A Seattle DSA Chapter Statement; developed by Housing Justice Working Group:

During the August 6th Council Meeting, corporate backed council members shamefully voted 7-1 to remove a procedural resolution placing I-137 on the November ballot from the agenda. CM Morales was the lone “no” vote. CM Kettle introduced the motion to table the I-137 vote, citing unspecified “legal questions” after a public comment session in which commenters unanimously voiced support for the initiative and urged Council to place it on the fall ballot. Tabling the I-137 resolution effectively cloisters the initiative to a February special election and gives Council the opportunity to subvert the initiative by placing big business’ deceptive alternative alongside it on the ballot.

Seattle DSA unequivocally sees this as a voter suppression tactic.

Rather than placing the initiative on the upcoming November election in which 80% of voters are expected to cast their ballot, the Council chose to answer the Chamber of Commerce’s call (literally) and send it to a low-turnout election. With seven bought votes, the Chamber of Commerce undermined the will of the Seattle voters who voted for I-135, signed I-137, and expressed continued support for social housing at every given opportunity. If the Chamber wants an alternative, they should do the work of putting their own initiative on the ballot rather than attempting to cripple social housing in its infancy with an insufficient alternative that upholds the status quo.

This action potentially opens council members to legal action. The City Charter states, “Consideration of such initiative petition shall take precedence over all other business before the City Council, except appropriation bills and emergency measures”. Any council member who voted in favor of the motion may be in violation of the charter and if so could be recalled.

Every council member who voted against social housing, for minimum wage rollbacks, and for private prisons is nominally a Democrat. One commenter remarked during the meeting,

“With Democrats like you, unprincipled as you are, who needs Republicans”.

When Democrats support the same policies as Republicans, are financially supported in their races by the same business interests as Republicans, and engage in the same voter suppression tactics as Republicans, we ask: What good are these Democrats for working people?

We must be organized in a strong movement and envision a future with a party for and run by working people. Seattle DSA stands in solidarity with House Our Neighbors and coalition partners. We are committed to fighting big business’ alternative and passing I-137 in February. Are you?

To get plugged into work supporting social housing, attend our next Housing Justice Working Group meeting, Tuesday August 20th at 6pm. To get plugged into a broader movement to fight against the destruction of the rights of working people by Democrats and Republicans alike, join the Democratic Socialists of America.

The post Responding to City Council’s Blatant Voter Suppression Against Social Housing appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

If Grand Rapids wants to meet the goals of 62% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and 100% by 2050, bold action is needed now! Will you send a message of support for GR Climate Coalition’s Beyond a Number: A Call For Bold Climate Action in Grand Rapids?

Grand Rapids’ emission reduction goals are the floor, not the ceiling. They can only be met with meaningful policies and adequate funding. Officials may turn away from these to save money in the short term or embrace the familiar status quo. But we can not wait any longer. Our representatives must make good on their promises.

Making sure our representatives know where we stand on the climate crisis is necessary now more than ever. Our City Leaders are most likely to act when the public exerts pressure on them.

Climate chaos is no longer just a specter on the horizon. It is here. It’ll get worse if we don’t act fast. Extreme heat and weather will increase cost of living and leave those who are already struggling with high prices even farther behind. We must not leave individual residents to solve the problems caused by systemic injustice and policy failures.

The GR Climate Coalition recently kicked off Beyond a Number with an Open Letter to the City Commission. The GRDSA is proud to have signed on to that letter. Now it’s your turn to take action and send a message to City Leaders to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emission.

The post Tell Grand Rapids City Leaders the Time is Now for Bold Climate Action! appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Thorn West: Issue No. 212

State Politics

• The California State Legislature has returned to session; August 31 is the last day that any of the remaining bills can be passed this year.

City Politics

• Days after withdrawing a motion to spend $2 million on private security to quash Palestinian solidarity protests, Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Bob Blumenfield have introduced a motion to implement 100 foot radius “protest buffer zones” around “sensitive sites.” A parallel motion was introduced at the county level on Monday. Both of these motions, and most of the media coverage of them, avoid mentioning that the incident that directly motivated this legislation was a protest of the illegal sale of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

• LA Public Press analyzes the 35-page document listing the county level government reforms that LA County will vote on as a package this November.

Housing Rights

• The Housing and Homelessness Committee has advanced a motion guaranteeing a right to counsel for Los Angeles tenants facing eviction. The City Attorney’s office, after being directed to draft “right to counsel” legislation, nevertheless returned language that explicitly refused to use the word “right.” That language was restored at Wednesday’s meeting, which was attended by advocates organized by DSA-LA.
  
• A service provider contracted to be a part of the city’s Inside Safe program is now being investigated for fraud after an audit conducted by the City Controller’s office determined that it was providing “unacceptable meals” to residents.

• Last week, Los Angeles officials pushed back against Governor Newsom’s executive order that state agencies prioritize the displacement of encampments. This week, Newsom threatened to strip funding from cities that refuse to ramp up the criminalization of homelessness. On Thursday, he came to Los Angeles to have himself filmed throwing away personal belongings at an encampment sweep on a local Fox news outlet.

Transportation

• Metro will conduct three hearings next week, beginning Saturday, about three proposed routes for the extension of the K Line. The K Line connects several stops in Inglewood and South Los Angeles and will eventually extend north to Hollywood. Though building is not scheduled to begin until 2041, there is some discussion of accelerating the timeline.

The post Potential K Line Extension Routes Considered + Gov Newsom Mad, Upset at LA Homelessness Policy appeared first on The Thorn West.

We have a few vacancies on NPEC right now and so are opening up applications on an expedited basis until August 15. 

Thank you for your interest in joining DSA’s National Political Education Committee! We’re excited to have you help develop our national political education program.

We’re taking applications through August 15th, 2024 . Applications are reviewed by NPEC’s Steering Committee and appointed by the NPC. These applications will be for the remainder of  this current term is May 1, 2024 – April 30, 2025. Applicants will be notified of acceptance via e-mail by the end of August.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org

by Saige Smith

Robinson recently released a new ad appearing to take a more moderate stance on abortion. His stance on abortion hasn’t changed; he’s only fine tuned his talking points in the wake of the upcoming election.

WATCH NOW: Mark Robinson’s new campaign ad:#ncpol #ncgov pic.twitter.com/TgLurZnpLQ

— Mark Robinson (@markrobinsonNC) August 2, 2024

Mark Robinson has been vocal about his extreme anti-abortion beliefs for years. He previously said “Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down” and “If I had all the power right now, let’s say I was the governor and I had a willing legislature, we could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason,” yet in the ad he pivots to supporting “commonsense” legislation with “exceptions.”

This ad is a perfect encapsulation of the GOP’s post-Dobbs rhetorical strategy. This article is going to detail how and why this is just the latest attempt by the anti-abortion movement to save face now that the harsh reality of abortion bans has really come to light post-Dobbs. The anti-abortion movement thrives off of abortion stigmatization, medical misinformation, and emotionally charged rhetoric, and this 30 second ad is full of it.

Fueling abortion stigma

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “that’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape … Which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported”

While neither Robinson went into detail about Yolanda’s abortion during the short ad, it’s important to note a few things. Research shows that people experience a mix of positive and negative emotions in the days after having an abortion, with relief predominating. The intensity of all emotions diminishes over time, mostly over the first year. The vast majority – 95% – of people who get abortions said that it was the right decision for them. People who are denied abortions have worse physical and mental health and worse economic outcomes than those who seek and receive abortions.

Mark starts by contributing to the idea that abortion itself is a difficult decision. Abortion is sometimes difficult and sometimes not – there are many nuances around having an abortion. Every decision to have an abortion is unique, individual, and deserving of respect. Just like they were able to decide to have an abortion 30 years ago, all people should be trusted to make the reproductive healthcare decisions that are best for them — including abortion — on their timeline and with the resources they need.

The beginning of the ad further implies that abortion is something regretful and shameful and therefore the wrong decision to make. Abortion stigma is perpetuated by abortion restrictions and inevitably leads to criminalization even when there are no authorizing statutes. Abortion stigma is everywhere, whether it’s the protesters at the clinic harassing you on your way in for your appointment, your parents threatening to kick you out, a teacher you confide in who tells you that’s not something you should talk about, a toxic romantic partner pressuring you against what you want for your pregnancy, the societal pressure to become a mother while ostracizing child-free people, or the laws creating barriers to abortion care.

The anti-abortion movement’s post-Dobbs rhetorical pivot

More and more horror stories have emerged since the overturn of Roe v Wade of people being forced to carry doomed pregnancies, give birth in a car after being turned away from the emergency room, or forced to travel out of state for abortion care – and the anti-abortion movement knows this.

Post-Dobbs, Republicans have had to deal with how unpopular and harmful their abortion bans are. Rather than admitting that pregnancy is too complex to legislate and addressing how these bans are detrimental to pregnant people, the anti-abortion movement is focusing on fine-tuning their talking points: by focusing on exceptions in abortion bans that do not work; moving away from calling abortion bans “bans” and instead calling abortion bans “commonsense consensus” or “compromise”; and performative amendments that do nothing but attempt to repair their image.

By design, exceptions do NOT work

On paper, abortion bans may include exceptions, but in reality, these exceptions are nothing more than PR points for the anti-abortion politicians who pass these nightmare bans. These supposed “exceptions” are intentionally vague and narrowly defined so that it’s impractical to actually use them — and that’s the point. When Republicans fall back on how the current ban has “commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape”, this is a rhetorical strategy to defer the actual problem — the wide-ranging harm caused by banning abortion — and pivot to appealing to the less stigmatized reasons people get abortions.

In North Carolina, abortion is banned after 12 weeks with a few vague exceptions up to 20 weeks. For example, North Carolina’s exception for the life of the mother defines a medical emergency as the following (emphasis mine):

“Medical emergency. – A condition which, in reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of the pregnant woman as to necessitate the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or for which a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function, not including any psychological or emotional conditions. For purposes of this definition, no condition shall be deemed a medical emergency if based on a claim or diagnosis that the woman will engage in conduct which would result in her death or in substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function”.

The language used does not define what exactly constitutes a “major bodily function,” nor what constitutes a “substantial and irreversible physical impairment” to a major bodily function. This intentionally vague language puts physicians in a bind when pregnant patients need an abortion for health reasons. It shifts the decision away from the medical providers and patients and over to the facility’s lawyers. The second part of this definition shows how Republicans anticipate that abortion bans will make people suicidal, so they specifically outline that abortions are not allowed to preserve psychological or emotional well-being of the mother.

How much of an “exception” is it if people have to wait for their vital signs to crash before they’re legally allowed treatment? How much permanent harm to one’s organs is an acceptable trade-off? Exactly how close to death does one have to get to so they can receive treatment?

As Jessica Valenti pointed out, “This is all by design; Republicans deliberately write in exceptions that will be near-impossible to use. So why in the world aren’t Democrats shouting as much from the rooftops? Instead, they’re giving Republicans a tremendous gift: The ability to point to exceptions that no one can actually use as proof that they’re ‘softening’ on abortion … If the exceptions meant to save people’s lives aren’t usable, what makes anyone think those for rape and incest would be?”

Reporting requirements and time limits place barriers in the way of survivors of sexual assault seeking abortion care in states with abortion bans. When you add in a culture that doesn’t believe victims about sexual violence, the purpose and ineffectiveness of rape and incest exceptions become more evident. When the state forces victims to provide proof of their assault to receive healthcare, the state inevitably creates policy that protects sexual abusers. This is the side that wants you to think that they’re the moderate ones.

Compromise? Who? Common sense? Where?

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “That’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported”

Calling North Carolina’s 12 week abortion ban “common sense” and intentionally not calling it a ban are tactics we saw sprout up last year when the NC Senate was hearing debate over S.B.20. As Jessica Valenti pointed out, “Bill sponsor Sen. Joyce Krawiec says, ‘this is a pro-life plan, not an abortion ban.’ (Let that sink for a moment: Republicans are so afraid of abortion rights’ popularity, they’re not even willing to call their bans ‘bans’ anymore.)”. Mandating humiliating, burdensome, and time sensitive barriers to healthcare is far from “common sense”. Going directly against medical providers warnings about the harms caused when abortion is banned is not “common sense”.

Post-Dobbs, polling shows that the vast majority of Americans want abortion legal: over 80% of Americans don’t want pregnancy to be legislated, 78% of Americans believe the decision to have an abortion should be left between the patient and doctor, and 7 in 10 voters support access to abortion medication. Republicans began to really embrace the stance that they believe in exceptions for abortions to make it seem like they are willing to compromise to appeal to moderate voters in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v Wade. In reality, they aren’t compromising on “common sense” legislation – they’re compromising the health and well-being of the very people they’re claiming to protect.

Medical Misinfo: late-term abortion edition

In true Republican fashion, Mark mentions “late-term abortions” at the end of the ad. The anti-abortion movement thrives off of emotionally-inflammatory rhetoric and abortion stigma, which are two characteristics of the phrase “late-term abortion”. This was Mark’s subtle way of appealing to moderate voters with extremist policy that’s been rhetorically watered down to make it more palatable in order to gain votes come November. 

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “That’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported.”

The phrase “late-term abortion” is a political buzzword that anti-abortion proponents have latched onto as a talking point to demonize abortions later in pregnancy when the vast majority (98.7%) of abortions are before 21 weeks. The anti-abortion movement has a reputation for using stigmatizing, emotionally-charged rhetoric to justify banning abortion and to ostracize the people who get and provide abortions. Anti-abortion opponents made up the phrase “late-term abortion” and embrace it because they define it however they want as a part of their language war.

According to experts like the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), the term “late-term abortion” has no medical significance and is not used in a clinical setting or to describe the delivery of abortion care later in pregnancy. When health care providers use language like “full term” and “late term” in the context of pregnancy, they’re talking about how far along the pregnancy is (with “full term” meaning between 39 and 40 weeks and “late term” meaning 41+ weeks). It’s important to note that they do not use these terms to categorize types of abortion care. 

The reasons people seek abortions later in pregnancy include medical concerns such as fetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment, as well as barriers to care that cause delays in obtaining an abortion. What’s cruel is delaying and denying people the healthcare they need.

Despite all this, leaders in the anti-abortion movement can’t even agree on exactly when a ‘late-term abortion’ supposedly happens. It seems to be determined by whatever Republican or anti-abortion organization writing the bill wants it to be.

For example, in 2021, congressional Republicans sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (model legislation created by the National Right to Life Committee), a bill that determined abortions after 20 weeks to be “late-term”. The next year, they sponsored the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act,” that determined “late-term” after 15 weeks. The anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute claims the phrase is appropriate for abortions performed after only 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Taking a page out of the playbook

Since abortion bans are highly unpopular and harmful, Mark Robinson is using the rhetorical tactics directly from the post-Dobbs playbook. It’s easier to fine-tune an extreme candidate’s political messaging in the months before the election than it is to address the wide-ranging devastation caused by their own policies that harm the people they claim to protect.

For years, Mark Robinson has been vocal about his anti-abortion stance by perpetuating abortion stigma and medical misinformation, and this pre-election rhetorical shift is no different. Don’t let him fool you. As he said, if it were up to him, we would have a total abortion ban with no exceptions. Remember this in November when you go to the voting booth, and remember to donate to the local abortion fund.

Read on Craftivist the Activist!

Former DSA member Maurice Isserman and fellow author Peter Dreier have expressed concern over the Coalition to March on the DNC and our plans to protest the Democratic National Convention this month, by drawing on the bloody history of the 1968 convention. The authors condemn people protesting Israel’s genocide on Gaza at the DNC, condemn members of the Coalition for being too “fringe”, and exhort readers to vote for Democrats rather than protesting them. As the co-chair of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, here’s why I believe the editorial badly misses the mark as we anticipate the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Less than a year after Dr. King’s 1963 march, 74 percent Americans stated that the  mass demonstrations had harmed the civil rights cause. In fact, as they were happening, nearly 60 percent of Americans viewed them negatively. With this history in the rearview, we now know that these mass demonstrations were critical to winning the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Had people not decided to engage in mass action to defeat Jim Crow we may be living in a completely different political environment. 

Mass demonstrations for Palestine are not new, but Israel is facing unprecedented criticism for their campaign of violence against Palestinians. Demonstrations have swelled in numbers as many previously disengaged people have seen horrific footage out of Gaza, or have heard Israeli officials actively encourage genocide in the media. Alongside the marches have been tens of thousands of phone calls and emails to representatives demanding a ceasefire, and a grassroots electoral campaign that elected 30 Uncommitted delegates to the DNC. There has been a clear shift towards Israel from Democrats: half of the Democratic Congressional delegation skipped Netanyahu ‘s address to Congress, and almost 100 Congressional Democrats signed onto demands for a ceasefire. The era where Democrats are reflexively supportive of Israel is over due to this groundswell of grassroots activism.

Dismissing people demanding an end to genocide as out of touch, fringe, or radical is a colossal misreading of the room, and contributes to right wing attacks on the basic rights of free speech. 

The Democratic Party is on the backheel this election cycle, having been forced to recognize that Joe Biden was an electoral liability and push the president to end his campaign and endorse Kamala Harris. To be admonished from making political demands — at the exact moment where any savvy political actors would identify this moment as the perfect one to do so, in exchange for electoral support — is a tacit way of telling people to never ask for anything at all. Kamala Harris has less than 100 days to make her case to American voters and failing to commit to ending genocide will cost her votes that she needs to win. 

Trump losing the election is key, and to accuse leftists — often the first on the fascist list of enemies — of not understanding this is, at the very least, condescending. If the Democrats truly believe in democracy, and believe defending it is more important than anything else this election, then they will listen to the millions of Americans demanding a ceasefire and earn their votes.  As socialists, we are acutely aware of the threat of Project 2025. We want Trump to lose, and to lose badly. 

Every election cycle is an existential crisis because we have a weak democracy — Republicans don’t win popular votes, they win an electoral college and heavily gerrymandered congressional districts. An un-elected Supreme Court expands the power of the right and the capitalist class while eroding our democratic and civil rights. The Senate, by design, stops the people’s house from actually serving the people. Instead of fighting to expand democracy, Democrats scold the electorate. The fact that our lame duck President has finally proposed bare minimum reforms on the Supreme Court is a demonstration of Democrats’ decades of political failure and inertia.

The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United States Palestinian Community Network – two of the groups leading the Coalition to March on the DNC – have consistently organized peaceful mass protests that have named the Israeli government and military as responsible for the occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Every March has focused on political targets such as the Israeli Consulate or the Chicago AIPAC office. Marshals have worked to keep protesters safe from police and outside agitators. For this, the local Palestinian community has been attacked and smeared relentlessly by the right wing. 

As a 501(c)4 organization, DSA does not condone or endorse unlawful activity, and we support the March on the DNC because of the Coalition’s efforts to ensure a peaceful and family friendly atmosphere. The Coalition sued the City of Chicago in order to get a permit to march within sight and sound of the DNC, so that the march will have a public impact with less of a risk of violence by police or right wing agitators. Isserman and Dreier have opted to ignore these efforts in their analysis of mass protests at the DNC. 

Protests aren’t to blame for the erosion of democracy to the point of crisis in 2024. So join your fellow Americans to peacefully protest, to exercise your democratic and inalienable right to free speech, to end a genocide on our dollar, and insist on a Democratic party that  will actually be responsive to the working people of this country. If our leaders had listened to protestors sooner we’d be in a stronger position to not just defend, but expand, democracy in the U.S.

We invite everyone on the side of justice to march with us during the DNC and sign up at tinyurl.com/CrashTheDNC 

The post Why You Should Protest the Democratic National Convention appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, August 7 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, August 7 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour at Zeitgeist (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Wednesday, August 7 (8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.): DSA Board Game Night (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, August 8 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, August 8 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, August 9 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, August 10 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Jackie Fielder For D9 Supervisor Mobilization (Location TBD)

Saturday, August 10 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach Training (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, August 11 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Meet at 1636 Haight)

Sunday, August 11 (1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Work Session (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, August 11 (2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at UNITE HERE Local 2, 209 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday, August 12 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, August 12 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, August 14 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, August 14 (6:45 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): August General Meeting (Location TBD)

Thursday, August 15 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, August 15 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, August 17 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Location TBD)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Turnout Tuesday for Dean Preston, Every Tuesday!

It’s all hands on deck as we close in on the final months before the election this November! Join the Extreme Dean team every Tuesday from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister to call Dean’s supporters and get folks fired up about weekend mobilizations.

Board Game Night!

Wednesday, August 7th, 8:00-9:30 p.m. Invite your friends to play some socialist-themed games and hang out. We’ll have snacks, drinks, and good vibes. Feel free to bring your own games, drinks, and snack to share as well. All are welcome!

Jackie x Labor Mobilization Saturday, August 10th

Show out with our labor comrades from Local 21, SEIU 2015 and 1021, and other union comrades! We’ll be meeting this Saturday, August 10th from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at Garfield Square (26th and Harrison). We’ll split up to knock on doors to talk to voters in District 9 about why Jackie is the pro-labor candidate and a voice for all workers!

Attend the Extreme Dean Grand Office Opening on Sunday!

The Dean Preston campaign is moving to a new headquarters at 1630 Haight Street! Join us this Sunday, August 11th at 10:00 a.m. to celebrate our campaign HQ opening along with the California Nurses Association. We’ll have food, drinks, and fun!

See you there!

Join the Palestine Solidarity Anti-Imperialist Working Group in our No Appetite for Apartheid campaign in SF!

Inspired by long-standing Palestinian boycott tactics and the BDS call, we are canvassing local stores and asking them to pledge to become Apartheid Free by dropping products from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and colonization of Palestine. It’s time to turn up the heat on this apartheid regime and take apartheid off our plates!

We will be holding our first public canvass on August 18th!

Want to show your support? Sign our Apartheid-Free Pledge so business owners know how popular this movement is with their local customers. After signing the pledge, we would love to see you at any of our upcoming campaign strategy sessions and canvassing days.

• Materials prep & canvas script run-though Sunday, August 11th, 1:00-2:30 p.m. at 1916 McAllister
• Canvassing kick-off! Sunday, August 18th, 1:00-2:30 p.m. at 1800 Folsom St (Foods Co)
• Weekly canvassing every Sunday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. Check dsasf.org/events for meeting location updates.

Sign the BAD! Petition

Bay Area Divest! (BAD!) is a new coalition that believes we must invest our public funds in our communities, NOT in repression, war, or genocide! DSA SF officially endorses BAD!, along with East Bay DSA, AROC, Palestinian Youth Movement, AFSC, Palestinian Feminist Collective, JVP, CodePink, and several other great organizations. Please sign the petition to join BAD! in refusing to allow our public funds to go towards supporting genocide and occupation.

Our endorsed candidate

Vermonters will go to the polls on Tuesday, Aug. 13, to select the major parties’ nominees for the general election in November. The membership of the Champlain Valley Democratic Socialists of America voted to endorse just one candidate in the primary: Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, an active member of our chapter and a powerful voice for Vermont’s working class.

The Chittenden-Central District consists of Winooski and Essex Junction, most of Burlington and Essex, and a sliver of Colchester. If you live here, we urge you to vote on the Democratic ballot for the Vermont Senate’s only Progressive and its only socialist (Tanya also received DSA’s national endorsement).

In the last biennium, Tanya helped win the Vermont PRO Act and a safe injection site in Burlington. She also spoke out for Palestinian liberation and recently sued the governor. She introduced bills to prevent the privatization of public services and to increase civilian oversight of the police, and while these didn’t pass, we know she won’t stop fighting for bold ideas.

A Republican-backed TV celebrity wants to cut short Tanya’s important work in Montpelier. Of the four Democratic competitors in Chittenden-Central, a three-seat district, newcomer Stewart Ledbetter, a tough-on-crime “moderate,” is easily the worst.

But thanks to the generosity of various landlords and business owners, Ledbetter has easily outraised all three incumbents combined. As Senate President Pro Tempore, Phil Baruth doesn’t appear to be at risk, but Sen. Martine Gulick, a self-proclaimed social democrat whom Tanya has called an ally, does.

Alongside Tanya, we recommend voting for Martine. A Democrat who just completed a productive first term in office, she introduced several minor but successful bills with unobjectionable aims, such as improving safety for road work crews, promoting doula services, and creating a pathway to legalization for psilocybin in therapeutic settings.

The Progressive slate

With our usual reservations, we also recommend the Vermont Progressive Party’s full 2024 slate, which includes four statewide candidates: Bernie Sanders for U.S. Senate, Esther Charlestin for Governor, David Zuckerman for Lieutenant Governor, and Doug Hoffer for State Auditor.

Zuckerman, the Progs’ standard-bearer, faces another well-funded challenger, Winooski Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner, whom the Democrats have identified as a rising star in their party. Renner has publicly positioned himself as a left-liberal – albeit one without Zuckerman’s stubborn hippie streak – but his top donors belong to the plutocratic Tarrant family, including a former Republican nominee for U.S. Senate who spent $6 million of his own money in a failed attempt to take down Bernie Sanders.

In the Champlain Valley, the Progs have endorsed three new candidates for State Representative: Larry Lewack in Chittenden-13, Missa Aloisi in Chittenden-17, and Chloe Tomlinson in Chittenden-21.

Of the three, Tomlinson seems to have the leftmost instincts on issues like climate and criminal justice. As one of two active candidates in a two-seat district in Winooski, she also has the easiest path to office, where she would replace outgoing Progressive Rep. Taylor Small. A CVDSA member, Nick Brownell, filed to appear on the ballot but later decided against campaigning this time.

Lewack, a founding member of the Progressive Party who works as a town planner, has a long track record of involvement in community and politics and, with Rep. Gabrielle Stebbins having declined to seek re-election in Burlington’s South End, a chance to claim an open seat. He faces two candidates with credible résumés of their own in a district that tends to favor traditional Democrats, but running principally on a promise of tax reform, Lewack has not presented himself as a radical.

Aloisi has to defeat a Democratic “incumbent” who, owing to a dirty move by Gov. Scott, took over Progressive Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s House seat in the final weeks of the 2024 session, following her mayoral inauguration. With Mulvaney-Stanak’s endorsement, Aloisi aims to win a district that straddles Burlington’s Old North End and its New North End, combining disparate constituencies.

Socialism isn’t on the ballot in any of the abovementioned House races. But the campaigns by Tomlinson, Lewack, and Aloisi represent plausible opportunities for the Progressive Party to expand its footprint in Montpelier, as long as the three incumbent Progs running unopposed in Chittenden-15 and Chittenden-16 continue to caucus with the party. For opponents of the political duopoly that afflicts every US state except our own, this prospect has a value that hinges only in part upon the particular character of Vermont’s left-wing alternative.

Important policies like just cause eviction and paid family leave are also, to some degree, at stake. With Progressive candidates vying pragmatically to win the Democratic Party’s ballot line, be sure to vote in the Democratic primary. The names on the Progressive Party’s ballot, which exists purely as a legal requirement, are placeholders.

On Aug. 13, polling stations will open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

Judith Stein and Nelson Lichtenstein’s book dissects the Clinton administration’s “Fabulous Failure” to deliver on its notional progressive commitments in the context of weak and disorganized social movements.

More people are imprisoned in the U.S., at over two million, than in “Red” China, a country of over two billion.The prison rate in Russia, where over 500 people are incarcerated for every 100,000, is much lower than our own, which hovers at 724. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the rate of imprisonment among black Americans for drug offenses, a major part of the tremendous rise in our incarcerated population, far exceeds that of white people in this country. This is despite both racial groups sinking their sorrows in illegal substances at similar rates. America spends funds that could go to roads and hospitals on a massive, brutalizing and racist prison system. 

The ballooning of the prison population within the U.S. can be traced to the now infamous 1994 crime bill, which funneled more money and resources into building prisons and police patrolling the deindustrialized remnants of blue-collar, low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” said Bill Clinton in 2016. Clinton’s bill was  “bipartisan,” combining the efforts of racist and paranoid Republicans with cynical and racist Democrats, like Strom Thurmond’s close friend, then-senator Joseph Biden. 

In Nelson Lichtenstein and the late Judith Stein’s A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, the Clinton presidency is taken apart, issue by issue. As historians of labor and political economy in the United States, Lichtenstein and Stein offer an extensive, and detailed, expose of the political machinations of Clinton and the so-called “experts” whispering in his ears about the political benefits of locking millions of people behind bars or gutting remaining pieces of New Deal regulation. 

A through line in A Fabulous Failure is the inherent authoritarian nature of U.S. bourgeois politics, saturated with anti-progressive forces and cheerleaders for capitalist “ingenuity,” including experts claiming to care about the average person or marginalized groups. As demonstrated within the text, reforms that were considered relatively progressive, like Clinton’s healthcare proposal, were motivated by the Clinton administration’s alliances with some of the more “reasonable” business interests rather than progressive social forces. This had much to do with the product of decades of political repression against the Left, both within and outside the labor movement. 

“Missing were the social forces that could mobilize not just on behalf of their own constituents, but with sufficient strength to transform politics and the political economy as well,” Lichtenstein and Stein write.

Even Clinton’s most progressive advisors never considered attempting to rebuild or enlist these forces. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who has repackaged himself online as a left-wing populist, and others within the administration shared a very patronizing view about labor unions. “The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace,” Reich told press at the time. Labor unions themselves, decimated by a mixture of repression and horrible decision making, refused to meet the moment in terms of recruitment of workers in the white-collar “new economy” and among businesses like Walmart.  

Banking on the moral and rational impulses among certain sectors of the business community, Reich, Ira Magaziner, who co-led Clinton’s healthcare reform task force, and a slew of others never grasped the fundamental nature of politics itself: power and who has it. The service-sector industry, followed by Wall Street, leveraged their power, derived from their position within the capitalist economy, imposing themselves over the already limited political horizons of others, including rival industries in old-school manufacturing. 

A political animal, drenched in personal hubris and some level of delusion, Clinton was eager to win a second term in the White House. Early in the administration, facing pushback from so-called business allies (Hillary sat on the board of Walmart) and the Republican takeover of Congress, Clinton gave in to his baser, extremely shorter-term interests.This meant shifting his focus from a tepid “progressive” agenda, framed in terms of finding a “compromise” between business leaders and their employees and between Black and white Americans, to become a center-right, neoliberal totem. 

“All this changed with the Republican sweep of the 1994 midterm elections. The Clinton White House was not just thrown onto the defensive but would soon accommodate the conservative onslaught,” Lichtenstein and Stein stated. Very early on, Reich and others either were marginalized or forced to change their own positions on serious issues, while center-right sycophants like Larry Summers were prioritized within the administration. 

Without a social base to call their own, Reich and others, like Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born, who championed some level of banking regulation over derivatives, were isolated. 

“Born’s seemingly modest gambit soon provoked furious opposition, from both Wall Street and the economic heavyweights who occupied the commanding heights within the federal government: Rubin, Greenspan, and Levitt,” Lichtenstein and Stein explain. “Summers placed an angry call to Born, telling her, ‘I have thirteen bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II’.”

Inevitably, shorter-term financial interests that could immediately “unleash” the economy triumphed over any ideological concern for how society could benefit a majority. The various constituencies that had been convinced to vote for “change” in the early 1990s after a decade of Reaganism were abandoned.

“Bill Clinton often called his presidency a ‘bridge to the twenty-first century’. But that arch would prove fragile and misaligned, with foundation pylons and suspension cables that could not bear the weight of the inevitable storms, political and economic, that swept the nation in the years he left office,” Lichtenstein and Stein conclude. The broader working class were wholly dismissed, as the AFL-CIO wandered between complicity and some measure of “polite” critique of Democratic leadership. 

Clinton’s policies laid the groundwork for future global recessions which would gut middle class and working-class communities. Communities of color, which already bore the brunt of Clinton’s crime and welfare reform policies, would be worst-affected when Clinton’s financial deregulation culminated in the 2008 Financial Crisis. 

Biden is discussed at the tail-end of the book and mentioned in relation to major pieces of legislation, like the 1994 crime bill, and his support for Clinton initiatives that created a fourth and fifth Reagan term inside the White House. Stein and Lichtenstein also remind the reader that Summers and other authors of Wall Street deregulation were reincorporated into the Obama administration, following in the enduring American tradition of criminality being rewarded as “expertise.” 

A Fabulous Failure challenges us to have a more complex and knowledgeable view about the nature of U.S. bourgeois governance and the politics of progress. It is a politically immature view, for instance, to conclude that the Left should not engage with existing political and economic institutions. As depicted in the book, government matters, from business regulation to providing such things as better food safety codes, labor regulations, and protections for tenants. None of this is revolutionary, but these decisions can be life-changing for many people. 

Individual elected officials, even those that profess socialism or progressive politics, will not be sufficient to secure sound policies. Every administration, Democratic or Republican, features a revolving door between public officials and private corporate interests, setting the stage for any kind of reform to be countered or co-opted. The sincerity, or lack thereof, of the Clinton administration’s progressive operatives and populist campaign rhetoric was irrelevant in the context of a profoundly hostile ecosystem.

The more far-reaching goals of socialist administrations at any level of government can only be achieved if we succeed in building a more supportive ecosystem. The most important element of this ecosystem is a robust and ambitious labor movement. This movement will, in turn, help to build a broader network of progressive and socialist policy makers able to serve as advisors and functionaries, channeling the demands and interests of the exploited into material gains. Advisors drawn from the ranks of progressive social movements and dependent on them for their positions and influence will be more reliable and effective exponents of their goals than the most committed freelancer.

This, of course, is easier said than done. Over the years, we’ve seen a growth in terms of left-wing media voices and  progressive think tanks. These can’t compare, however, with the bevy of options capitalists, liberal or conservative, have at their disposal.

In the face of this discrepancy in power and resources, A Fabulous Failure showcases how critical it is to find ways to cultivate a deep bench of thinkers and policy aficionados accountable to progressive social forces. The best case scenario for the Clinton administration was always going to be disappointing from a socialist perspective. In the absence of a social base and supportive infrastructure for progressive change, what we actually got was much worse than that disappointing result: a skyrocketing incarceration rate, welfare restrictions, and eventually catastrophic financial deregulation. Without these supports, socialist administrations will also be subject to drift and disaster — regardless of the personal convictions they bring into office. 

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