Where do we go after election day? Donald Trump has won the presidential election, a campaign marked by vile fascism, nativism, and the demonization of immigrants and trans people, while serving only the billionaire class.

Neoliberal infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes. The consequences of this resurgent fascist right wing are life and death for the most vulnerable in our communities and across the globe. The Democratic establishment chose to pivot hard right at the expense of immigrants, Palestinians, LGBTQ+ folks, unions, and workers across the country. We cannot be shocked that the working people of this country turned their back on a failing party when that same party abandoned them. 

Solidarity is a powerful force against the despair of this moment. It is our role as socialists to organize and show that another world is possible. Time and time again, DSA-LA fights the capitalist class and wins. We are beating the cops, landlords, and charter school billionaires spending millions to defeat us at the ballot box. We are expanding our power on local city councils and school boards through the victories of Ysabel Jurado, Konstantine Anthony, and Karla Griego. We are organizing in our workplaces and making clear that Los Angeles is a union town. Socialist demands are resonating across the multiracial working class of the city and now we must drive these forward with our expanded bloc.

This is why 4000 Angelenos call DSA our political home. It can be your home too. We have been building power since DSA’s exponential growth in 2016 and have forged a strong foundation to fight. With this power we can fight fascism and protect the most vulnerable in our communities. Together, we can organize to make Los Angeles a Sanctuary City and put a stop to ICE collusion with LAPD. Together, we can organize Starbucks and Amazon workers to build the labor movement in our city toward UAW’s call for a nationwide General Strike on May Day 2028 and realize the power of the working class.

This election is over. The work is just beginning.  A better world is possible. Join DSA.

A second Trump presidency will be disastrous for all working, marginalized, and oppressed peoples. The right wing agenda laid out in Project 2025 and supported by Trump and his allies seeks to strip away human rights from millions of Americans by banning abortion, criminalizing gender affirming healthcare, and deporting millions of immigrants.

Trump has also made clear he will govern for the benefit of his fellow billionaires, such as Elon Musk, who seek to abolish the National Labor Relations Board, which protects the right to unionize and holds employers accountable for workplace abuse and exploitation. Trump’s win is a victory for racism, sexism, transphobia, nativism, and the ruling class which profits while the rest of the world burns.

The blame for Trump’s win lies squarely with the increasingly centrist Democrats. As vile as Trump and his movement are, they could not have achieved their goals without the complacency and accommodation of Democrats and other “opposition” figures. The far right attack on trans rights accelerated under the Biden administration, and both Biden and Harris campaigned on immigration policies that would restrict refugees, increase deportations, and militarize the border beyond anything done by the Trump administration.

The Democrats’ obsequience to corporate donors and ruling-class interests demobilized the multi-racial working-class base that has always led the fight against Trumpism. Similarly, the Democrats’ active choice to be complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestine disillusioned many otherwise anti-Trump voters. By abandoning the working class in favor of millionaire donors, the Democratic Party lost an election that should have been a clear refutation of the dangerous and unpopular far-right.

Boston DSA will continue to work towards a party of and for the working class, one that is independent from the capitalist ruling class and establishment parties they control. As socialists, we know that no president – Democrat or Republican – is going to protect us or our communities. As democratic socialists, we know that workers deserve more – and it’s up to us to fight for it and win, no matter who’s in office.

That’s why Boston DSA has spent the last four years standing in solidarity with the entire working class – from Teamsters, to the UAW, to the BTU. It’s why we’ve helped flood the streets for Palestine, knocked on doors for socialist electeds, and helped tenants organize and fight back against landlords. We know electing Democrats or Republicans won’t get us trans rights, free abortion on demand, a Green New Deal, or Medicare for All – only mass movements of the working class, organized in our jobs, our streets, and our schools, can do that.

Despair is not a luxury we can afford.

If you’re ready to fight for a better world, join us.

JOIN BOSTON DSA: bdsa.us/join

CHAPTER ORIENTATIONS: bdsa.us/getengaged

SEATTLE DSA STATEMENT ON THE NOV. 5 GENERAL ELECTION

Last night, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for a second time. If you’re feeling angry, scared, or disillusioned with politics in the United States, you are not alone.

Dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party has never been clearer: the millions who voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 did not show up after years of broken promises and half-measures, and the Republicans won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years.

Seattle DSA reaffirms our stance against Trump and the racism, white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, islamophobia, Zionism, anti-semitism and capitalist interests he represents.

As socialists, we will always fight to oppose fascism regardless of the party that supports it.

For the last four years we’ve fought against the policies of a floundering Democratic party as it failed to defend bodily autonomy, armed and abetted a genocide, did nothing as the cost of living spiraled out of control, and left entire swaths of the country devastated by climate catastrophe.

At the same time, our efforts to build local power to fight back against the right wing have never been stronger.

Last night, in a landslide victory, we sent Shaun Scott to the Washington State legislature with over 67% of the vote by running on a socialist platform to tax the ultra rich, fund social housing, and prevent school closures.

To the north, our comrades in Everett won a historic raise in the minimum wage, a priority the Democratic Party has largely abandoned, and to the south, Portland DSA members elected both of their candidates for city council, running on our democratic socialist platform.

We are here for anyone who wants to fight for a better world post election; we have a lot of work to be done together. Seattle DSA is also fighting beyond electoral work. We are fighting to boycott Israeli apartheid, fund social housing by taxing massive corporations, organize our workplaces as we radicalize our unions, and we are planning what else we need to accomplish together in the coming years.
Join us to build a movement which can resist and beat Trump, and win real, material gains for workers in Washington and across the country. We aspire to be the instrument of our collective liberation, the hammer workers need and deserve to smash fascism and bring forth a new society founded on justice, dignity, and freedom.

Join DSA today! 

Our Upcoming Events: 

• Our post-election planning social this Saturday, 11 am at Cafe Red. We’ll talk about what we can do going forward to build power together in Seattle. https://actionnetwork.org/events/seattle-dsa-post-election-social/
  
• And for new or prospective members, join our new member orientation call on Zoom, this Sunday at 2 pm: https://actionnetwork.org/events/seattle-dsa-new-member-orientation
  
• You can see our full calendar of events on our website: seattledsa.org/calendar 

Seattle DSA

The post WORKERS NEED A HAMMER:  appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

This is a joint statement from the following Washington DSA chapters: Seattle DSA, Tacoma DSA, Palouse DSA, Snohomish County DSA, …and growing.

On October 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) along with Canada designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization” and announced sanctions on the organization which “prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons.”

Our chapters regard this as an unacceptable form of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement and call for this decision to be reversed. Samidoun is one of the oldest and most well-established Palestinian advocacy organizations in the United States and performs vital work in reporting on the conditions of Palestinian prisoners held by the State of Israel and organizing for their liberation and more broadly in the Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialist movements.

Samidoun reports are widely cited by academics and human rights organizations as a reliable source of information on the appalling conditions and widespread abuse in Israeli prisons. Attempting to shut down their work by declaring them a “sham charity” is a blatant effort to deny the world one of the only reliable sources of knowledge of what happens to Palestinian prisoners behind Israeli prison walls.

Locally, Samidoun has been a beacon of light for many through this dark time. They led peaceful demonstrations in downtown Seattle every Saturday following Israel’s invasion of Gaza, engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, and have supported activists targeted with repression for their activism in support of the Palestinian people, including  DSA members facing trial. They have demonstrated the meaning of the word “solidarity,” and now they need that from all of us. We stand with Samidoun against this fierce repression, just as they stand with the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held hostage by the Israeli government without trial.

To be abundantly clear, this is an attempt by the Department of the Treasury to censor, discredit, and undermine the entire movement for Palestinian solidarity. This decision should be understood as part of a broader pattern of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement that also includes the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism by governments, educational institutions, and other bodies in order to defame those who protest the genocide in Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon as antisemites. In this case, advocates for Palestinian rights are being accused of scamming donors and laundering money for the PFLP, a liberation force designated to be a “terrorist organization” by the US government. Samidoun denies “any material or organizational ties to entities listed on the terrorist lists of the United States, Canada or the European Union.”

The US also has a long track record of labeling anti-imperialist resistance groups as terrorist organizations, including South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) until 2008, while simultaneously allowing millions to be funneled through tax deductible non-profit organizations to fund imperialist terror, like the violence of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We reject this classification and will not allow this decision to weaken the bonds of solidarity with those fighting for a free Palestine. Our chapters remain committed to the liberation of Palestine and call for a reversal of the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions on Samidoun and an end to all repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement.

The post WA DSA Chapters Say: No Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement! appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

Media Advisory

For Immediate Release

November 6th, 2024

Politics Beyond the Ballot Box

Local Raleigh Organizations Hold Organizing Fair

Moore Square, Raleigh, NC

November 9th, 2024 1-4PM

NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America, in collaboration with multiple local organizations dedicated to social justice, organized labor, and community support, will be hosting a public Organizing Fair in Moore Square in Raleigh on November 9th from 1-4pm. This will be an opportunity for community members to learn about the struggles in their area and the organizations involved in this vital work. With the end of the 2024 election, more Americans than before are paying attention to politics. But, we need to recognize that voting is only one of the essential ways we express our voices and advocate for our communities. Labor protections, civil rights, and peace cannot be advanced once every four years. They must be fought for every day, week, month, and year. 

This organizing fair will be a place for passionate Triangle residents to become connected to these fights in their own backyard. The event will have tabling to create opportunities connecting community members with organizers, speeches from veteran organizers about next steps, and tables for community members to discuss the 2024 election and its consequences. Organizations participating include but are not limited to: Raleigh Mutual Aid Hub, The Southern Workers Assembly, Jewish Voices for Peace, Triangle Tenants Union, Meals for the Masses, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America.

“The strategy of showing up every few years to cast a vote clearly is insufficient. Workers are kept out of power no matter who is in charge. It does not need to be that way though- workers are really what makes everything run. Nothing is made without labor. We have power, we just have to be organized and conscious. This event is important because it is a first step towards realizing the power we can only claim if we get organized.” - Jody, IBEW member

We encourage all Triangle residents who care about this election to turn out and learn about how they can become involved in their community’s work. We cannot trust elected officials themselves to fix the growing problems our nation is experiencing. We have to do it ourselves. And there is no other place to get started like your own community.

In the wake of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump in the recent Presidential election, leftists can be forgiven for asking “who will the Democrats blame?” After all, the left is used to being the Party’s scapegoat. After Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing defeat in 2016, many insiders and Clinton fans eagerly lambasted “Bernie bros” as saboteurs. It was the left who didn’t show up to vote for her, so the story went, and it was their fault for Trump’s rise. There was very little introspection on the part of the Democratic Party. After all, they ran a perfect candidate! She was centrist and spoke in vague platitudes and represented the Obama legacy of a fierce, dogged status quo. Clearly her loss was because of the left’s conscious wrecking, not because her campaign manager was the famous-for-failing-upward Robby Mook, who staffers had often criticized for his over dependence on micro-analytics rather than being able to look at the big picture. Not the fact that she represented the same old neoliberal sludge that Americans had grown to distrust. Nope, must’ve been the left and that crazed base of Bernie Sanders who were still sore about the primaries.

Then there were the 2020 Democratic primaries, where Bernie Sanders started off with a bang, but after a concerted campaign to paint this rabid leftist as anti-feminist and unelectable, and after some well timed exits by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, the DNC paved the way for Biden to win the nomination. But that doesn’t mean the left got off blame free. In the Congressional elections that year, the Democrats failed to attain gains in the House as everyone expected. This was enough to make Democratic lawmakers start pointing fingers internally, and the popular thing for establishment figures to do was, you guessed it, blame the left. 

You see, if it hadn’t been for how vocal the left wing had been, and how unembarrassed they were by the word “socialism,” then maybe voters wouldn’t have felt so alienated! There was even reportedly a fiery Zoom call where centrist Democratic Representatives angrily denounced more progressive members as the reason why the Democratic Party failed to meet expectations. Never mind the fact that it was a high turnout Presidential election year where Trump supporters came out in force, unlike in 2018, and were always going to give Republican down ballot candidates a boost. 

These are just a few recent examples of the Democratic Party attacking the left because of the establishment’s own unpopularity, it’s a time honored tradition among the self proclaimed party of change. So, after Harris’s recent crushing loss to Trump this week, who will the Democratic insiders blame? Will it yet again be the left and its dastardly, devious saboteurs? Interestingly enough, early signs point to no. How can this be? Let’s look at the road to where we’ve ended up. 

Unlike in the campaigns of 2016 and 2020, there was no primary process. This prevented a field of challengers for the candidacy from forming and presenting a leftist that centrists could glob onto with hate. Joe Biden was the assumed nominee until, due to his brain slowly melting in full public view, he wasn’t anymore. Unfortunately for the Democrats, this happened in June and July, so the Party was forced to sort of shrug and just pick someone. That someone happened to be Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris. And with the opponent being Donald Trump, a proven loser from the 2020 election, Harris’s campaign saw little reason to expound on a detailed platform and positive vision, preferring to instead focus in on why Trump was bad and a bogeyman and had to lose. 

As a number of pieces quickly pointed out, Harris had difficulty even differentiating herself from Joe Biden, a President who could almost never get above a 40% approval rating. When polls showed that a majority of Americans felt the nation was going in the wrong direction, Harris failed to paint a picture of how she would shake things up and offer something new and fresh. 

In the first reports from analysts, it’s this lack of positive vision and detail that likely cost Harris. That, coupled with the fact that she was largely an unknown on the national scale (outside of the fact that people knew she was Vice President), and there are of course the factors that race and gender bias played against her (let’s be honest, a lot of Americans are racist and sexist). Add on top of those the unpopularity of Biden and Harris’s unquestioning support of Israel in its genocidal onslaught of Palestinians (a majority of Americans want the US to demand a ceasefire now), all of these factors coalesced to lead us where we are now. 

There is also the factor of Trump himself. To his base, he is the resurrection of a cause cheated. Someone unfairly persecuted for telling it like it is. Then there is the hateful rhetoric which, under circumstances where things feel like they’re slipping out of one’s control, can play well. It’s the fault of immigrants, or the deep state, or trans people, or whatever else you can label without actually having to do any real hard thinking. Just give me some other group to hate, let me hate! Unfortunately, that tact played well this year. Even when the media criticized Trump’s dark fascistic rally at Madison Square Garden for being tinged with overt racism, that didn’t stop people. For some, it’s often easier to give into hate rather than think through complex, structural reasons for one’s suffering.

There is no blaming of the left to be found in these early reports from insiders and analysts. Which, to be frank, is sort of refreshing. This doesn’t discount the chance that the left will be blamed in part later on. After all, the Uncommitted Campaign which demanded Harris insist on a ceasefire in Gaza was widely successful in Michigan, a state Biden won but Harris looks to have lost. One shouldn’t doubt the ability of the Democratic Party to spin that into a major reason why Harris lost. But, for now, in the somber sobriety of “the morning after,” it seems Democrats are finally, for once, not going to point fingers at its more progressive and leftist wing. 

Does this mean they’ll take the time for introspection and realize what is really the reason? My guess is no, of course not. If there’s one thing Democrats do well, it’s dodge and weave like a butterfly when it comes to accountability. If this author had to speculate, the Democrats will chalk this up as a campaign with internal staffer strife (true), with no positive vision (true), and just to be fair they’ll tack on something random, like picking Tim Walz as the VP candidate. But will they actually interrogate their own internal structure? Will they question the Party’s commitment to a right-leaning centrism and economic neoliberalism? Will they stop trying to attract moderate Republicans, rather than offer working class American voters a kind of economic populism that they clearly long for? NAH. Lol, there’s no money in that!

The post In the Wake of the Election, Who Will Democrats Blame? appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Statement on November Election Results

Today we wake up to a world more in dire need of our solidarity than ever before. As votes continue to be counted across the United States, it becomes more and more clear that the Democratic Party is not the opposition we need or deserve to beat back the far-right.

 

For months, we raised the flag on the need to address working peoples’ needs, their fears, and especially their calls for their families to stop being murdered. The Democratic Party chose its donors, pundits, and the ruling class’ project in imperialism.

 

Who will choose to stand up for workers here and abroad? Who will stand up for healthcare, housing, and education for all? Who will stand up for our bodily autonomy, our civil rights, our democracy, and our planet?

 

Under Joe Biden, the United States has prioritized maintaining a massive military budget, expanded oil drilling, racist immigration policies, and a genocide in Gaza. The Harris’ campaign chose to continue (and even expand upon) many of the same policies put forward by an unpopular Biden administration and is now answering for it. Under a second Trump administration the threat of repression and consolidation of power has never been greater.

 

Without a working class alternative to the Democratic Party, and one that organizes in our homes and in our workplaces, we will fall further behind.

 

The Democratic Socialists of America believe that we can, as a united working class, beat the ruling class and build a better world. Just last night we defended rent control in Hoboken, NJ in an overwhelming victory. DSA elected socialists to office in New York, Oregon, Georgia, and Kentucky. DSA-supported ballot measures won massive victories expanding abortion rights in Montana, Nevada and Arizona. Nebraska and Missouri expanded sick leave, raised the minimum wage and cemented labor rights. Michigan Representative and DSA member Rashida Tlaib won a landslide re-election in a district Harris lost. It is clear that policies and candidates that offer genuine opposition to the far-right continue to win, and Democrats choose not to be on the side of the working people’s demands.

 

These next four years the far-right will be emboldened, but just as they ascend the need for political alternative will grow increasingly clear.

 

Will you join us? Will you stand with us as we face incredible headwinds in 2025?

 

Will you join the fight for our lives, our neighbors and our planet?

 

Join DSA

###

 

The post Statement on Election of Donald Trump first appeared on North NJ DSA.

Following a grueling presidential campaign and a gut-wrenching election night, our worst fears have been realized.

Donald Trump will once again be the next president of the United States.

The scale of Kamala Harris’s loss has been stunning. Not only did she manage to lose all seven swing states in the Electoral College, she is also very likely the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the popular vote to a Republican in twenty years.

Harris deserves much of the blame for Democrats’ defeat. She replaced an unpopular incumbent at the last minute, and instead of running on a radically different platform than her predecessor, she stuck to Biden’s extremely unambitious strategy. She refused to break with Biden on Israel despite the dire moral imperative of ending a genocide and the severe unpopularity of his position. She campaigned with far-right Republican politicians instead of shoring up support among the Democratic base. Perhaps most importantly, she failed to promise that anything of substance would change if she were elected president at a time when most Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.

Despite the valiant and selfless efforts of millions of progressives and socialists to prevent Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Harris made it clear from the beginning that her campaign took the Left’s support for granted, and she repeatedly ignored its warnings that her centrist platform would alienate key constituencies.

The most radical utterance of the campaign, Tim Walz’s impromptu October 9 remark that the electoral college “needs to go”, was immediately shot down by the Harris campaign. The Democrats’ pathological aversion to risk has made their platform all but untenable, especially now that Republicans are on the verge of cementing long-term control over our broken electoral and political system.

Even though Harris’s tack to the center is clearly to blame for her defeat, the Left will suffer relentless attacks over the next four years. Democrats will use the party’s brief flirtation with mild social democracy in 2020 as a scapegoat, claiming the positions Harris was “forced” to take to compete in the primary that year poisoned her image with moderate voters.

Republicans, meanwhile, have plans to unleash a different type of attack altogether.

***

Over the coming months, there will be thousands of articles in the liberal press detailing the exact kinds of harm Trump is likely to inflict on our country and the world during his second term. All of it needs to be taken seriously. He has promised to pursue personal vendettas and to use the military to crush protests. He seeks to purge the federal bureaucracy and administrative state of competent leadership and radically transform the national economy to suit himself and his supporters among a certain subset of the capitalist class. He plans to target millions of immigrants and refugees using a vast militarized police apparatus. He is likely to renege on his promise not to sign a law banning abortion nationwide. He and his inner circle have enthusiastically supported and even proposed expanding Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. He has pledged to actively sabotage the fight against climate change, primarily out of spite. And on and on and on it goes.

This is a grave moment in the history of American democracy. Trump will use the power of the state in unprecedented ways to target his perceived enemies and to entrench right-wing dominance over the American political system. Many of the freedoms we currently enjoy under the Constitution are likely to be curtailed, and some will be abolished altogether.

Democrats have spent the past five years assuring us that there is no “other side” to a Trump victory. Either the anti-Trump coalition wins, or democracy dies. There is no contingency, no plan to rally against the onslaught of nightmares we’ve been warned endlessly against.

And yet, we are still here.

***

The American far right is gleefully preparing for what they see as their final victory, and much of their strategy depends on intimidating their enemies into silence. They want the Left to go into hiding, to flee the country, to stop speaking out for fear of retribution, and to abandon the political sphere to right-wing extremism.

In the frenzied time between this catastrophe of an election and Inauguration Day, we must guard against overestimating the power of the far right. It is easy to imagine that they are capable of anything, and the vague perception that they can get away with literally any crime and ignore all existing law will pre-emptively demobilize opposition to the incoming administration.

As soon as Trump takes the Oath of Office, the far-right will be hampered by its own unpopularity, infighting, and incompetence. Trump will surround himself with the same sycophantic and profoundly incompetent medley of toadies and conmen, and they will spend much of their time propping up a man who does not have the faculties to govern.

Trump’s return to the White House is likely to be a farce of Ronald Reagan’s second term, during which an ailing president increasingly unable to lead was puppeted by a ghoulish cast of right-wing charlatans. Unfortunately, Trump’s prospective cabinet makes Reagan’s rotating cast of misfits look like Boy Scouts. We don’t know exactly what horrible things they will try to do once the MAGA right grips the levers of power once again, but we must prepare however we can.

***

Liberalism has proven once and for all that it cannot save American democracy. Neither Biden nor Harris considered any serious reforms to our economic and political system, not even vastly popular ones. The multiracial working class will bear the brunt of their failure to act. The only alternative to the coming barbarism is to organize.

We must join together in opposition to Trump’s efforts to undermine American democracy. The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and it is committed to opposing fascism and supporting the working people of all nations. There are hundreds of other progressive and left-wing groups across this country that will take up the fight to defend our communities and our people. In the aftermath of this catastrophe, we have no option but to protect one another.

The coming years will be difficult. Laws will be written to target the most vulnerable among us. Democratic structures will be damaged and will not easily bounce back. Regional and global conflicts will intensify in ways that cannot be reversed. Environmental damage will be wrought that cannot be undone. People will die who cannot be brought back to life.

But we are still here, and we still deserve a better world. We have no choice but to press on.

The post We are still here appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

The 2024 election is over. Now is the time to continue building power in our workplaces.

The post Building Power at Work appeared first on EWOC.