Communist Party in the late 1970s, before the massacre in Hama. He was arrested for democracy advocacy and for protesting against the regime’s military intervention in Lebanon on the side of right-wing militants. Saleh was incarcerated for sixteen years in Syrian prisons for his organizing.

Saleh’s last year was spent in Tadmor Prison – the black hole of the Syrian regime. To understand the regime, one must understand Tadmor.

“Tadmor Prison is a name, or a crime scene, which resonates terribly in the Syrian imagination,” notes Robin Yassin-Kassab (Saleh xiii). “Faraj Barraqdar, a fellow prisoner, called Tadmor ‘the kingdom of death and madness.’” The prison, built by French colonizers, was reappropriated by the Assads when they came into power. This is revealing. A regime that has no problem in using colonizers’ weapons against its own people is no different than the colonizers that preceded the regime. Salameh Kaileh, a Palestinian writer who was detained in Tadmor from 1998 to 2000, has reported that “in Tadmur you have nothing. You’re only left with fear and horror.”

Faraj Barraqdar, a former prisoner of the regime, described Tadmor in his poem:

High walls of cold cement
Control towers
Mine fields
Check points
Barricades and special military forces
Finally… A space of pure patriotic fear
If the whole of Syria falls
This prison will never ever fall

Tadmor Prison was ground zero for the Hama massacre. Hundreds of political prisoners were shot to death in their cells as Assad’s brother, Rifaat, ordered his soldiers to kill one dissenter after another at gunpoint in 1983.

After sealing its legitimacy in blood, the Assad regime began to explore new methods of control over the people. The government transformed itself to don the coat of neoliberalism, becoming an outpost of the global financial empire of Washington, as Bashar inherited Syria from his father. The internet entered Syria. Reform was in the air. But much like Mao Zedong’s period of reform in 1957, reform was smoke and mirrors.  “A new class of crony capitalists, at their fore Assad’s extended family, became conspicuously rich,” Wendy Pearlman describes. “As power and wealth became concentrated in a narrower elte, the regime increasingly abandoned its traditional working-class base”.. Bashar al-Assad spearheaded the consolidation of power in this “neo-bourgeoisie that… owes everything to the regime and has a lot to lose were the revolution to emerge victorious” (Saleh, 18).

The creation of an elite, capitalist oligarchy that owed their existence to an exterminationist and paranoid regime also changed the societal fabric of Syria. “Development… favoured cities at the expense of rural areas, city centres at the expense of outlying neighborhoods, and wealthy suburbs at the expense of the crowded traditional suburbs” under the new neoliberal authoritarian model favored by the Assad regime (35) In other words, Bashar al-Assad utilized economic violence through forced displacement and gentrification to destroy traditional communities and defund Syrian homes.

This neoliberal turn had another consequence, one that also emerged in the West as a result of austerity: privatization of higher education. Adam, a media organizer in Latakia, said that “universities used to be free. But by the time I went to college, I had to pay for it… the regime had no willingness to reform the problems in public universities. Instead, their answer was to open new private universities, which charged people thousands of dollars” (Pearlman, 40). And when they graduated, similarly to countless students in the US today, they entered a workforce devoid of job offerings with degrees that felt worthless.

Then, schoolchildren painted the walls of a Daraa school with graffiti. Then, families were turned away and sexually harassed by security forces. Then, people started mobilizing – particularly in the traditional communities that a decade of neoliberal development had neglected and destroyed as gentrifying high-rises were built in the preferred neighborhoods of the oligarchy. Every Friday, people went to the squares and protested. Rural villages started assembling. A political movement was beginning in Syria – in the shadow of Kurds’ ethnic cleansing, in the shadow of Tadmor Prison, in the shadow of the Hama massacre, in the shadow of new skyscrapers, in the shadow of fascist gangsters arbitrarily attacking people in old cafes.

At its heart, the Syrian Revolution unfolded as a secular, feminist, and radically inclusive movement wherein a popular front of liberals, conservatives, and socialists of all sects and ethnicities within the heterogenous diversity of Syria all participated in confronting the regime. Many key organizers were millennials, the same generation that would reinvigorate and lead a new era of Democratic Socialists of America an ocean away. And many of the key leaders of the Revolution against the fascist, masculinist government were and continue to be women.

Students were some of the first protesters in the Syrian movement, with female students leading the charge. In demonstrations at the University of Aleppo, a former student named Ghaysh described how “women who wore headscarves would hide papers and signs in their long coats because they wouldn’t get searched” (Pearlman, 40). Male dorms were shut down quickly, but female dorms remained open, because security forces, in their sexism, conceived of maleness as the only potential source of resistance. Quickly, the center of organizing became the suites and dorm rooms of female students at the University of Aleppo. Sometimes, female students would even physically block police from attacking male demonstrators in the same way that anti-fascist organizers blocked police from attacking protesters during the George Floyd uprising.

Meanwhile, some organizers began to coordinate across the country in a massive digital organizing drive using Skype. Razan Zeitouneh, a human rights lawyer and organizer, created the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) to coordinate regionally and nationally. Organizers from one town could coordinate with organizers in another town entirely by using anonymous pseudonyms in Skype rooms. Many of the leaders of the LCCs would spend up to 12 hours together organizing online, according to feminist organizer Zaina Erhaim, who was a close comrade of Zeitouneh in maintaining the LCCs ten years ago. The LCCs were ”anti-sectarian, committed to nonviolence, and opposed to foreign intervention.”

That progressive ideological unity within the LCCs did not last the year. When the regime brought in tanks and released violent right-wing terrorists from its prisons to infiltrate and discredit the Revolution, as well as garner Western sympathy as the Assad regime posited itself as a key in the War on Terror, the secular and nonviolent Local Coordination Committees splintered. Zeitouneh was detained and disappeared within two years. Zeitouneh has not been seen since.

Meanwhile, Yassin al-Haj Saleh and Samira al-Khalil, his wife, both organized together as dissidents committed to democratic socialism, free from the Assad regime’s chains. Samira established women’s centers and small income-generating projects. As Yassin aimed to meet up with her, Samira was abducted and disappeared along with Zeitouneh. They are suspected of abduction by one of the patriarchal, terroristic militias in the opposition.

Many organizers began to lose faith as the regime violently suppressed one assembly after another, and their friends turned to more new authoritarian ideologies. Instead of envisioning an abolitionist approach to uprising, many adopted the regime’s authoritarian tactics – an eye for an eye. Countless joined and built violent, terroristic militias, which were either infiltrated with terrorists from Assad’s prisons, or filled with military officers disillusioned from the regime but still loyal to the toxic militaristic culture of sexual assault and targeted violence. Some dissident militias adopted prisons from the Assad regime, just like the regime had adopted them from the French colonizers: “at these sites the treatment of prisoners (who are not necessarily associated with the regime) does not come close to complying with basic human dignity” (Saleh, 182). The most infamous of these were the Daesh prisons in Raqqa, given that Daesh is a death cult of horror.

The violent suppression of the political movement carried on as “many initiators of the revolution and civil society activists [were] detained or assassinated, while armed resistance has been emphatically on the rise, with militants being recruited from the most disadvantaged ranks of society” (Saleh 166). One of the leaders of the Local Coordination Committees, Yahya Shurbaji, a pacifist whose commitment to nonviolent political tactics never wavered, was killed under torture in prison in September, 2011.

Invariably, the left-wing and non-sectarian organizers were targeted by the regime as the greatest threats. Lina Sergie Attar, who is the founder and CEO of the Karam Foundation serving Syrian needs in the diaspora, described a scene that unfolded as the Revolution slipped away into violent mayhem: “so many years ago, at the time when we felt the hope of the revolution slipping away into the ugliness of war, my friend, activist Rami Jarrah, told me, ‘The people who started the revolution will not be the ones who finish it.’”

In 2017, other refugee justice activists and I organized a symposium of Syrian revolutionaries at Middlebury College in central Vermont. The symposium contained two primary elements: speeches and workshops on activism. One activist-turned-journalist that I had the privilege of working with was Loubna Mrie. She became an activist between nineteen and twenty years old, smuggling medicine and food to families in Homs, as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) emerged as the armed element of the movement in its initial stages. Even though she was an organizer in the opposition, Loubna was targeted by her community in Latakia because her family was so deeply connected to the regime: “my father’s family is well known in Latakia—my uncle, my cousins and my dad founded the shabiha there.”

When Loubna was identified with a mask on in a Youtube video, her mother, who had always supported her daughter as she participated in the Revolution, was kidnapped. Her father cursed her and hung up the phone when she called him. But one day, Loubna said: “one of my friends, someone that I trust, told me that the dead body had been seen. I called [my father] and told him that he killed her. He said OK. He told me that he wished he could do the same to me.” Eventually, she fled to Turkey and has sought asylum in the United States.

Ever since those first few years, the country has been engulfed in immense violence and civil war. Syria is a theatre of death where the twisted features of Bashar al-Assad in his business suit continues to direct the show, presiding over a country filled with corpses and ruins, the wreckage of his war on his own people for daring to dream of a better world. In 2013, Saleh described Syria as “a playground for ghouls and terrifying, faceless beings” (210)

And yet, even as names like Eastern Ghouta and Idlib erupted in the flames of horror, some places of incredible lived resistance continue to survive. Most notably is the political project of western Kurdistan, on land that once the Assad regime ethnically cleansed, spearheaded by Indigenous people. The Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, often called Rojava, persists as a political experiment as the “most feminist revolution.”

The Federation is a multi-ethnic, heterogeneous de facto nation based on a model of Kurdish democratic confederalism. Since Rojava explicitly rejects centralized statist models for social progress, calling the Federation a state would be inaccurate and disingenuous. Indeed, decisions are made democratically through local communal assemblies where women co-chair every meeting and assembly. As Carne Ross describes, “in terms of historical comparison, this project resembles most closely the short period of anarchism witnessed by George Orwell in Republican Spain during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s.”

The anarchistic model of governance in the Federation has created one of the most progressive, democratic models worldwide. Not only are decisions made subject to the opinions of every resident, but residents who belong to ethnic minorities in the context of the Indigenous-led region, specifically Arabs, Assyrians, and Syriacs, are given priority on the speaking list for assemblies. In other words, Rojava uses a progressive stack structure for all conversations nationwide throughout the Federation. Interpreters are also mandated for anyone with linguistic differences from the common language of the assemblies.

The Democratic Federation exists in a region where every surrounding force is deeply hostile to the Federation’s existence. Beyond just the Assad regime, Turkey and Daesh are constant threats to the livelihood of this radical experiment in Kurdish-led, anarchistic self-governance. The Federation is heavily armed in the same style and philosophy as the Black Panthers were, but are elevated to the position of a national army. The People’s Self-Defence Units are composed of male and female soldiers defending the collective from the imperialist and fascist forces that surround its oasis.

In March, 2020, JM Lopez reported on a women’s commune called Jinwar that can be found inside the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. In many ways, Jinwar functions as a haven for Arab, Kurdish, and Yazidi survivors of sexual assault perpetrated by fascist forces of both the Assad regime and the patriarchal militias and death cults found in the opposition. Jinwar was created by feminist organizers as an eco-village that officially opened on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 2018. The town is arranged in a triangle of thirty houses, all of which function as “a shelter for those who suffer abuse, a home for widows with children who lost their husbands during the war, and a place for women who want to get away from a capitalist society.” Some women are survivors of child marriage – explicitly, a form of rape – and shelters that functioned more like prisons than shelters in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Jinwar is also based in Indigenous Kurdish culture. In Kurdish, “jin” is related to both the term “woman” and “life”; the term “war” signifies “space,” “land” or “home.” Essentially, Jinwar is a Kurdish name that can be loosely translated to “Women’s Home.” As one Jinwar organizer noted in the village’s construction, “the village will be an autonomous space, a space of women to live freely and to regain the confidence, strength and creativity that have been undermined in the long historical process of an ever deeper and broader systematization of state, capitalism and patriarchy.” The village is a safe space for women who have survived immense oppression and is one type of socialist feminist community.

The construction of Jinwar was done on explicitly eco-socialist lines. The houses were built only through materials that do not pollute the environment mostly by Indigenous women, powered primarily through solar power, free from market influence. Decisions for Jinwar are made by monthly assemblies of the residents of the village; tasks are distributed by them as well. There is a children’s park, a bakery, a library, a medical dispensary, and a communal kitchen – all administered by women who trade off jobs every month. Visits to Jinwar by men are allowed, but they are not allowed to stay overnight. Jinwar is a far more progressive community than any Western society has been able to create in our era, located in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria produced by the Revolution, even as terror seized the rest of the country.

The Revolution increasingly seems to survive only in Rojava, but the Revolution also lives in the consciousness of its participants worldwide. A social movement is an animating force, injecting life into the blood of every individual. “We had gotten used to oppression. It was part of our life, like air, sun, water. We didn’t even feel it. Like there is air, but you never ask, “where is the air?”… and then – in one second, in one shout, one voice – you blow it up. You defy it and stand in front of death,” said Cherin, a mother in Aleppo (Pearlman 88). Yassin al-Haj Saleh captured the energy of the Revolution and its organizers further: “for hundreds of thousands of Syrians, the Syrian popular uprising has been an extraordinary experience, ethically and politically: an experience of self-renewal and social change, an uprising to change ourselves and a revolution to change reality” (29).

The Revolution can never die when it lives on in participants’ memories. The movement may have been forced into the bloody hold-outs of deeply corrupt and patriarchal rebel militias, or into the feminist collectives of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. However, as the people who dared to dream are forcibly displaced into refugee camps and resettlement programs, the movement lives on as a human revolution in the soul and mind of each Syrian displaced far from Aleppo or Damascus.

Many revolutionaries continue to live as they are reduced to the political status of “asylee” or “refugee.” Twentysomething organizers who spent 12 hours a day online coordinating protests from their bedrooms are in Istanbul, Berlin, Chicago, Copenhagen, New York City, Beirut, and San Francisco. Activists are community members in places like Las Vegas, working service jobs, or apolitical classmates in community colleges like the College of Southern Nevada. “Just a few weeks ago, I watched two Syrian refugee girls, Hawla and Rua, present their project to redesign the popular online game, Among Us, to become a more interactive game in real life,” said Attar in her recent article. “They were coding live on Zoom in front of their mentors, guest critics, and peers. Another young teen in Istanbul, Rouba, has started an Instagram baking business during the pandemic. And yet another teen who had lived through the starvation sieges in East Ghouta as a child became a young technology leader in his Turkish school, where he taught dozens of Turkish students design programs he learned at Karam House. These young people and thousands more are proving every day that Syrian refugees are much more than their tragedies and trauma. They are brimming with potential and endless possibility.” Syrians are here, among us, with us and alongside us, and their struggle and experience is ours, as well.

I met one such child in Atlanta, Georgia, at a school with a large population of refugee children. Eleven other students, activists, and I were volunteering with New American Pathways and the International Rescue Committee there. The children in the after-school program were all refugees – from Iran, from Syria, from Iraq, from Pakistan. One child, a boy in second grade, had an eyepatch. We learned that he lost his eye in the regime’s assault on the city of Aleppo. He was a natural at art.

Ultimately, there are a number of lessons we should draw from the Syrian Revolution. The first is understanding that the movement, in itself, is an energizing force. Whether or not a specific mobilization succeeds or fails, it will continue and persist in the heart of its organizers. We should not let our efforts be poisoned by opportunism or replication of the systems of oppression we seek to abolish, whether in the form of patriarchy or racism. The forces of counterrevolution, the institutions with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, will not yield without force, but that force must always be driven by principles. Ends do not justify the means, because bad means are toxic to good ends.

The second is that, in the tumult of the Revolution, there have been models of progress in Syria worth emulating as goals of the global left. The highly accountable, progressive Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, perhaps more than any other society in the world, upholds values of social progress. Places like Jinwar present radical alternative ways of living – eco-socialist, Indigenous, multicultural – to the debilitating systems of oppression we breathe. Rojava proves that a better world is possible – a world that is full of interdependent care, where survivors can thrive in safe spaces. Rojava is the future we should strive for.

Further, we must remember that many regimes are wolves in the sheep’s clothing of left-wing rhetoric. Whether China or Syria, these “anti-American” authoritarian systems are toxic to marginalized people within their own borders and to social movements for greater progress worldwide. These regimes function as national bourgeoisies upholding the very imperialist system whose bedrock in the twenty-first century is the United States. As they participate in and propagate the finance system whose ultimate iron fist is Wall Street, they oppress their own people to maintain power. The Assads of the world are the cogs in the global empire. We must recognize the forces of oppression for what they are, regardless of what they say. No self-respecting abolitionist can support regimes that prop up their power through incarceration and displacement.

Finally, we must understand that relegating any conversation on Syria to the extent of Western intervention is a disservice to the organizers – young people, mothers, workers – who find purpose and life in the Syrian Revolution. The Syrian experience holds lessons in the nature of social movements today more than any French or Russian Revolution does, yet we place the latter two on a pedestal even as we only ever mention Syria when the President of the United States drops bombs on the country. Syria deserves to be thought of and treated on its own terms, as Syrians experience it. While presidents should be condemned for interventions that harm civilians, Syria is all too often treated by Western leftists as only a practice ground for recycled anti-war rhetoric and not a real place with real people. At best, positioning the West as the center of the galaxy of the Syrian experience is erasure; at worst, it infantilizes and silences Syrian people and gaslights survivors of war by informing them that the monstrous regime did not, in fact, murder their relatives or destroy their communities to maintain power.

Solidarity means addressing the lived experiences of workers and students, of revolutionaries and digital organizers, on their own terms – in all their flaws, in all their beauty. They are our comrades and fellow travelers. Now, as many have become refugees, they are our neighbors. The people of Syria are the people of the West are the people of Syria. Understanding that our future is the same and our struggles interdependent is the way to be truly internationalist.

Long live the Syrian Revolution. Organizers who have a world to win, unite.

Within its first hundred days, the Biden administration had already bombed Syria, deployed bombers to Norway, and arrayed countries against China through the ‘Quad’ Summit. Meanwhile, Texans went without electricity, Asian-Americans and African-Americans suffered from racial violence, and millions of working people across the country awaited financial relief while struggling to obtain vaccines that were often deployed inefficiently, creating logistical and material problems on top of existing hardships. 

The connection between these sets of events may not seem obvious at first. However, the reality is that the desperate race for COVID-19 vaccinations and the efforts to deal with the pandemic coincide with the increasingly tense nature of the geopolitical situation, especially the rivalries between the great power nations, such as the United States, China, and Russia. Furthermore, this geopolitical competition, spurred on by the pandemic, will have serious implications for the working class of this country. We have already seen some of its political implications, such as the rampant opportunism on the left, which claims to support the working class on the one hand, while promoting neo-liberal imperialism on the other. In order to prepare for these events, we must have a better understanding of the forces at work and above all, we must build up an authentic anti-imperialist movement, which will not only benefit the oppressed nations of the world, but will also aid our country’s own working class by preventing unnecessary conflict and eliminating foreign distractions which are designed to misinform and mislead the public. 

Recall last year when Russia launched its ‘Sputnik-V’ vaccine. Many Western media outlets attacked the effort as nothing but ‘propaganda’ and dismissed its efficacy on baseless grounds. Regardless of whether the Russian claims were true or not, it was very telling to see such a hostile reaction during a time in which international cooperation was the mantra of the UN and WHO. Of course, far from being a friend of the world, the Trump administration had engaged in the most shameless attempts to monopolize its control over vaccines from other countries, all while criticizing China and Russia for their ruthlessness. 

It must be said again and again that regardless of whether the claims of the Russian and Chinese governments about their vaccines are true, it is highly suspicious for the Western media outlets to be so vigorous in their attacks against them, especially when we consider how the United States, the United Kingdom, and the EU countries have been struggling to deal with their own vaccines. Here, I claim that the suspicious motive behind these attacks has little to do with scientific concerns about vaccine efficacy and much more to do with an imperialist agenda. 

Backtracking a bit, let us not forget Biden’s iconic words, ‘America is back’ – this proclamation sounded the alarm as to what the intentions of this administration would be. It means renewed efforts to infringe on the affairs of other countries and the endless expansion of the already monstrously large military-industrial complex. 

Now, I return to the issue of media hostility towards Russia and China. The longstanding tensions between the U.S. and those two countries are well known, but have become particularly more tense in recent years due to events in the South China Sea and Black Sea. With regards to the former, Biden has sent a clear message about U.S. intentions to reject China’s claims in the strategically vital, energy rich area. And with regards to the former, Biden maintains the U.S. position on Crimea belonging to Ukraine, despite the fact that this is no longer the de facto situation, and is not likely to change. Given this geopolitical context, we can clearly deduce the fact that there is a clear motive at work for the so-called progressive liberals who support Biden and the U.S. establishment as a whole. Far from being the guardian angels they present themselves as, the liberal media is only interested in justifying aggressive U.S. policy, especially in the wake of the Biden victory, and they do this by focusing their attacks on China, Russia, and any other country which may prove to be an obstacle to their agenda. In the interests of the American working class, we must not allow ourselves to fall victim to this deception. 

Finally, I shall bring my entire point together. Recall the domestic problems I mentioned earlier, chief among them being the Texas power crisis, which left over 5 million Americans without electricity. This occurred amidst the desperate efforts to vaccinate millions of Americans in a race against time to prevent the new COVID-19 variants from taking a foothold. The situation in the EU countries was not much better, causing bitterness and resentment among citizens due to the lackluster rollout, despite the optimism of political leaders. What is striking about all of this is that in such a time of crisis, it would behoove Western political leaders (including our own in Washington D.C.) to at least make a good faith effort at cooperating with countries like China and Russia in helping to meet global vaccine demand, especially when time is of the essence and supplies are short. The response has been, as we know, anything but that. Our supposedly ‘peace-loving’ leaders have been working hard to undermine such efforts by pushing countries to reject Chinese and Russian vaccine shipments – and not because their own supply is so plentiful. But then the question arises – why would they do this? In order to understand the answer, we must turn to the works of theory.

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Imperialism is not merely a preferred policy choice of the current establishment – it is a distinct phase of development in the capitalist economy itself. Although the development of capitalism began within the confines of individual states, it inevitably expanded beyond them and encompassed the entire globe. And this was not by mere chance, but was (and still is) built into the very logic of capitalism itself. It would have been impossible for there to have been capitalism ‘in a single country’ because the aims of the capitalist are global. And these aims have no respect for ‘international treaties’ or ‘conventions’ of any kind. For example, the company Pfizer cut back its previously agreed shipment of vaccines to Europe, due to the fact that European health officials had figured out ways to extract more doses of the vaccine than what was previously agreed to in the contract, causing widespread indignation among European governments. And I have not yet mentioned the massive profits made by these vaccine corporations during this terrible time of hardship for the entire population of the globe, but especially those in the poorest nations. In short, the development of huge corporate monopolies, such as those of Google, Amazon, and the aforementioned vaccine corporations inevitably leads to imperialism as a means of suppressing the class struggle domestically and expanding profits internationally. 

Imperialism also has its own distinct class antagonisms, such as the intensified class struggle between the labor aristocracy and the working class, which is particularly divisive in our country. These antagonisms arise from the contradictions of imperialism. An obvious example of this is the aforementioned Texan power crisis. While corporations scramble to secure their grip on resources and maximize their profits, millions of people are quite literally left in the dark. The aim of the capitalists is to placate the more well off elements of the labor aristocracy while suppressing the general mass of workers. This produces the political opportunism we have seen on the left in recent years, such as the capitulation of the reformist Sanders camp to Joe Biden. The political divide between working class interests and the reformist aspirations is to be found in the contradictions of imperialism itself. Historically, this divide has caused betrayal and infighting on the left, such as the infamous divide during World War I between the socialists of the Second international and the supporters of the Bolsheviks, who denounced the opportunism of the former.

The events of these past few months have demonstrated the need for a socialist movement that is truly revolutionary in its aims and strategy. In contrast to reformism, revolutionary socialism grasps the fact that the contradictions of capitalism can never be resolved under the present system. It can only be achieved by the complete overthrow of capitalism by the working class. And in its place, the working class can build a political and economic system based on the collective ownership of the means of production and safeguarded by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will serve society as a whole, not just a few powerful individuals. This is the viewpoint of revolutionary socialism. 

To summarize, the American working class must have an anti-imperialist movement in order to protect its own vital interests and to steer clear of the dangers of opportunism. The purpose of this movement would be to work in conjunction with and give direction to the existing parties and organizations of the socialist movement. This can be achieved through protests and demonstrations against the government’s actions, such as the withholding of vaccines from other countries, but also through solidarity with other countries, such as the ‘Hands Off Syria’ movement. As long as capitalism exists, imperialism will exist. Conversely, the strength of the socialist movement depends upon the existence of an anti-imperialist movement which can rally the working class against war, aggression, and political opportunism, with the ultimate purpose of undermining imperialist interests and blocking the suppression of the class struggle, so that the socialist movement, which alone is capable of resolving the contradictions of capitalist society, can carry out its revolutionary tasks. 

The working class can not expect any lasting relief, so long as the vicious policy of the U.S. imperialists continues to make the world a more unsafe place. Even a global pandemic does not put the military-industrial complex to rest. On the contrary, it has spurred a ‘vaccine war’ which has only added to the misery of the working people. In the eyes of imperialism, vaccines are just a commodity and people’s lives are just the casualties. 

The Atlanta chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (Atlanta DSA) is proud to announce our endorsement of member and fellow Democratic Socialist, Rogelio Arcila for the Atlanta City Council District 4.

Rogelio, born and raised here in Atlanta, is the child of Mexican immigrants and the first Latino to run for Atlanta City Council. After witnessing many years of neglect of the city’s working people by Atlanta’s so-called public servants in favor of tax breaks for developers and ever-increasing budgets for the city police, Rogelio was driven to run for City Council seat for District 4. For too long, our city council has ignored the desires, demands, and needs of the everyday people who keep Atlanta running. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our residents are facing a housing crisis as predatory developers load costs and taxes onto residents, pushing residents out of their long-time homes and making Atlanta too expensive for working people. Even as more corporate wealth sets up shop in Atlanta and taxes rise, there are fewer and fewer resources available for the community’s real needs.

Rogelio believes that our city’s wealth should fulfill the needs of the people, not corporations and developers. This is why Atlanta DSA is enthusiastic in our support for Rogelio as a candidate in a district overlooked by its own public servants. With Rogelio in office, we will have a councilperson who will be accountable to and fight for Atlanta’s working people, not its 1%.

“I am so humbled to receive the support of a group of hardworking and dedicated people whose values align with mine,” said Rogelio. “I know that true power lies with the people, and when we decide to mobilize and act, together we can protect our rights against the encroachment of corporate interests and corruption.”

“We are thrilled to see one of our own fighting for a voice in our city’s future,” said Atlanta DSA co-chair Shafeka Hashash. “Rogelio has already accomplished so much for our chapter’s mission here in Atlanta by serving the city’s everyday people faithfully. I look forward to seeing what more he can accomplish in office.”

If you would like to join in the effort to support Rogelio’s campaign and elect him to office this coming November, you can donate and/or volunteer at voterogelio.com, or you can get involved with Atlanta DSA by joining today at atldsa.org/join.

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We envision a Clark County fueled by 100% renewable energy, where all people have equitable access to resources such as water, housing, education and healthcare, and the labor of our workforce is mobilized toward fighting climate breakdown.

As such, Las Vegas DSA opposes the Clark County Lands Bill, which would allow real estate developers to purchase federal public lands outside of the Las Vegas Valley along the I-15 corridor toward California. This bill would further urban sprawl, increase carbon emissions and air pollution, and perpetuate inequities in housing, transit, and climate. Las Vegas is among the fastest-warming cities in America, experiencing 5.7°F of warming since 1970. Low-income Las Vegans suffer the most from climate change and pollution, with increasingly unaffordable utility bills, higher rates of many adverse health conditions, and more exposure to environmental hazards and the unequal effects of natural disasters. The Clark County Lands Bill is in direct opposition to the changes we must see in order to maintain a livable planet and build a green energy future.

Clark County residents already suffer from the consequences of sprawl:

• Disproportionate impact on communities of color: Robert Bullard, environmental justice researcher, touches on multiple ways sprawl impacts hurt minorities (White flight and the decay of urban public schools, lack of reliable public transit, and air quality impacts in urban centers)
• Spatial mismatch leads to lifetime cycles of poverty, impacts on time and money earning potential of those who live in low income urban areas.
• Las Vegas is a non-attainment zone, meaning air pollution here exceeds EPA air quality standards. The valley has the 9th worst air for ground-level ozone in the country. As a result Nevada ranks 13th in the nation in asthma, which is the leading causes of missed school days and grade retention in children

The land disposal and expansion of the urban growth boundary proposed in the Clark County lands bill would exacerbate these issues, while contributing to significantly increased carbon emissions which put us on a track for a climate catastrophe. While the evidence of significant harm from sprawl and unchecked growth are becoming more clear by the day, this bill would double down on the patterns of unsustainable development which have brought us to the brink of climate and ecological collapse.

We are not here to solely express opposition, but to offer a more sustainable path for our community which addresses projected population growth, dwindling natural resources, and the effects of a two-industry economy that is vulnerable to the whims of economic boom-and-bust cycles. The Green New Deal is an economic, racial, class and environmental justice piece of legislation that guarantees universal housing and creates millions of good jobs in the process of tackling the climate crisis. The Green New Deal does even more, it moves us away from outsourcing solutions to private industry which has proven, and will continue to prove, its inability to pull us out of climate catastrophe. There has never been a better time to leave the status quo behind, legislate for your constituents and work to ensure that the solutions meet the scale of the climate, economic, racial and environmental crises we face.

Signed,
Las Vegas DSA
Sunrise Vegas
National Lawyers Guild – Las Vegas

As the budget fight continues to heat up in Albany, workers in New York City are continuing the struggle for power and equity on the job and at school. On tonight’s episode, we’ll visit the picket line at Columbia University, where unionized graduate students are on their second week of a strike to demand fair pay and healthcare. We also hear an update from last Saturday’s NYC-DSA march to Tax the Rich and Impeach Cuomo.

We’re joined LIVE by NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for City Council District 39 (and community radio fan!), Brandon West, to hear about his work to Defund NYPD, defeat machine politics, fund excluded workers, and build working-class power. 

To learn more about Brandon West and get involved with his campaign, please visit https://westforcouncil.com/.

Starting on Wednesday, March 24th, AADSA will host conversations with ACC commissioners Mariah Parker, Carol Myers, Jesse Houle, Tim Denson, and Melissa Link on affordable housing in Athens. The conversations will be streamed live on Facebook and Twitter.

Marin DSA stands in solidarity with Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), who are engaged in a historic organizing drive to form the first-ever union for Amazon warehouse workers in the United States. 

All workers deserve a union. Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the world and Amazon has made record profits throughout the pandemic, all while refusing to pay their workers a living wage, failing to provide proper safety standards, and subjecting them to dehumanizing working conditions. 

Capitalism runs on exploiting workers to maximize profits for the wealthy few. Workers organizing together in a union is how we fight back to build a more just, free, and equal world. We stand with RWDSU and the Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama!

On Tuesday, February 16th, Charles Howard, University Chaplain and Vice President for Social Equity and Community at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with Lawrence Ware, co-editor of "Ballad of an American," the first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson, about Robeson's relevance for today. Paul Robeson was the pre-eminent Black, left-wing figure of U.S. popular culture during the 1930s-40s. Concert singer, film actor, public personality, his "Ballad for Americans" was heard by millions of radio listeners. Idolized across large parts of Europe, his records heard widely in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Robeson was struck down by McCarthyism. His legend and his lessons remain. The event was co-sponsored by the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus (AFROSOC) of DSA, the DSA Fund, and the International Committee of DSA, along with the Religion and Socialism Working Group of DSA. You can order the book from Rutgers University Press and receive a 30% discount on it and all books sitewide by using the code DSA RUP at checkout.

The Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America (ATL DSA) stands in unity and solidarity with the Asian-American community in Atlanta, Georgia, and across the United States as we collectively process a horrific hate crime that targeted Asian women, killing 8 people.

Our first thoughts turn to the victims, their families and their communities. Many people, including our comrades in ATL DSA, are experiencing intense anger and pain in the wake of another racist mass shooting event. This spree shooter specifically targeted women, highlighting the particular gendered racism that Asian women face in the United States. In his own words, the shooter targeted businesses which he believed were sites of sex work. ATL DSA stands with Asian women, who face a particular gendered racism in the United States. We stand with sex workers, an unjustly criminalized group vulnerable to violence. We stand with Asian sex workers who are often victims of racialized sexual violence resulting from patriarchy and white supremacy. Race, gender, and class in America intersect in ways that render poor and unassimilated Asian Americans invisible and thus especially vulnerable to violence like the murders that were perpetrated on March 16.

Moreover, we know that this horrific event did not take place in a vacuum. Over the last year, acts of racist violence against Asian Americans have increased significantly, a direct result of the jingoistic rhetoric about China and the COVID-19 virus propagated by politicians on both sides of the aisle and furthered by corporate media outlets. During the 2020 presidential election, both Trump and Biden jockeyed to be “tougher on China,” as the ruling class egged on a new Cold War with China and continues to do so now. In any conflict between China and the U.S. or their proxies, it is the working class that suffers, abroad and at home. We must be vigilant in counteracting propagandic narratives that would lead us to believe otherwise. Yesterday’s killings are the latest expression of a long history of anti-Asian racism and discrimination that stretches back hundreds of years in the U.S.

The simple fact is yesterday’s murders did not need to happen. We must reject the anti-China and anti-Asian rhetoric that inundates American society, and we must fight to end the racialized misogyny that demonizes and oppresses sex workers. We denounce anti-Asian and Sinophobic rhetoric in all its forms, and we oppose those who wish to perpetuate conflict with China. We stand in solidarity with sex workers and oppose efforts to increase policing or expand the carceral state as a solution to this violence, as we know this would only result in further oppression and harm towards those affected.

We stand in solidarity with communities most impacted by this attack and are prepared to respond to calls for support. We are listening to our comrades, our local Asian-American community groups and their leaders, to best understand how to act in solidarity, and we will amplify any ways that the broader community can demonstrate their support as well.

Also see the DSA National Political Committee’s statement for more info.