Tucson DSA's The Sonoran Socialist
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Sacramento Takes A Step Towards Ending Homelessness
By: Teddy Georgeoff
On Aug 1, 2023, the Sacramento city council heard from an impressive 36 members of the public, and thereafter spent an additional 3 hours in passionate debate. This resulted in the narrow 5-4 passage of the Ordinance Authorizing the City Manager to Implement a Temporary Shelter Program. The ordinance gives full authority to the City Manager, Howard Chan, to select locations and establish safe grounds for our homeless population.
This is the third time Mayor Darrell Steinberg has suggested a plan like this, but this was the first time he had a majority of support on the city council for it. The ordinance is targeting a very specific problem. As we astutely heard from Council Member Katie Valenzuela, enforcement of city code upon our unhoused population is in a constant state of displacement with no destination. This style of enforcement has harmful effects on the unhoused with no progress towards a solution. In addition, this type of shuffle-along policy is in direct violation of Martin v. Boise, which states cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough homeless shelter beds available. This makes our current practices not only ineffective, but illegal.
It has taken a few iterations of this ordinance to pass with previous versions being bogged down in deliberation due to the complexities of the negotiations and NIMBYism when choosing safe ground locations. With the passing of this ordinance, the City Manager will have full discretion and 60 days to select the city owned parcels of land among the 8 districts and move as many people into these safe shelter zones as is possible. These will be unmanaged zones to reduce cost, but the city will, by law, be forced to provide a “dignified” level of support to all who reside there. This “dignified” level is still up for discussion between the county, the City Manager, and City Attorney Susana Wood. This specific lack of clarity around the word “dignified” is a reason why Mayor Pro Tem Mai Vang, a supporter of safe ground, voted no on this ordinance as presented.
Although there were some dissenting opinions from the public, more praised the measure than protested it. “This is a dream I have had for 13 years,” a member of the public who helps with safe grounds said in public comment. “For the first time I agree with the mayor,” said a DSA member as he started his two minutes at the podium. After public comment, Caity Maple mentioned that she and Katie Valenzuela had been advocating for this since the first day they joined the council stating, “It’s kind of amazing that we are here.”
However, Council Member Karina Talamantes lashed out at the mayor and accused him of not visiting her district and for the lack of good neighbor policies in the ordinance. Her rationale that we don’t want to give the City Manager unilateral decision on this issue was thwarted by Vice Mayor Guerra’s reminder that it takes 5 votes to give him the power and 5 votes to remove that power should the council be dissatisfied with the city manager’s direction. Although the good neighbor policy was amended by Vice Mayor Guerra’s motion, Council Member Talamantes still voted no, seemingly out of frustration with the Mayor.
Safe ground is not a new concept and has been utilized successfully in places like San Diego, LA, and in many other states. Safe ground has some of the highest impact per dollar invested due to economies of scale and ease of creation. It becomes easier to ensure safety and provide services to the unhoused if the city gives them a sanctioned space to reside.
This ordinance does not come to us in perfection. There is a lack of clarity on the services that are required to be offered at each site. How can we be sure that these grounds are safe? There is debate on if Howard Chan, the City Manager, is the right person to drive this initiative, in addition there is a lack of metrics which define success. There is also a lack of specificity in the geodiversity of the plots to be selected outside of the mayor’s directive to the City Manager to “try your best”. Even with these faults, the council voted to pass in hopes that it will quickly show signs of progress for the city.
My Opinion:
After watching this debate unfold for over 6 hours, I have come to the following conclusions:
Human beings need a dignified place to reside. Given we have a fully utilized 1100 bed capacity to house our 10,000 unhoused people, this ordinance will be beneficial and could potentially lead to upwards of $5 million in funding to create a more permanent destination for our remaining 8900 unhoused citizens. We should continually advocate for the most vulnerable among us, and funding initiatives that favor solutions over bandaid enforcement is a key to success.
When the rest of the council rightfully asked for City Manager Chan to be receptive to public input, Council Member Sean Loloee of district 2, voiced an undemocratic opinion. Stating, “I don’t think, when it comes to the sites, advocates or activists really help the situation.” As someone who is supposed to represent the people, I find it disgraceful he would try to silence them. Or perhaps he thinks the public dumb and incapable? The experience of the social workers who are on the ground, and the homelessness population itself need to be involved in giving comments for this process to maximize success.
I will echo the council members in saying that we should not lose focus on the long term goal of housing for all, but until we are able to achieve this politically and financially, this is good policy. The council did well, although barely, to realize perfection should not be the enemy of progress and passed this step towards addressing our city’s homeless crisis.
A Slice of Union Pizza with Barboncino Workers United
We need social housing!
Today we submitted a petition to both the City of Bozeman and Gallatin County to establish a Housing Authority. This is the first step to building Social Housing and lowering the cost of housing in Bozeman.
With a Housing Authority, we can take an active role in increasing the supply of affordable housing. We cannot continue to look for remedies from the status quo. The reality is that when housing is tied to profits, it is more profitable for developers to maintain scarcity. Meanwhile, non-profit developers statewide fight over a small pot of LIHTC and Section 8 vouchers to serve a growing need. With a public housing authority, the city could use its tools – the same ones that build our schools and fire stations – to access bonds to start building Social Housing.
With Social Housing, we can have local control of development to meet the needs of our community in Bozeman – including deciding the cost of rent, developing in a way that meets crucial sustainability standards, and creating communities welcoming to workers, students, pets, and families. Social Housing is a sustainable model of publicly owned and publicly developed mixed-income housing that would remain permanently affordable. With our own housing authority, the city can set the rents for their own developments and the reasonably-priced rents can go back to maintaining the building, rather than being pocketed by for-profit developers.
The city cannot mandate requirements for private developers to have more low-income units, meaning that we continue to use public funds to subsidize landlords and developers to maintain their profits. The city cannot mandate that LIHTC units are kept affordable in perpetuity, meaning there is always a threat that we will lose affordable units each year. But the city CAN have local control on development if the city establishes a public housing authority and starts creating its own supply of Social Housing.
Want to learn more about the concept of Social Housing? Join our Topical Discussion on Sunday, August 20 to learn about how the model of social housing could work in Bozeman. https://www.facebook.com/events/214570914505353
David Bentley Hart | Bible Translation, Christian Socialism, & the Moral Obligation of Belonging
Teamsters Win Historic Contract Demands
Read the Official Teamsters Press Release
Teamsters Win!
The Teamsters have reached a tentative agreement with UPS by staying firm to their demands, showing that if we fight for what we deserve we can win! The agreement includes major changes, including:
- Historic wage increases. Existing full- and part-time UPS Teamsters will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023. Over the length of the contract, wage increases will total $7.50 per hour.
- Existing part-timers will be raised up to no less than $21 per hour immediately, and part-time seniority workers earning more under a market rate adjustment would still receive all new general wage increases.
- General wage increases for part-time workers will be double the amount obtained in the previous UPS Teamsters contract — and existing part-time workers will receive a 48 percent average total wage increase over the next five years.
- Wage increases for full-timers will keep UPS Teamsters the highest paid delivery drivers in the nation, improving their average top rate to $49 per hour.
- Current UPS Teamsters working part-time would receive longevity wage increases of up to $1.50 per hour on top of new hourly raises, compounding their earnings.
- New part-time hires at UPS would start at $21 per hour and advance to $23 per hour.
- All UPS Teamster drivers classified as 22.4s would be reclassified immediately to Regular Package Car Drivers and placed into seniority, ending the unfair two-tier wage system at UPS.
- Safety and health protections, including vehicle air conditioning and cargo ventilation. UPS will equip in-cab A/C in all larger delivery vehicles, sprinter vans, and package cars purchased after Jan. 1, 2024. All cars get two fans and air induction vents in the cargo compartments.
- All UPS Teamsters would receive Martin Luther King Day as a full holiday for the first time.
- No more forced overtime on Teamster drivers’ days off. Drivers would keep one of two workweek schedules and could not be forced into overtime on scheduled off-days.
- UPS Teamster part-timers will have priority to perform all seasonal support work using their own vehicles with a locked-in eight-hour guarantee. For the first time, seasonal work will be contained to five weeks only from November-December.
- The creation of 7,500 new full-time Teamster jobs at UPS and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions, establishing more opportunities through the life of the agreement for part-timers to transition to full-time work.
- More than 60 total changes and improvements to the National Master Agreement — more than any other time in Teamsters history — and zero concessions from the rank-and-file.
The decision has not yet been officially ratified, but given that all of the contract demands were met by UPS, it seems likely that this will be agreed upon by all Locals.
What can we learn from this?
As socialists, what can we take away from this? Although there are many elements to this complex organizing effort that has culminated after years of change within the Teamsters and within UPS from before the pandemic until now, let’s highlight two things in particular that made this successful:
- Meaningful demands and unwavering commitment to them. UPS creates a list of demands that improves the workplace for everyone, from rookie part-timers to full-time veterans. This sort of contract is appealing to all workers and shows that they are looking out for everyone. As organizers, we should always be seeking buy-in from the entire working class and responding to their individual circumstances as best we can. Additionally, once we agree upon our demands, we should not be willing to abandon them for the sake of expediency. UPS Teamsters were willing to go on strike until their demands are met and we should always keep our ambitions as high.
- Practice pickets show the capitalists our power. UPS Teamsters mobilized their workers to perform a dress rehearsal for the strike and held practice pickets nationwide, including here in Wilmington. Not only does this help workers improve logistics for a real strike, but the attendance for these practice pickets seems to have shown the bosses that workers were serious about their strike threat. By doing acts that demonstrate our power, we can make the capitalists more willing to concede to our demands because there is a credible threat to their power and wealth. If a practice strike is enough to get a full concession, imagine what more could be won.
Congratulations to the UPS Teamsters on this historic victory!
Onward to Convention: A Post-Election Retrospective
Radical Democracy as a Solution to Liberal Democratic Failures
Member Bryce Springfield
Radical democracy is not a term that many of us are used to hearing in our political science courses. You might hear it in one of the few classes that cover social movements and extra-parliamentary politics, but in general students are exclusively exposed to a rather limited understanding of democracy that not only fails to acknowledge the possibility of democracy beyond government, but that also has a fundamental distrust in the capacity of the “bewildered herd” — as Walter Lippmann once called the public — to make its own decisions about the institutions that affect our everyday lives.
This system is one wherein constituents, under a particular constitutional arrangement, “freely and fairly” elect representatives who suggest and vote on government policies on the public’s behalf. In addition, it features a market-based economic system with non-democratic firm-level relations between private owners on the one hand, and non-owner workers and consumers on the other. Many would call this capitalist, representative system a “liberal democracy.”
From direct democracy to liberal democracy
Many prehistoric societies throughout a large span of the human experience saw direct or semi-direct democracy as a natural system of self-management in both politics and economics. Yet in recent history, some have treated liberal democracy as the form of social organization most compatible with human nature.
From what we know about early democracies, several early agricultural societies, such as those of Phoenicia and Mesopotamia, are thought to have adopted democratic institutions long before the Greek city-states did. Going even further back, a wide range of prehistoric societies tended to “make all important collective decisions by consensus, and many of them [did] not even have chiefs,” with larger bands often breaking into smaller units to allow easier consensus-making, according to a 1993 paper.
Some have argued that the democratic aspect of many early societies may have contributed to a largely “peaceful order.” Contrary to what many 19th-century Western thinkers theorized about prehistoric violence and war, available data suggests that only around 2% of human fossils from 2 million to 14,000 years ago show evidence of a “traumatic violent injury,” while that percentage dramatically increased following the development of centralized state societies after the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
In Ancient Athens, from roughly the 6th century BCE to the 4th century BCE (with interruptions), “democracy” referred to a system of active popular participation (limited to adult male citizens) in the formulation of legislation and the exercise of executive functions. The selection of the citizens who performed these functions was accomplished via sortition, in that members of the public were chosen at random to participate in decision-making assemblies, similar to modern juries. Though limited in terms of inclusion, Athens exercised a much more direct form of democracy than that of today’s Western democracies. The Roman Republic (509 BCE — 27 BCE), on the other hand, is the most influential early case of a representative democracy, with popularly elected officials performing political duties instead of the people themselves, inspiring future democratic republics.
Fast forward to the 18th century, and one observes the “liberal democratic” model developing as an alternative to the radically authoritarian and feudal regimes that dominated Europe at the time. With the support of a range of Western intellectuals, often viewed as an extremist and unreasonable fringe by their contemporaries, the idea of a representative democratic government featuring constitutional rights and a capitalist economy posed a deep challenge to existing institutions. Over time, liberal democratic ideals gained significant traction among European publics, enabling revolutions first in the American colonies and then France, and later in other European countries and, eventually, their colonies as well.
I mention these details to put liberal democracy, particularly its representative democratic and capitalist elements, in perspective; they are but a blip in human history, and thus are clearly not the products of human nature until recent centuries.
Today’s crisis of liberal democracy
I agree with the premise that the formation and expansion of liberal democracy over the last three centuries marks a positive change in human development away from authoritarian and feudal systems of political and economic domination. This revolutionary process has normalized democracy as a universal ideal, and standardized legal equality as well as freedom of thought, speech, association, religion, and the press. Liberal democracies have often failed to live up to these same ideals, particularly when it comes to domestic social equality and colonial domination, but in many cases they have successfully challenged and overturned systems of oppression around the world.
In today’s age, however, there are a few respects in which liberal democracy is failing to meet the rising standards expected by working-class people who make up the global majority.
Capitalist economy
Recent polls reveal that a staggering 60% of an international sample of workers are emotionally detached at work, while only 33% feel engaged with their labor. In the US, the standard-bearer of global capitalism, 50% of workers report frequent stress at work, with their most frequently reported cause of workplace dissatisfaction being unfair treatment.
Though even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels openly acknowledged the incredible power of capitalism as a force for global industrialization, capitalism is a fundamentally undemocratic system wherein the owners of the means of production (i.e., capitalists) hold outsized power over those who operate the means of production (i.e., workers). Similar criticisms have been made about many state socialist solutions, like those of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and various other experiments where production was controlled by an undemocratic bureaucratic apparatus holding outsized power over the workers they claimed to represent — an arrangement often justified by asserting that the Communist Party aristocracy was the workers, or even that the masses were too stupid to direct their own workplaces. Yet mainstream political commentators rarely extend this criticism to capitalism, even though a nearly identical logic applies.
As the anti-authoritarian left has understood for generations, in either of these systems — no more in the authoritarian socialist case than in the capitalist case — the workplace where most workers spend the majority of their lives is dictatorially controlled by an unelected executive or board of executives, who may arbitrarily set wages and undemocratically select unit managers. Even in wealthy social democracies with strong welfare programs and powerful labor unions, workers are forced to remain employed to avoid a squalid lifestyle. Meanwhile, in the Global South, the consequences for those who choose not to degrade their bodies, minds, and time enough for capitalism can include starvation or death. In either case, it is a “free” choice between exhaustion or poverty.
Working conditions around the world are often very poor, woefully ill-compensatory for the economic value produced, and even unsafe due to workers’ lack of influence over workplace decision-making. On the other hand, if workers could exercise democracy in the workplace, it is highly likely that they would not make the same decisions as those of a disconnected capitalist on issues related to safety, benefits, wages, and employment. Not only that, workers would also have more direct incentives to reduce irresponsible risk because of profit sharing and increased sensitivity to the threat of losing their jobs. Reducing risk throughout the economy would then mitigate the possibility of bankruptcy and wider economic crises, and give innovators fewer negative incentives and more financial stability to do their valuable work.
Furthermore, workplace democracy would address the “local knowledge problem” that right-wing economists seem all too happy to attribute to centrally-planned economies. This theory refers to the argument that central planners, such as those of state socialist regimes, lack much of the information necessary for rational economic decision-making, as such information is distributed amongst individual actors.
Yet under capitalism as well, owners, executives, and high-level managers frequently do not have extensive direct experience in everyday work, limiting the information they have to make informed firm-level plans. By ensuring that all of those who work for the factories, the shops, and the gig services have an input in the direction of their respective firms, whether through representatives or direct decision-making, firms can be better equipped to improve efficiency, productivity, and stability.
These theoretical predictions are generally supported by major literature reviews of both worker-owned cooperatives and, to a lesser extent, union-represented workplaces. Worker cooperatives tend to be more productive and stable through recessions than other firms, and they also tend to have longer lifespans, greater employee satisfaction, lower employee turnover, and greater efficiency. Union-represented workplaces also see significantly higher pay than comparable workplaces, as well as better workplace safety and increased firm stability.
Representative democratic government
Although some countries express satisfaction with their representative systems, support for democracy in many countries has significantly declined, while in others pro-democracy sentiment has simply always been low. In a 34-country survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019, the median country had 52% dissatisfaction with democracy in their country, compared to a mere 44% satisfaction. In Latin America, a very high portion of respondents — 70% — said they were dissatisfied with democracy in their respective countries, with countries like Ecuador and Peru in particular seeing around 10% satisfaction. This data reflects significant declines in democratic satisfaction from just two or three decades ago.
What is causing this? One possible reason could be that populations are feeling increasingly disconnected from their representatives, with 64% of citizens in the median country surveyed by the Pew Research Center agreeing that elected officials do not care about “what people like them think.” In many representative democracies, campaign donations and politicians’ own investments provide incentives to stray from the popular will in favor of special interests. In the US, we can see this tendency expressed in relation to a vast range of policies — from universal healthcare to free college, to marijuana legalization, to abortion rights, to a $15 minimum wage — each of which have strong public support, but none are currently close to promulgation at the national level. A variety of studies have demonstrated that United States representatives, though partly influenced by voter preferences, frequently give outsized preference to policies favored by the wealthy.
One factor that may explain this proposed relationship is the fact that elected representatives, on average, are not of comparable socio-economic status to that of the general public, typically being significantly wealthier. As a consequence, even those potentially sympathetic to the working class simply do not experience the everyday difficulties that workers regularly face, and can therefore suffer from, again, the local knowledge problem frequently cited by right-wing economists.
These developments are especially dangerous in light of the democratic backsliding that has recently occurred in Hungary, Poland, Nicaragua, Bolivia, India, Tunisia, Turkey, and other countries where executives and single parties have increasingly dominated over legislatures and courts, and have enforced laws that seriously limit media and associational freedoms. These trends likewise menace the United States, where several major politicians have denied election results and where state governments regularly limit voting rights. As confidence in democracy declines, more and more countries are at risk of autocratization — an alternative that I, along with liberal democrats, assert is worse than the liberal democratic arrangement.
Some theorists of democratic backsliding, such as the authors of How Democracies Die — the book that apparently helped push Joe Biden to run for president in 2020 — have argued that merely “restor[ing] the basic norms” of liberal democracy and including a more diverse range of people within the liberal democratic mechanisms will be enough to save democracy. However, the true roots of democratic backsliding go much deeper than this, as has been shown in the above analysis.
Further than merely questioning the status quo — a civic duty in any healthy democracy — authoritarian populists threaten democracy by claiming to be the only ones who can truly represent the “real people.” But creating the institutions and providing the spare time for people to represent themselves could put a significant number of obstacles in the way of these despotic distortions of the public will. The capacity of authoritarian populists to skillfully abuse the top-down model of representative democracy in order to disseminate antidemocratic attitudes and reforms would be largely immobilized in such a scenario.
Given that authoritarian populists are the usual suspects in advancing democratic backsliding in the modern day, and that said authoritarian populists gain power through the personality-oriented politics of representative democracies, it would serve democrats well to push for an alternative that makes the path to autocratization much more challenging.
Radical democracy as an alternative
A few radical democratic projects have succeeded in reviving direct democratic as well as workplace democratic ideals in the last few decades, while simultaneously maintaining the benefits of constitutional rights prioritized by liberal regimes.
In 1994, for example, a large portion of the Mexican state of Chiapas established autonomy through the high-profile Zapatista Uprising, which was waged in protest against what the largely indigenous population saw as an authoritarian and undemocratic government. Since then, 360,000 Zapatistas have enjoyed participatory democracy in a decentralized system of government, alongside a democratic economy consisting of worker cooperatives and common ownership of land, and a democratic education system involving both students and parents.
In 2012, during the Syrian Civil War, four million people suffering under the aggression of the Syrian and Turkish governments, as well as of ISIS, formed the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (also known as Rojava). They gained their autonomy through the establishment of a federalist system of participatory democracy, with significant sectors of the economy being managed democratically through worker cooperatives and workers’ councils.
But what would such a system look like for Princeton students? I will end with a description of a hypothetical alternate universe in which Princeton students live in a radically democratic society.
Suppose that in this alternate universe, there is a major push among students for the University to divest from fossil fuels. If the level of support for this change was similar to that in our universe, divestment would be an overwhelmingly obvious policy to pursue, given that 82% of undergraduates favor it. Assuming that a majority of University employees and graduate students also agree with this change, which is a fair supposition given the high number of faculty endorsements behind it and the generally liberal or leftist political attitudes of students and working New Jersey residents, the matter of fossil fuel divestment could be resolved almost immediately, as opposed to only partially after many years.
Suppose that just like at the real Princeton, the alternate Math Department enjoys an atrocious reputation among undergraduate students for the poor organization of its courses and the mind-numbing teaching style of some of its professors. With student input actually counting for something, rather than simply being diverted into listening sessions, and then committee meetings, before finally being ignored, perhaps students could successfully influence the department into seeking out more dedicated lecturers rather than only researchers who may not be passionate about teaching their students.
Suppose that you work at the local Starbucks on Nassau Street, and you hate the grueling working conditions there, as plenty of baristas have expressed in our own universe. If the Starbucks were a worker cooperative, the employees who keep the store running would have significantly more power over their wage rates and working conditions, meaning they could raise wages to a level that encourages both higher productivity and more job applicants. Workers would ensure that profits are no longer aimed at supporting investors and executives, but rather at supporting all who contribute to the productive process.
Within the government of this alternate universe, perhaps marijuana would be quickly legalized, so students would not have to worry about state violence or University discipline against them for using the drug. Perhaps we would already have a public healthcare system that eliminates the frustrating and expensive reimbursement bureaucracy we face with the Student Health Plan, and we would not have to carefully search for in-network doctors nearby — instead, we would know that all doctors are covered.
And finally, with mechanisms of direct participation, perhaps we could reduce the level of atomization and loneliness in our society, and therefore develop a better sense of mutual understanding and respect for each other and the issues that matter to us. Maybe psychologists both on- and off-campus would be offered higher pay through their own workplace democracies, as well as through popular participation in public healthcare policy. This would encourage more psychologists to come and support young people, a particularly vulnerable demographic in terms of mental health issues, a key concern for many in the Princeton community given the alarming number of recent mental health-related tragedies.
Liberal democratic institutions are failing us at this stage of human development. Radical democracy, on the other hand, provides answers to many of the dissatisfactions that students, workers, and voters now face. Thus, radical democracy offers a new understanding of democracy appropriate for a new age.
This piece was originally published in The Princeton Progressive.
An Analysis of Evidence for State Oppression in Xinjiang, China
Member Bryce Springfield
During my first semester at Princeton, I, like many students, decided to look into student organizations that I could get involved with going forward. Apart from wishing to satisfy my “speedcubing” hobby with the Cube Club, I also looked into left-wing organizations to which I could contribute, as I had been a committed socialist for several years at that point.
While several left-wing organizations had gone dormant, one that caught my interest was The Prog. A quick glance at the description made The Prog seem like a great fit for me: it is Princeton’s only left-wing campus newspaper written by and for students. However, after taking a look at The Prog’s website, one piece raised a lot of questions for me: “OPINION: What’s Really Happening in Xinjiang?” by an anonymous author. As I read the article, I found myself disappointed with the article’s arguments, which sounded similar to points I had heard from some Marxist-Leninists and even the Chinese government’s own public comments.
My first thought was this: the Left is meant to question the status quo and its institutions. Considering the pervasiveness of capitalist institutions in China’s economy and authoritarian bureaucracy, one should think that a minimization of the Chinese government’s oppression of minority groups should be something that leftists radically reject. However, I did not find this article to follow that ideal.
In its introduction, the author of “What’s Really Happening in Xinjiang” rightly points out that the United States has utilized unfounded claims and racist propaganda to justify its imperialist ambitions. Most visibly, this is what happened after the September 11 terrorist attacks as President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” in response. Many Muslim Americans were targeted and discriminated against by individuals and the government, which has had lasting repercussions until today. Even in recent years, nearly half of Americans see Muslims as a group more inclined to violence than others, and Muslims are the least approved-of religious group in the United States, according to survey data from the Pew Research Center.
The War on Terror gained widespread legitimacy and support through the construction of an Islamic “threat” that justified US-backed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other regions, leading to at least 37 million displacements, mass food insecurity, and the deaths of 897,000 to 929,000 people.
Yet, alongside vague references to “CIA front groups, defense contractors, and Western government sources” fabricating empirical support for key claims regarding the genocide, the author resorts to suspiciously familiar fearmongering about the “increasing radicalization of some of [Xinjiang’s] Islamic citizens” — referring to a few notable cases of terrorism — as, seemingly, a mitigating factor for the oppression that the Chinese government commits against an entire population. Though I applaud the author for at least acknowledging officials’ “eager[ness] to surveil, arrest, and racially profile Uyghurs,” some parts of the article appear to me to question whether key claims of atrocities in Xinjiang are true or imply an alternative framing of “vocational schools.”
In this article, I hope to demonstrate compelling evidence from the Chinese government itself and other openly available sources to emphasize the state oppression of Uyghur Muslims in the majority-minority Xinjiang province, particularly from 2017 to 2019. Then, I will discuss how leftists can reconcile legitimate claims of atrocities with anti-imperialism and international solidarity against statist and capitalist systems that profit off of oppressed groups.
Genocide
Of course, “genocide” is often a loaded term used to overcharacterize a wide range of atrocities, as the author of the opinion piece points out. For the sake of using this word in line with international standards, I will compare the United Nations’ definition of genocide with what I believe is occurring in Xinjiang based solely on the information presented in this article.
In Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or simply the Genocide Convention, ratified or acceded to by 149 countries, including China, the following definition was approved:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Most people likely immediately only think of part (a), but this excerpt demonstrates that genocide also includes other sorts of atrocities while maintaining clear, defined bounds. In the case of Xinjiang since at least 2017, I would argue that, with the points made in this article, at least (b) through (d) likely apply due to mandatory “re-education” for Muslim practices and especially forced birth prevention. Therefore, I will use the term “Uyghur genocide” to refer to the state oppression particularly against Muslims in Xinjiang, but that may also target others in Xinjiang.
For the purposes of this article, in addition to mentioning a few things about forced cultural assimilation (which some refer to as “cultural genocide”), I will primarily focus on the genocidal aspects of oppression in Xinjiang according to the UN definition, although there is also much to be said about surveillance and repression of free expression in Xinjiang for the sake of “stability,” including against activists pushing for — and this is of particular interest to the Left — environmental protections.
Internment Camps
The most well-reported aspect of the Uyghur genocide is perhaps its internment camps, described by the Chinese government as “vocational education and training centers” or “re-education camps.” According to Chinese government officials, there is an “urgent need” for these camps in order to fight the “Three Evil Forces” of terrorism, separatism, and extremism that have threatened Chinese territorial and civil stability “[b]etween 1990 and the end of 2016.”
Shortly after this policy realignment, the creation of internment camps was first observed in 2017. In 2018, Xinjiang officials responded by either denying the camps’ existence or justifying them as agents of social stability and economic growth. What is interesting is that in 2015, a few years before this major policy shift, Chinese government officials claimed that they had already been extremely effective in preventing terrorist attacks, indicating that the new policies in Xinjiang were not in response to heightened terrorist activity.
Since then, Chinese government sources have shifted toward acknowledging the re-education camps and have even invited Western journalists to observe them under highly restrictive conditions, presenting them as bona fide educational facilities. However, an analysis of the birth rates and arrest rates in Xinjiang suggests something more nefarious.
Crude birth rates and incarceration rates
One does not need to rely on Western researchers or on testimonials to find drastic irregularities that cannot reasonably be explained by normal demographic or developmental trends. In fact, we only need to look at the Chinese government’s own annual statistical reports, the China Statistical Yearbooks, which it publishes online and in print. Unfortunately, the Yearbooks do not report on ethnic breakdowns. Regardless, an analysis of the provided data points to abnormal trends in Xinjiang, which is mostly populated by minority groups and nearly half Uyghur, that are not observed in other regions in the same time frame.
The first piece of evidence that should raise serious concern is Xinjiang’s change in birth rates over the last few years. Although the Chinese government began omitting regional birth rates from the 2020 statistics, the data up to 2019 is clearly unusual.
My analysis begins with recent regional birth rate data from 2013 through 2019 provided by the China Statistical Yearbooks. Below are a couple of graphs I constructed to visualize the data. In the first, we see a significant drop of 49% in the annual birth rate in Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019, which is a much faster drop than that of China as a whole. This brings the regional birth rates significantly below that of the country, which is all the more concerning given that Xinjiang’s historical birth rates had been notably higher than that of the national average.
To compare this to other regions in China, below is a histogram showing Xinjiang as the lowest instance of birth rates from 2017, when the “vocational camps” opened, to 2019. One thing to note is that with the rescinding of the One Child Policy in 2015 and 2016, according to many Chinese demographers, we should see an immediate increase in birth rates followed by decreases over this period — due to “two-child policies” — to a greater extent than natural changes. Given that Xinjiang was exempted from having one-child restrictions as mentioned in the article, meaning it should not have experienced shocks from this, it should be concerning that it is an extreme outlier even compared to other Chinese provinces that were expected to experience significant changes.
The only comparable drop in reported birth rates since 1950 that I am aware of is that of Greenland from mass sterilization under Danish colonial rule, which is a fitting comparison. Even this, however, was over the course of nearly a decade rather than two years.
We see unusual changes in official contraceptive data in 2018 in Xinjiang, as well. In the China Health Statistical Yearbooks, we see rapid increases in the national proportion of sterilizations — which include vasectomies and “tube tying” — in Xinjiang especially in 2018. The author of the original article correctly notes that Adrian Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist and senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation widely cited for claims about the Uyghur genocide, performed serious errors in his calculations of sterilizations in Xinjiang, but the data displayed below demonstrates the point to be generally correct, despite his obvious biases and propensity to exaggerate.
In addition to information on birth rates and birth control, we can look at incarceration rates reported by government officials in various work reports. Analyzing the official work reports of the Xinjiang provincial government and the Chinese national government, I produced the graph below to represent the percentage of arrests in China as a whole that were in Xinjiang. Clear abnormalities are present from 2017 to 2019, and provincial reports are notably missing from 2022, when national arrests exploded from the White Paper Protests, where protestors sang “The Internationale” and other socialist messaging against authoritarian suppression, particularly aggravated by the Ürümqi fire in Xinjiang. Incidentally, while the arrest reports mention the regulation of monopolies and fraud, their defense of capital is evident in their talk of promoting the “deep integration of party building and business,” “serving private enterprises,” and highlighting the punishment of “crimes against the legitimate rights and interests of private enterprises.” This is a topic I will return to later.
Despite Xinjiang being just 1.5% of the national population, it quickly went from making up less than 5% of national arrests to more than 20% after 2017, and arrests remained quite high in the following years. Considering that terrorist incidents in Xinjiang did not more than quadruple between 2016 and 2017, this should suggest that a campaign against a more vast swath of the population had been coordinated.
Razing of cultural sites
Beyond statistical data on reproduction and incarceration, it is also important to look at the cultural effects of the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang, which may also help us think about why China chose to ramp up repression in the region despite declining terrorist incidents. Evidence from publicly available satellite imagery has been studied to look at how religious and cultural sites in Xinjiang have been affected. Systematic studies have demonstrated an unusual 32% of mosques in Xinjiang having been destroyed and another 28% significantly damaged between 2017 and 2020. One of the more visible examples of this was the erasure of the ancient Imam Asim Shrine, where thousands of Muslim pilgrims regularly prayed and tied flags just a decade ago before its apparent destruction.
Islamophobic legislation
Next, I will examine the policies and prevailing ideas that may be driving Uyghur persecution in Xinjiang. For this, I closely read the 2017 “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulation on De-Extremification,” hosted on the Xinjiang regional government’s website. While I used a browser extension to translate the document, which could lead to misinterpretation, others have performed their own translations, which read similarly to my computer translation. Revisions to the law in 2018 see nearly identical restrictions.
Beginning in Chapter I, article 3 of the legislation, the definition of “extremification” is left very broad. Specifically, it notes that “[e]xtremification … refers to speech and actions under the influence of extremism, that spread radical religious ideology, and reject and interfere with normal production and livelihood.” Extremism refers to ideas and behaviors that “incite hatred and discrimination, and advocate violence by distorting religious teaching and other methods.”
What is inciting hatred and discrimination, or violence? What is “radical religious ideology”? What is considered an interference “with normal production and livelihood”? These questions are not answered in the document and these terms are left open to interpretation so that any idea one may find challenging could be a “violent” thought and any behavior deemed atypical could be “radical” and interfere with “normal production.” This enables the document to provide sweeping powers to the government to persecute Muslims in Xinjiang who adopt more visibly Islamic clothing, speech, traditions, and political and religious thought.
The legislation specifically prohibits “irregular beards or name selection,” the wearing of “burqas with face coverings,” or other “symbols of extremification” in Chapter II. The former two restrictions are common presentations and behaviors of Muslims worldwide, and the latter can describe anything the government deems as “extreme,” leaving ample room for arbitrary discrimination.
In Chapter III, the legislation reveals the main objective of these strict regulations: “De-extremification shall persist in the correct political orientation and direction of public opinion” (Article 12) and “shall do a good job of … combining ideological education, psychological counseling, behavioral corrections, and skills training [emphases added]” (Article 14). From this 2017 legislation, the pervading theme seems to be the Chinese and Xinjiang governments’ interest in forcing cultural and political conformity and the “correct political orientation” of Xi Jinping onto the Uyghur and Muslim populations of Xinjiang.
Global imperialist and capitalist intersections
As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, it is important to recognize that the justifications given by Chinese officials for increased control of the Uyghur population is a continuation of the global “War on Terror” proliferated by the United States. After the September 11 attacks, Chinese state rhetoric on the Uyghur population shifted toward dubiously connecting Uyghur organizations and jihadist groups rather than emphasizing “pan-Turkic separatism.” In fact, some of the United States’ current foreign policies in Central Asia may actually bolster the deportation of Uyghur Muslims to China, as the US subsidizes security systems and massive hauls of military equipment for authoritarian regimes in the region who are themselves supportive of the crackdowns in Xinjiang or who find some of their own Uyghur citizens too disruptive.
It should be mentioned that the Chinese government stands to benefit from oil deposits and other economic opportunities through its grip on Xinjiang and by employing War on Terror-esque justifications against the majority Muslim peoples that populate much of the province.
In addition, while labor conditions in China as a whole are quite squalid, oppression and surveillance in Xinjiang have been particularly beneficial to global capitalism’s exploitation of workers for endless profit. Regardless of concerns about human rights violations in Xinjiang, companies like Nike and Tesla benefit from the province’s cotton and polysilicon production supported by forced laborers and actively try to water down labor laws related to it; and billions have been invested in public-private security technology partnerships, drastically higher than in previous years. Meanwhile, as hinted in the section on incarceration, the Chinese Communist Party’s deep defense of private interests is clear in its own rhetoric and overt actions, even incorporating capitalist CEOs and business leaders as a major part of the National People’s Congress and as a core piece of the Party itself.
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There is far more to be said about the complexities of state oppression in Xinjiang, including the silencing of left-wing activists, anti-LGBTQ laws, the government leaks of mass surveillance data, the heavily restricted conditions of foreign inspections, and more. Alas, there is only so much that can fit in one piece.
Of course, several aspects of what has been documented in Xinjiang have been committed by Western governments, particularly toward indigenous and Black populations. However, this does not mean that the Uyghur genocide is any less troubling because other countries do the same. It does indicate that the working class has multiple competing enemies sustaining the same system of globalized state capitalism. To this day, state oppression in Xinjiang benefits global capitalism, including Western firms, through its securitization and production of materials under poor conditions. We must find ways to liberate the oppressed in Xinjiang, regardless of the atrocities of either “side.”
We should always question government and corporate media narratives as well as their motives. However, we can look at concrete data and other public information to substantiate at least some claims espoused by agenda setters. Perhaps exaggerated conclusions and the history of US imperialism rightly result in a higher degree of skepticism, but, in this case, we have convincing primary source evidence available, free from the manipulation of US propaganda outlets, Adrian Zenz, or any other potentially biased Western source.
As leftists, we should respond to the clear motives that some interest groups and US officials have regarding the expansion of US imperialism not by trying to dismiss or mitigate claims of atrocities as only “in service of a larger imperial project” or by giving credibility to government-constructed visits or other authoritarian governments’ representatives and ambassadors, but by educating our peers about what war hawks wish to do with information of atrocities. US statements and policies acknowledging the Uyghur genocide are not the problem; the problem is the imperialist tendencies of the United States and the influence that pro-interventionist interest groups have over our government.
It is not easy to provide a simple solution to end and provide restitution for the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, but surely most leftists can agree that putting American boots in China or attempting to externally change the country’s regime aren’t viable options if we want to reduce violence and promote freedom across the world. Part of the solution will need to involve teaching international solidarity for the liberation of all working class people, including for Chinese Uyghurs potentially seeking refuge. This is what many in the Muslim world have already demonstrated through mass demonstrations in Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Indonesia, just to name a few, and through polls in Palestine. It may also involve accepting refugees, and independent socialist groups developing alternative media and support infrastructure to aid those potentially suffering from oppression or organizing for liberation.
Neither the US’s democratic capitalism nor China’s capitalism with Marxist–Leninist aesthetics will save us. Only the working class can save itself through building solidarity and, in this case, critically assessing claims of atrocities without lending fallacious credibility to either imperialist or denialist tendencies.
This piece was originally published in The Princeton Progressive.
Cuba under siege: behind the Biden blockade
Our focus this week is on Cuba, where a 62 year blockade is being continued by President Biden. We’ll be hearing from the DSA. International Committee activists campaigning to end the blockade on a recent political win, and a from Desirée Michelle Molina, a recent Columbia University graduate who has just spent four months living in the country. Our episode starts with an update from Jeremy Cohan, co-chair of New York City DSA, about what to expect from the DSA’s National Convention in Chicago this weekend.