You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute Underground on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting from the occupied studios and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com or sign-up for our newslettser to get links to what we talk about on the show. You can do that on at our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com. You can also find us on twitter @nycRPM.

Daniel Soyer is professor at Fordham and a scholar of American Jewish history. He is a co-editor, along with Irena Klepfisz, of The Stars Bear Witness: The Jewish Labor Bund 1897 - 2017. Our interview with him is the second of a two-part series on the Jewish Labor Bund; it covers the origins and operations of the Bund in Eastern Europe, American Bundist history, as well as how Jewish immigrant communities formed the backbone of socialist political activity in NYC and throughout America. Our music is “Made and Broken” by Hugel. Support us on https://www.patreon.com/religioussocialismpodcast

The Columbus chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America stands in solidarity with TransOhio, and all others who have chosen to side with marginalized communities, in ending their partnerships and relationships with Stonewall Columbus.

It is easy to acquiesce to power, to side with the oppressors instead of the oppressed. It is easy to let our allies continue to make choices that contribute to the marginalization of those in the community, to not “rock the boat.”

Queer and trans people of color experience among the worst institutional oppression in Columbus, with the assaults on and arrests of the Black Pride 4 being an egregious example. It is, however, certainly not the only example, with so many in our city continuing to experience the brunt of structural violence every day.

When an institution like Stonewall Columbus decides to side with the powers-that-be — the police and the penal system — they do a monumental disservice to all the queer and trans people of color who did so much work in building the LGBTQ+ Rights movement, historically and today. Our struggles for liberty, equality, and solidarity are fundamentally tied together, and to side with the oppressor in any of them is to side with the oppressor in all of them.

It is our duty and our honor to stand with BQIC, TransOhio, and all who fight against the entrenched institutions of racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia. It is our duty and honor to stand with all who pursue a freer, more just society.

These are heady times for Columbus DSA! We’ve got a member running for city council, Liliana Baiman, who promises to deliver real socialist policies to help people in a city whose leadership has been content to ignore them. This is part of a rising tide nationally that has seen new leftist leadership on city councils, in state legislatures, and even in Congress. 

In the midst of this period of increasing electoral activism, it is worth remembering that this is not the first time socialist candidates have done well at the ballot box in Ohio. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Socialist Party presented a viable challenge to the two-party system in the state and nationally. They campaigned on policies that with hindsight seem commonsense: referenda, public control of utilities, and progressive taxation. For a time, their campaigns were effective. In 1911, the Socialist Party in Ohio elected twelve mayors, four city-councilmen in Columbus, two in Dayton, and one in Toledo. Difficult as it may be to believe, Lima had a socialist mayor for a few years.

The culmination of this, which was likely more important than the mayoralties and city council seats, was the state’s constitutional convention. Ohio was dominated by a Republican political machine that tried to block municipal reform if it deviated with party orthodoxy. Socialists became a major part of the progressive coalition that supported a state convention, and while no new constitution was created, thirty-three amendments were added to the state constitution. Amendments gave the state the power to regulate state industries, created a workers’ compensation system.

And yet, within a few years the Socialist Party had declined in Ohio and nationally. Why did the Socialists decline so quickly after 1911? Part of it was simply co-optation: both Democrats and Republicans adopted parts of the Socialist platform. Socialists had created a critical mass that led to new policies, but once some of those policies were adopted, socialists had little to distinguish themselves between the Republicans and Democrats. The Bolshevik Revolution, the Sedition Act, and the First Red Scare created a backlash against leftists of any stripe. Some of the votes cast for socialists were no doubt protest votes against a two-party system that had been unresponsive for too long, with equally weak candidates. Lima’s socialist mayor spent more time trying to close saloons than he did fighting capital, which may have been why he only lasted two years in office.

As we get close to this election and the return of a socialist to the Columbus City Council, there are things we can learn from this earlier period of history. It is not simply enough to be elected to office, as some officeholders hoped over a hundred years ago. Nor can it happen solely by improving the state’s constitution or other administrative solutions. Hopes that access to initiatives and recalls would create socialism did not pan out, as referenda and initiatives can be deeply regressive (remember, a majority of British voters actually opted for Brexit). Merely providing legal machinery and framework cannot by itself create a more just society. Civic reform, while desperately needed, was not sufficient to sustain a democratic socialist movement the issues were too abstract to sustain socialism and needed a strong connection to working people’s lives. 

For all of those warnings there were very tangible successes that should serve as lessons, too. Socialists managed to drag both Democrats and Republicans into supporting positions they had previously paid no attention to. In this sense, they shifted political norms in the direction of socialism. In the early 1900s, this was over public control of streetcar companies and utilities providers. Today, we’re fighting back against the same companies charging outrageous submetering fees. 

In a lot of ways, Lili’s fighting the same battles that Ohio’s socialists were fighting a century ago. She’s taken aim at the problem of big money in politics, because Columbus City Council has been too eager to give away tax abatements that only benefit developers. The socialists of the Class of 1911 fought for a minimum wage and won one; now, Liliana’s fighting to update it. Socialists then fought against exploitative private streetcar fares, and Liliana wants to bring rail service (back) to Columbus. 

 Despite the numerable challenges socialists have faced over the decades, one thing has stood true through time: local activists tip the scales. After World War II, attention to local issues faded away in many cases. Today, however, when the federal government is gridlocked and we are once again led by strikingly unresponsive parties, it is worth remembering that local activism can deliver and make people’s lives better. Every Saturday, we’re canvassing for Lili, and we hope to see you before November 5th. 

October 20th Canvass Info 

Lili’s Calendar

Donate to Lili

You’re listening to RPM Underground on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting from the occupied studio and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com or sign-up for our newsletter to get links to what we talk about on the show. You can do that on at our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com. You can also find us on twitter @nycRPM.

The administration at the University of Oregon has increasingly shifted more work to graduate employees (GEs). GEs do research, teaching, and grading, some of the most important work at the university. However, they remain some of the lowest paid employees. This is why the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF), the union representing GEs, deserves a fair contract.

The GTFF has been bargaining for nearly a year now and the UO administration is still giving them a paltry contract offer. The university is providing raises that do not keep up with the cost of inflation, as well as planning to dangerously cut the amount of money it provides for healthcare. 

Meanwhile, the UO administration has given itself multiple raises. UO President Michael Schill received a 9% pay raise for this year, a full three times what the union is asking for GEs. That sets his salary at $720,000 per year, the equivalent of 45 GEs 

Eugene Democratic Socialists of America stands with GTFF in bargaining for good wages and healthcare. If they go on strike we will stand with them on the picket line.

MADSA members again marched with our banner and signs in Atlanta’s massive LGBTQ Pride parade, despite scattered showers, as thousands cheered from the sidelines. Photos: Michael Roberts

On Oct. 11, MADSA and Ga. Tech Young Democratic Socialists of America, with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Mijente, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and others marched and picketed at Amazon headquarters in Buckhead during the workday, to protest the company’s contracts with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency that separates families, jails people legally seeking asylum in the U.S. and puts children in cages. The action was coordinated with events taking place throughout the U.S. during the weekend leading up to Indigenous People’s Day (AKA Columbus Day). Below is the statement issued by the demonstrators:

From the day he took office, Donald Trump escalated a failed and cruel immigration policy into an all-out war against immigrants, banning Muslims, slamming the door on refugees, tearing children from their parents’ arms. Each new affront has been met with outrage and protest, but even when he has retreated, Trump has sought new lines of attack: concentration camps, workplace raids, new bars to green cards and citizenship.

Meanwhile many immigrants are being terrorized in their own communities, afraid to answer the door, take children to school, or go to work. These communities need to see and feel the solidarity of the majority that stands with them.

We call on all those who oppose the raids, family separation, deportations and incarceration to unite against this reign of racist persecution. It is time to say, “¡Basta Ya!” Enough is enough!

This indigenous people’s day weekend let us act together –whether with a march, vigil, rally or direct action– against those who would give us a future of division and white supremacist hate. Let us unite in broad regional coalitions drawing together people of faith, unions, anti-nativist fighters and other progressives to target camps, jails, shelters or other parts of Trump’s anti-immigrant, deportation machinery.

Let us act in the knowledge that no human being is illegal anywhere, not least in a country formed through violent colonialism. Most of all, let us open our arms to immigrants in our country or at our borders with a greeting of friendship: Mi casa es tu casa. Our home is also your home.

Photos: Reid Freeman Jenkins

Most of us in the United States’ capitalist society work for someone else — our “employer.” Employers run on two main principles: profit maximization and cost minimization. These principles have a direct and immediate impact on workers’ lives.

Under capitalism, we as workers surrender our autonomy to our bosses by providing our labor and adhering to workplace rules and instructions in exchange for the payment of a wage. Standing alone, workers have very little power over our working conditions and wages.

However, workers in the United States have come together in the past to make demands of their employer by withholding their labor, and effectively halting the profit maximization/cost minimization machine, until their employer complies with their demands. Workers have demanded fair wages, safe working conditions, better hours, stronger healthcare coverage, freedom from harassment and discrimination on the job, and a number of other issues.

Employers need workers because our labor is the source of our employer’s profits. Therefore,  employers negotiate with us and give a little to ensure that we will continue to work for them  so that they can continue to profit— but it is important to recognize that most employers will only give as much as is demanded of them.

Workers know that when we band together, larger demands can be made of our employers. Standing in solidarity puts more pressure on the employer than does standing alone. A boss can shift responsibilities to cover the work done by a few workers, but an entire striking workforce becomes more difficult to ignore.

Workers hold the power; our actions require employers to comply with our demands or risk losing profit.

Employers know this. It is the reason that employers fight back against workers when we attempt to organize, when we make demands, or when we go on strike. Employers use all their tools—by putting financial pressure on workers or by using social and political capital to give themselves an advantage.

For decades, employers have fought pro-union legislation in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures. Employers and their peers are behind right-to-work legislation that attacks unions by attempting to erode funding and membership, shifting power to corporations, and forcing communities to compete for business, instead of businesses competing for customers. The entire goal is to convince workers to decline to join the union in an effort to diminish the union’s political power and deplete the union financially.

We have seen it in our state. Here in Ohio, Governor Kasich, through Senate Bill 5, attempted to strip public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights. Luckily, Ohio voters were able to destroy that attempt through a statewide ballot initiative that repealed the legislature’s decision, but in the meantime, Kasich was still able to rob child care and in-home health care providers of their rights. Nationally, Supreme Court cases like Janus — which ruled that government workers can’t be required to pay for a union’s negotiations, even when these free-riders benefit from those negotiations— have been used as tools to weaken the union and attempt to disintegrate power from the inside.

Workers do not have to sit back and take these attacks. We can work together, by organizing ourselves and forming a union, to speak out against unfair treatment and to stand up for our rights in the workplace. By coming together, workers can keep each other educated and prepared to mobilize when important policies are threatened.

Organized workers can ensure that all employees, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, age, race or ethnicity, national origin, religion, genetic information, disability, or pregnancy, are treated fairly in the workplace. Through grievance proceedings and collective action, unions can be powerful advocates and allies when addressing issues of discrimination, retaliation, and/or harassment.

Organized workers can also fight against wealth disparity. Workers with union contracts make more on average than their non-union counterparts, and the pay gap between races and sexes shrinks when workers negotiate their wages together. Through collective bargaining, workers have been able to earn a higher percentage of the wealth that our labor produces.

Additionally, organized workers can fight to establish strong safety protocols and work rules at work sites that ensure employers comply with state and federal safety standards. Every day in this country, an average of fourteen workers die because of job injuries, and this figure doesn’t include the estimated nearly 95,000 workers each year who die from occupational diseases. It does not have to be this way.

The power of organizing is not simply limited to a person’s particular workplace. Unions empower workers who have more in common with each other — despite their various differences — than they ever would with their bosses, the politically connected, or shareholders who profit from their labor. Coming together as a group of workers at a particular workplace is a good way to start building worker power, but it is not where our solidarity ends.

In a country where Trump tax cuts will cost the nation $1.9 trillion over a decade, where Ohio tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest citizens will cost more than $6 billion a year, and where working families are falling farther and farther behind, something has to change. As workers, we have the power and the momentum needed to change it. The time is now.

 

If you are interested in learning more about unions and how they work, your rights at work, how to build power in the workplace, or how to support local worker struggles in Columbus, come to Columbus DSA’s Labor 101 event this Saturday (October 11th) from 11am – 1pm at the Northwood High Building, 2231 N. High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43201.

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com or sign-up for our newsletter to get links to what we talk about on the show. You can do that on at our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com. You can also find us on twitter @nycRPM.

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