Trump is desperate. The pandemic, recession, and uprising for Black lives have undermined his popularity and wrecked his credibility. His polls are plummeting across the country, even in the so-called “red states.”

To salvage his failing regime and hopes for reelection, Trump has turned to law and order racism and repression. At first, he tried to order the military to repress protests against racism and police brutality, but the generals blocked him.

So, instead, he deployed federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to crush the movement in Portland, Oregon. He’s sending them to Chicago, Seattle, New York, Oakland, and over a dozen cities across the country.

These agents evoke memories of the Gestapo. Their uniforms do not have identification, they patrol the city in unmarked vans, and they pack military grade weaponry.

They have teargassed protesters, beaten them, and detained many without charges in undisclosed locations. Trump’s storm troopers are a threat to our democratic rights and their deployment must be stopped immediately.

Portland Shows Us How to Fight

Trump hoped to intimidate Portland with outright repression. But his strategy has backfired, spurring the movement for Black lives to grow bigger, broader, and more radical.

Parents of protesters formed a “Wall of Moms” and a “Wall of Dads” to protect activists. The dads showed up with leaf blowers to disperse the stormtrooper’s teargas.

More groups are joining them. Organized workers have established a “Wall of Unions” and military veterans built a “Wall of Vets.” The protests have become so militant that they successfully forced the Feds to retreat to their headquarters.

Portland has shown us how to resist. We must follow their lead and rise up against the deployment of Trump’s storm troopers everywhere. In the words of the anti-fascist movement in Spain against Franco in the 1930s, we must say “No Pasarán!”—“You Shall Not Pass!”

Bringing the War Home

Who are these federal agents? They all come from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It was formed as part of the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that war is based on lies. It has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with empire and oil.

The US set up DHS to be its domestic arm of the war abroad. It houses among other agencies the Federal Marshalls, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ICE’s Border Tactical Unit (BORTAC) that are right now deployed in Portland and elsewhere. They usually police the borders as well as surveil, arrest, and deport undocumented immigrants, Arabs, and Muslims.

Trump has now turned this giant apparatus of repression against the uprising for Black lives and against all of us. Thus, as Martin Luther King said during the Vietnam War, “the bombs dropped abroad explode at home.”

Will the Democratic Party Resist Trump?

Thankfully the Democratic Party has objected to the stormtrooper’s deployment. But let’s be honest about the Democrats. They supported the establishment of DHS. Obama used ICE to deport more immigrants than any other president in US history.

Our own Senator Leahy secured contracts with DHS and ICE to establish their operations in Vermont. ICE’s office in Williston centralizes national information on undocumented workers and informs agents to arrest and deport them across the country.

Even worse, some Democrats are collaborating with Trump. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that she would welcome his agents on the condition that they police violent crime in her city. In other words, she will aid and abet federal police brutality.

Other Democratic Party governors and mayors oppose the deployment, but not on anti-racist grounds. They say their state troopers and local police can control protests and fight crime.

That is no alternative. We don’t want state troopers and local cops repressing our protests and policing our cities. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

Defund DHS, ICE and the Police!

Regardless, Trump won’t listen to the Democrats. He will deploy his storm troopers if we do not organize mass actions to stop him. Here in Vermont, we have a responsibility to demonstrate at the ICE and DHS offices in Williston.

They help Trump carry out repression in our state and across the country. Community Voices for Immigrant Rights already staged an emergency action in Burlington and will soon announce plans for a protest in Williston.

We all have a stake in this fight. As Martin Luther King declared, “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Trump is attacking immigrants, Black people, Muslims, Arabs, and Indigenous people.

In repressing demonstrations, he is undermining our collective right to organize, assemble, and fight for justice, equality and freedom. And he’s wasting our money on this repression and policing. That’s why we must unite and fight to defund DHS, ICE and the police and eventually abolish them.

We should take all that money and pay reparations to Black people and other groups oppressed by the US at home and abroad as well as fund jobs programs, Medicare for All, social services, and a Green New Deal. Amidst the pandemic and recession, it is time to invest in programs that put the needs of oppressed people, the working class, and the environment first.

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM

July 25, 2020 07:46

Right now, in the midst of COVID-19, we have a President, a Secretary of Education, and a capitalist class that is desperate to ignore the growing epidemiological threat that COVID-19 presents, and specifically the threat presented by re-opening schools full time in the Fall. This neglect could be a ploy to direct funds away from public education and into private schools, while at the same time putting teachers, staff, students, and their families and loved ones at risk. But not going back to full time, in-person school hasl material impacts — we lack any semblance of basic social democracy, so we don’t have sufficient subsidized child care for working parents and we won’t have sufficient unemployment income support for parents who have to stay at home because their kids are at home. Because that kind of subsidization and support is expensive, the brutal logic of capital prevails: re-open the schools, no matter how many more may die.

Like everything else about the COVID crisis, the contradictions reveal themselves and sharpen. We saw, a few years ago, an inspiring round of anti-austerity teacher’s strikes. Imagine a nationwide teacher’s strike on these demands. Imagine a nationwide strike, not just teachers, on these demands. Teachers’ unions are not interested in turning their schools into abattoirs and charnel houses for their members and charges. Organized teacher and staff labor strategy under this pandemic is a complicated issue, especially because the paramount demand — don’t open up schools in-person — if met creates massive economic harm and material consequences if not accompanied by demands for massive public spending on childcare and income assistance. But, we know the power workers, and teachers in particular, can wield when they strike. It is a massive, almost unimaginably difficult thing to accomplish. And these demands directly link to other vital demands to ensure basic social safety and health: M4A and social housing and rent control. It is enormously tricky for striking workers to coordinate the immediate need to avoid the danger of re-opening in-person school, the need for state action to replace public schools’ vital role in our meager social safety net (as they provide students food, social services like counseling, and childcare in addition to education), and the broader social demands that would blunt the harms of both this pandemic and capital in general. A nationwide teacher’s strike, if it could happen, won’t work unless parents support it. It is one thing for parents to deal with the inconvenience of teachers striking for a few days or weeks, it is another for them to support a strike to keep schools closed indefinitely. Perhaps demands must broaden further: bigger schools to make social distancing effective, hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes, hiring more staff to ensure regular disinfection, etc.

I’m a parent, so I think about this dilemma a lot. Given the absurdity of our federal system, we have thousands of different state, county, municipal boards of health, governors, mayors, city councils, school boards, making ad hoc and ill-advised decisions and rules on COVID, while the federal government’s response has been at turns incoherent, incompetent, and savage. Gavin Newsom is held up like a hero by liberals, and while less homicidal than many other governors, he’s too chicken shit to even make a proclamation on whether or how youth sports should be conducted. Parents are worried about how they can work if this crisis continues, and there is no coherence, no movement at the school level, much less at the county or state or nationally.

Now, it is clear that absent a mass popular movement pressuring the state, nothing like M4A or any of these other demands will happen. But the current crisis cannot wait for a realignment or a break, dirty or a clean, from the Democrats, nor can the protections and support students need be accomplished through electoral campaigning, because we are talking about a matter of months before schools ostensibly re-open. Regardless, the Democratic Party, institutionally incapable of working through its own contradictions, can only be pushed from the outside on these demands, because it will close ranks internally to make sure anything like M4A is off the table. The demands required of this crisis are potentially even bigger than M4A. The ruling class will oppose them more viciously than ever, because the demands require massive and unacceptable redistribution. But, the alternative is more dystopia, more failure, a deadly malaise. How can we organize a movement for a humane future?

John R. Parker, Jr.

(Maximas gratias ago to Bob Hodges for his helpful suggestions on this.)

Contact: for High Peaks DSA, Zohar Gitlis, highpeaksdsa@gmail.com; for Sunrise Adirondacks, Kayla Lodico, sunriseadirondacks@gmail.com; Fred Balzac, 518-588-7275/fredbalzac@aol.com

Co-authored by the High Peaks DSA Executive Committee, Sunrise Adirondacks Steering Committee, and Fred Balzac.

For immediate release:

High Peaks Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Adirondacks and Fred Balzac commit to work together through the Sept. 15th election and beyond for progressive reforms—for the benefit of all Saranac Lake Village residents and the region’s environment.

Sign up to volunteer for the High Peaks DSA for Fred Balzac campaign: https://forms.gle/NbNrFTVsRrtLDtVR9

Two local chapters of national political organizations that are at the forefront of the progressive movement in the United States have endorsed Green Party candidate Fred Balzac in the race for Village of Saranac Lake trustee. The election, which was postponed from its original date of March 18, 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will take place at the Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake on Tuesday, Sept. 15, as well as by absentee ballot.

The two groups—High Peaks Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Sunrise Adirondacks—are urging village residents to support Balzac’s candidacy in a broader effort to raise a wide range of pressing issues and needed reforms at the local level, in the hopes of spurring a large voter turnout for the Sept. 15th election.

“We are seeing a record number of young people waking up to inequality in our society; simultaneously poor, historically marginalized and oppressed people are organizing mass movements with bold demands to address systemic injustices. It’s been astonishing to see how many people want to see change locally as well. In June we had about 700 people demanding racial justice in Riverside Park, which is more people than voted in each of the last two Village Board elections. We’ve seen this level of interest bleed into Village Board meetings, which have been well attended throughout the spring and summer. We’re excited to support Fred and feel confident that he can rise to the current moment, unlike some of our current legislators who have continued to fumble and play defense,” said High Peaks DSA Co-Chair Zohar Gitlis.

According to village records, 590 votes were cast in the most recent competitive race for trustee, in 2016. In the 2018 election, with candidates for mayor and two trustee seats running unopposed, only 255 votes were cast. The village has 5,400 residents, according to saranaclakeny.gov.

Among the locally relevant issues that one or both groups have been grappling with are the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, housing rights, the establishment of an anti-choice pregnancy center in the village, policing reform, the lack of widespread access to renewable energy and the effect of climate change on the local environment.

Solutions and reforms being put forth by the groups include: mutual aid; rent cancellation and an extended eviction moratorium; a shift in spending from policing to social services; local implementation of the Green New Deal; sustainable development and “smart growth”; and a diversification of the local economy (more details here).

In the race for village trustee, Balzac—whose campaign slogan is “Your struggle is OUR fight”—was either already running on these issues and advocating for these solutions or has embraced them as a result of the endorsement process. Members of the two grassroots activist groups see his candidacy as a vehicle for influencing public discourse on these issues and solutions not only during this year’s election but going forward.

“We are excited by Fred’s willingness to listen and dedication to representing the people of his community, and his urgency to take action on public concerns,” said Kayla Lodico, Hub Coordinator of Sunrise Adirondacks.

As for the candidate himself, he views the endorsements by the two groups as an opportunity to build a pro-people/pro-environment coalition throughout the Adirondack North Country. “I am honored but also humbled by the endorsement of both High Peaks DSA and Sunrise Adirondacks and take seriously our joint commitment to continue working together on issues that are so critical to the well-being of village residents and the local environment, win or lose on Sept. 15th,” Balzac said.

“Both of these groups are comprised of smart, dynamic and dedicated individuals—many of whom are two, three or four decades younger than me—and they really represent the future of our village and region. I’m pleased to report that, as long as these good people stay involved, the future is in very good hands.”

To learn more about: Balzac’s candidacy and voting in the village election, including by absentee ballot, contact Fred at 518-588-7275 or fredbalzac@aol.com; re: High Peaks DSA, email the Executive Committee at highpeaksdsa@gmail.com and/or visit highpeaksdsa.org; and re: Sunrise Adirondacks, email the Steering Committee at sunriseadirondacks@gmail.comand/or visit facebook.com/sunriseadirondacks.

About the Candidate

Fred Balzac has more than 40 years of professional experience as a journalist, medical writer-editor, publicist-promotions writer, innkeeper, nonprofit/community organizer and grant writer. He earned a B.A. in English from Columba University in 1983 (graduating with the same class as one Barack Obama!) and, 30 years later, went back to college to earn a Multimedia Journalism Certificate at SUNY Plattsburgh, where he continues to take a class each fall & spring semester.

Since moving to the Adirondacks full-time in 1993, he has been involved as a volunteer in numerous causes and community efforts. As co-organizer and president of Bridge Beyond in the Town of Jay, he led a 15-year effort to protect the Jay rapids and swimming hole and preserve the historic (circa 1857) Jay Covered Bridge (JCB)—resulting in a million-dollar restoration plan that renovated the JCB as a pedestrian-bike crossing and saved the scenic-recreational upstream river corridor from desecration via the placement of a new bridge downstream, while also restoring reliable emergency-vehicle protection to the eastern side of the Ausable River. This pro-environment struggle by Balzac and comrades was recognized early on by the Adirondack Council, which bestowed its Community Action Award on Bridge and Beyond in 1995.

Following his opposition to the creation of an occupancy tax in Essex County out of a concern that it would largely benefit the county’s richest community, Lake Placid/North Elba, and shortchange most of the county’s other 17 towns, Balzac was named by then-Jay Supervisor Thomas O’Neill to the county Occupancy Tax Advisory Committee and briefly served as its chair. A registered Democrat for most of his adult life, Fred served on the Essex County Democratic Committee from 2008-2011 before changing his registration to the Green Party.

Balzac’s reasons for switching included his alignment with the Green Party’s Four Pillars and Ten Key Values (see gpny.org), the continuing influence of corporations and the wealthy on the Democratic Party at the national and state levels and the inability of the Party to endorse unions at the county level.

A formative influence on Balzac was his temporary position as a FEMA-funded crisis counselor in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, which helped open his eyes to the impoverished living conditions of many North Country residents. Ideologically, Fred has consistently moved to the left as he has watched inequality grow under the leadership of mainstream politicians, and he is now proud to be a dues-paying member of DSA.

Issues And Solutions

Here’s how Fred Balzac’s candidacy for Village of Saranac Lake trustee aligns with some of High Peaks DSA’s concerns and aims:

Housing rights: One of the group’s earliest actions was a call for rent cancellation in the face of the COVID-19 economic shutdown. Balzac, who is a dues-paying member of DSA, supports rent cancellation or mortgage cancellation for all tenants, landlords and homeowners adversely affected by the pandemic and is calling for a local extension of New York State’s moratorium on evictions through at least the end of 2020. If elected, he is committed to at least beginning a discussion of the village implementing rent-control/rent-stabilization policies similar to what exists in New York City.

Mutual aid: As a response to the severe economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, High Peaks DSA initiated an active mutual-aid campaign that is ongoing (see highpeaksdsa.org/campaigns). Balzac supports this campaign and endorses the pandemic-response platform of Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins (see howiehawkins.us/platform), including the implementation of such “COVID-19 emergency measures for the duration of the crisis” as “Medicare to pay for COVID-19 testing and all emergency health care; a “moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and utility shutoffs”; suspension of “student loan payments with 0% interest accumulation”; and “a 10-year, $42-trillion ecosocialist Green New Deal for economic recovery through a just transition to 100% clean energy by 2030.”

Crisis pregnancy center (CPC): As an active member of High Peaks DSA’s CPC working group, Balzac helped draft the group’s position statement opposing the establishment of the Adirondack Pregnancy Center in Saranac Lake and vehemently opposes the center on the grounds that “It will harm women.” He believes the village Development Board may be in violation of its own Development Code and is calling for the board to reverse its decision in March approving the center’s establishment. Balzac is also calling for the Development Code to be revised to enable the Village Board of Trustees to override Development Board decisions. “Elected officials should have the final say, not people who are appointed to boards and who are not directly accountable to the People,” Balzac said.

Policing reforms: High Peaks DSA has taken a leadership role on this issue, having organized the recent “Black Lives Matter” demonstration in Riverside Park that drew the largest number of protestors seen in Saranac Lake in recent memory and also meeting recently with Chief of Police James Joyce, and the group has launched a multi-pronged campaign focusing on policing and justice system reforms. Balzac, who attended the meeting with Chief Joyce and was impressed by his openness to working with the community, supports shifting Village funds from policing per se to social services—in terms of things like 911 calls about mental-health-related or other non-criminal matters. The candidate is also calling on the Village to enact a totally transparent process open to all members of the public in fulfilling Governor Cuomo’s recent executive order on reforming local police policies and practices.

Budget priorities and political transparency: Several community members, including High Peaks DSA members, spoke out and/or attended the June 22 Village Board meeting at which the board, by a 3-0 vote (with Trustee Patrick Murphy absent and Mayor Clyde Rabideau not voting), approved a $12,500 contract with the Lake Placid-based Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) for destination-tourism marketing services, along with an additional $12,500 for the creation of a community enhancement fund available to the village’s Arts & Culture, Downtown and Parks & Trails advisory boards. While Balzac supports the latter funding, he says the funding of ROOST raises serious questions about the wisdom and transparency of the Village Board’s action.

“ROOST already receives a couple of million dollars a year in bed-tax money to do things like manage saranaclake.com,” Balzac said. “For it to enter into a contract with the village that includes managing saranaclake.com is double-dipping and, in my view, bad public policy. Given that ROOST has been dropped by both Franklin County and the Town of Harrietstown, I question why Mayor Rabideau and Trustee Shapiro in particular pushed to give ROOST work in Saranac Lake—at a time when New York State is facing billions in revenue loss that the state seems likely to pass on to localities in the form of cuts in state aid.

“We also need to rethink the whole approach to tourism that ROOST and its CEO, Jim McKenna, have been pushing in the region. Lake Placid is now facing a crisis in affordable housing due to the advent of Airbnb and other short-term rentals and is becoming overdeveloped and unlivable thanks to an over-reliance on tourism that benefits the big hotels and not necessarily the residents of the community. I don’t want to see that fate befall Saranac Lake and will fight it.”

An Affinity with Sunrise Adirondacks for Going Green

The alignment of Balzac’s candidacy with Sunrise Adirondacks is evident from the group’s rigorous endorsement process that encompassed a detailed questionnaire and conference-call interview with the candidate, including such questions and responses as:

Regarding the requirement that he take the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and the Sunrise Movement’s Green New Deal Pledge to use your office to support and advance the Green New Deal through all legal avenues, Balzac affirmed that he made both pledges.

Other Important Issues To Fred Balzac

● “Working to enhance our current housing stock, protect the rights of tenants while being fair to landlords and ensure more & better affordable housing—e.g., by requiring developers of high-end housing to set aside a percentage of units for medium-to-low-income housing….”

● “Push for ecologically sustainable development and SMART growth—bearing in mind always the potentially catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis on our community”

● “A MORATORIUM on any further waterfront development: I remain hopeful that the new hotel on Rte. 86 will prove to be beneficial to the Village economy but believe the project was not well-thought-through concerning its placement, oversized mass, and impact on traffic patterns & water quality—and that similar future projects should not be allowed on our waterways.”

● “Go Green: work toward more renewable energy, preservation of open space, and local food production in both the public and private realms—while connecting local government with area schools to expand educational opportunities for all, including adults”

● “Expand local tourism efforts while diversifying our economy so that Saranac Lake never becomes too dependent on tourists and we can avoid, for example, the adverse effects Lake Placid is experiencing with short-term rentals/Airbnbs. I’m also a strong supporter of the arts as an economic driver.”

● “Enthusiastic support for Franklin County’s choice of the Franklin County Local Development Corporation (LDC) to handle marketing the region—a choice the Village Board should go with”

● “Maximizing municipal services while keeping Village taxes down as much as possible”

● “Most of all, honest, open and transparent local government, serving the interests of working people, families with school-age children, seniors, renters, property owners, the economically disadvantaged, small business owners and permanent residents—not the special interests (defined as any entities that seek consideration from government that’s not in the public interest)”

The post Press Release: HPDSA & Sunrise ADK endorse Fred Balzac for Village Board appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com / https://rednet.socialists.nyc/rpm/ or on twitter @nycRPM. 

YDSA of BC is calling on Boston College to divulge details about the money it received under the CARES Act earlier this year, and for BC to promptly disburse the money to students as intended under the law. We have serious concerns about the handling of this money by the university, money that was specifically designated by the congress of the United States for relief of students.

Under the law schools were required to disburse at least fifty percent of the money they received directly to students. Boston College reportedly received $6,448,576, meaning at a minimum $3,224,288 should have been given out in grants. This money was not intended to be commingled with financial aid, used to supplement existing support programs. BC cannot give this money to students in August and then determine the students need less support in the coming year. It was to be given to students to help cope with school closures and to survive during the pandemic. President Trump signed the bill into law on March 27th. It is now mid July and BC students do not appear to have received much of this money.

On May 1st Boston University announced it created a web page for students to apply for payments ranging from $500 to $6000. Students had until May 8th to apply. Salem State University set up a webpage with information about the act and instructions on how to apply for grants. UMASS  Amherst set up a similar website.

The University of Chicago announced it would be giving 100% of the $6.2 million it received to students. Harvard, before succumbing to political pressure to return the money, announced in April it would was going to  allocate 100% of the $8.6 million it received to students as well. Georgetown announced that as of July 9th it distributed $3.055 million, giving grants of $2,600 to 1077 students. We are now four months into the pandemic and students at BC are still waiting for news of any kind related to this money. Almost comically, the only mention of the CARES Act on any BC webpage is on the alumni center’s page where BC explains how the law provides incentives for people to donate money to BC.

BC closed in March. It kept several hundred students with demonstrated needs on campus until the beginning of May, but then forced them to leave campus stating it wasn’t providing summer housing to students, even those it determined just a month and a half earlier were in need of a place to stay. Then in June BC moved football players back into the dorms. Many of those students forced to leave in May faced hardships and could have used this money then for food, housing, and travel. And past information related to students’ financial aid status does not accurately reflect the situations they may be facing now. That’s why other institutions set up processes for students to apply for the money based on current needs during the crisis.

BC needs to produce a full accounting of the money it received and immediately disburse 100% of the funds to students who need financial support and  who are entitled to this money from the government. An institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and an active donor base does not need to be keeping any of this money for institutional spending.

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com / rednet.socialists.nyc or on twitter @nycRPM.

YDS of BC officially condemns BC for its total lack of leadership and its inaction in response to the guidelines proposed by ICE targeting international students. One hundred and eighty universities from across the country filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit against ICE. Boston College was not part of this group.There is no excuse for this abdication. Read the statement from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration here.

The UAW, the union that includes the Boston College graduate worker’s along with grad workers from Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, is filing an amicus brief in the case. The UAW previously filed an amicus brief in the case against Trump’s travel ban in 2018. On Monday graduate students from across Boston hosted a rally at the Massachusetts State House in opposition to ICE’s potential ban on international students. Why are graduate students doing more to fight for international students at BC than the actual university is?

BC claims to be a leading Catholic Jesuit university, but fails at almost every turn to take a moral stand when faced with the opportunity. From refusing to divest from fossil fuels, it’s association with weapons manufacturers, employing a police Chief who collaborated with ICE. continued discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, and it’s failure to confron racsim and hate crims on campus, BC fails to live up to its own claim of adhering to some set of moral values.

On BC’s website, on the page of the Office of International Students and Scholars, the school states that others have filed lawsuits and thus hopefully ICE’s proposed guidelines will not go into effect. This is completely outrageous. To say in the face of great injustice that others are doing something so hopefully it will be taken care of is morally indefensible and unacceptable.

We reiterate the call made by the BC Asian Caucus for BC to file an amicus brief in opposition to ICE’s guidelines. The fact that so many universities have done so and we are left demanding once again that BC take action in the face of a moral outrage is sadly not surprising, but it is nonetheless disheartening and unacceptable.

The latest episode of Heart of a Heartless World is an interview with Rev. Andrew Wilkes, longtime member of DSA, a contributor to the Religion and Socialism Working Group, and a writer for outlets such as The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Sojourners and others. A doctoral candidate in political science at the Graduate Center in the City University of New York and former Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, Rev. Wilkes is co-pastor along with his wife Rev. Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes at the Double Love Experience, www.doubleloveexperience.org We talk with Rev. Wilkes about the forthcoming event, “Faith, Abolition, and Socialism,” a panel discussion on Thursday, July 16th, 2020 at 7:30PM EDT. This is the first event in a conversation series organized by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Religion and Socialism working group. Rev. Wilkes will be in conversation with Linda Sarsour, the co-founder of Until Freedom and former co-chair of the Women’s March, on how faith traditions can help undergird abolition, undo structural racism, and push toward a fundamental restructuring of our political economy. We hope you can join us! Go here to RSVP: https://www.dsausa.org/calendar/faith-abolition-and-socialism/

July 07, 2020 03:44

By David Roddy and Alyssa De La Rosa

A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 1

A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 2

A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 3

4: DSA Looks Inward

On Sunday, January 20, 1985, President Ronald Reagan was sworn in to a second term. DSA’s aspirations for a Mondale presidency–which DSA Labor Commission vice-chair Timothy Sears described as an opportunity to tell the truth about “[Reagan’s] phony ‘recovery’ with its staggering interest rates and declining standards of living, about the insane arms race, about the brutal budget cuts and the dirty little war in Central America–were now irrelevant.

With the departure of Manning Marable from formal organizing within DSA in 1984, Cornel West took the mantle as the organization’s leading Black scholarly voice. West described DSA as, “The first multi-racial socialist organization close enough to my kind of politics that I could join.” Like other people of color that comprised DSA’s National Minorities Committee, West was critical of DSA’s decision not to back Jesse Jackson’s primary campaign, noting at the time, “Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic nomination constituted the most important challenge to the American left since the emergence of the civil rights movement in the fifties and the feminist movement in the seventies. Unfortunately, the American left, for the most part, missed this grand opportunity.”

Following the defeat of Mondale, the Democratic Left devoted an entire issue to the question of building multi-racial coalitions, featuring leading Black members of DSA. In this issue, DSA leader and Jackson campaigner Gerald Hudson noted, “In the summer of 1983, few on the black left doubted either the necessity or the possibility of creating a multiracial coalition. We had always been convinced that black unity was necessary to achieve ‘liberation,’ but we no longer believed it to be enough. Racism could not be eradicated from American society, nor the abject poverty of a third or more of Afro-Americans eliminated, without the creation of a broad-based movement for social change. We had good reason to be hopeful. In Chicago, in Boston, around the candidacy of Jesse Jackson for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, movements embodying these convictions had emerged onto the bleak landscape of American politics. By mid-1984, though few of us doubted the necessity of such a coalition, many of us had come to doubt its possibility.”

Hudson observed that “This subject has led to debates within DSA,” continuing that “Many black leftists were dismayed with and puzzled by the failure of important segments of the white left to support either Mel King’s mayoral campaign in Boston or Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. After all, the movements that grew around the candidacies of these men sought the empowerment of blacks through programs and demands that were of general benefit. Moreover, they made explicit overtures to the progressive white community. When that community did not respond, many of us were baffled and disappointed.”

Hudson locates “class first” politics as the source of the white progressive community reluctance to embrace the Rainbow Coalition, stating“ many democratic socialists came to believe that it was possible to discern a saving unity in a progressive economic program. The enormous appeal of this idea should not be underestimated. Did not the various oppressions out of which these movements arose have an economic aspect? Though racism or sexism was not reducible to their economic aspects, that they had such an aspect meant that their victims would benefit from an economically based progressive program.”

However, Hudson also observed, “Racism and sexism, insofar as they cannot be economically defined, go unopposed. When movements develop that do oppose these problems, they go unsupported by supporters of economically based coalition politics. Moreover, although white leftists may agree, for example, with the need for a full-scale effort against racism, in practice they often perceive the need for a coalition that includes constituencies that will not accept an anti-racist campaign (e.g., in Boston many leftists saw the need to mobilize racist white ethnics and called race a divisive issue in the 1983 mayoral race). Unfortunately, we have not been willing to step back and assess the failures of economically based coalitions and examine the complex issues involved in the building of such coalitions. ”

The Black Left and the Democratic Party

For West, the question of the rightward shift of the Democrats under Mondale, “the efforts for black unity and the political articulation of people of color in this country is now sophisticated enough to link its concerns with the downtrodden white working poor and the morally sensitive white middle class–as evidenced in the Jackson campaign. Soon the domestic front political pressure is brought to bear on the Democratic party to either embrace or exclude progressive forces. If it chooses the former, leftist possibilities loom large within the two-party system; if it chooses the latter, the only alternative becomes that of wholesale assault on the two-party system with the creation of a third political party.”

Still, some Jewish members of DSA remained skeptical of Jackson’s ability to attract Jewish voters. Paulette Pierce, at the time a member of the National Executive Committee of DSA’s Feminist Commission, wrote forcefully against this mindset: “Jewish progressives charge anti-Semitism, and black progressives suspect that a not too subtle racism may be at play. Without an open and perhaps heated exchange about this issue, the left will find it impossible to organize successfully within the black community, and black leftists already in progressive organizations like DSA will find it increasingly difficult to function… We are accused of engaging in racially polarizing politics and told to grow up and content ourselves with an integrationist strategy.” Pierce argued that “it is implicitly racist to assume that a coalition strategy which puts racial issues at the core of its politics cannot succeed. At best, such a position assumes that racism is presently so entrenched in our society that multi-racial alliances based on equality are currently impossible.”

Pierce also highlighted the chilling effect DSA’s endorsement of Mondale had on its small Black membership: “What is deeply troubling to many blacks including this writer is why so many of the constituencies targeted by the Rainbow Coalition stayed away and chose to support the neoliberal domestic and cold-war foreign policies of Walter Mondale…What is left unstated but may be the most important reason why white progressives stayed away is their fear that a coalition which puts antiracism at the center of its politics will alienate white labor, the constituency which many on the left still believe is essential to a successful progressive alliance…Obviously, Jackson was not the perfect candidate, but why must the black candidate be perfect? In anticipation of those who will ask, ‘Must we then accept the worst?’, Jesse was not the worst, Mondale was.”

Once again, those in the organization that were sympathetic to a sort of progressive Zionism took exception. Jeffry Mallow, who first criticized Marable for his endorsement of Jackson, responded to Pierce: “ The January-February issue of DEMOCRATIC LEFT was more than a little troubling for a Jewish socialist to read…we have Paulette Pierce’s apologia for Jesse Jackson’s antisemitism, wherein she…portrays the “hymie” remark as a one-time gaffe, rather than one of many antisemitic slurs which Jackson has uttered over the last decade” and “implies that Jews and other whites are racist because they refused to vote for a black anti-semite. Frankly, what attracts Jews to the democratic left is that they do not have to ignore their identity, divorce their people, and support everybody’s self-determination but their own. Let’s hope that, at least in DSA, it stays that way.”

The National Minority Commission and the 1985 Convention

The result of these divisions was the whitening of an already white-dominated organization. A report back from the 1985 convention noted that “Low participation of Black and Latino delegates, however, was a cause for concern. While every major convention plenary afforded minority representation from the podium, there were still fewer Blacks, Latinos, and Asian members at Berkeley than at the New York convention in 1983.”

The Commissions, meanwhile, organized to change Harrington’s proposed economic policy draft for the 1985 convention arguing ”Any left should examine the economy from the point of view of the working class-this draft does not. Any accurate view of the US working class would have to notice that our society is stratified by race…It is the responsibility of a socialist organization to offer an analysis that includes within its perspective the economic realities of the entire people.” This language was accepted and the convention had a special plenary on race and the left where “Cornel West advocated an anti-racist, anti-imperialist strategy for the organization….Speaker Bev Stein described Portland’s role in building the Oregon Rainbow Coalition. Mel Pritchard of San Francisco spoke of the complex issues faced by DSA’s minority members. Jim Jacobs called for focused organizing to counter racism in white communities, and Dolores Delgado Campbell outlined Latino issues and concerns.”

Mel Pritchard, who came out of the New American Movement, was elected Organization Secretary for the National and Racial Minorities Committee at the 1985 Convention. He spoke to us about his frustration with DSA at that time, arguing that at the time of the merger DSOC “weren’t going to do any conscious anti-racism work. That was essential to their strategy in organizing…That’s not gonna work. I was hoping the merger might create more of a case to do anti-racism organizing.” However, he found the economism advocated by the former acolytes of Max Schactman previously in DSOC left little hope that the anti-racist work carried about in NAM by the likes of himself and Manning Marable could viably continue within DSA. Within a year he left “because the Shachtmanites who institutionally controlled DSOC controlled DSA”

Dolores Delgado Campbell, another speaker on that panel and co-chair of the Latino Commission at the time, related to us about the difficulties in retaining members of color in the organization: “We had people who were drawn by what we said we represented but it wasn’t enough for them. They were drawn by people like Manning Marable and Harrington recruited people like Dolores Huerto and Eleicaio Medina, who were major leaders in the UFW. ”

Nonetheless, Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha–the Commissions newsletter–noted that “by majority votes the delegates supported our positions of the draft economic plans and Central American [solidarity] work,” indicating that the organization was broadly sympathetic to the work of the Commissions.

That year, the Latino and Anti Racism Commissions developed a series of local leadership “Facing Racism” talks, designed to highlight that “the authentic popular struggles of people of color are constituent parts of the left we seek to create.” Beverly Stein, the Co-Chair of Portland DSA, noted in Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha that “the events were very successful, attracting new face to DSA and giving us an opportunity to educate, primarily the white left, about racism.”

Lookings Toward a future Rainbow Coalition

By the spring of 1986, DSA began warming relations with the Rainbow Coalition, with both Michael Harrington and Jesse Jackson addressing the opening session of a conference titled New Directions, which brought together the various strands of labor and social movements together to organize for a leftward shift within the Democratic Party.

Writing in the November/December 1986 edition of the Democratic Left, DSA Afro-American Commission chair Shakoor Aljuwani argued for DSA to take an active role in a potential Jackson 1988 campaign; “The Rainbow Coalition showed that it is possible to build a broad and powerful constituency of the “locked-outs and drop-outs,” the poor, and working people - groups that in other countries form the base of parties of the left. It was the major progressive voice to counter the onslaught of conservatism. It brought dynamism to the otherwise lifeless efforts of the Democratic party against the Reagan offensive.”

Aljuwani spoke to the need for the organization to embrace the consciously multi-racial strategy of the Rainbow Coalition, writing that “In the moral vision and political program of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition there exists a deliberate attempt to embrace the interests and needs of Afro-Americans, the elderly, women, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, small farmers, Jews, Arabs, displaced industrial workers, trade unionists, gays, peace activists. The major problem has been convincing the three major liberal constituencies – labor, feminists, and Jews – of the seriousness of that vision and rhetoric. It is here that DSA can play a major and possibly even a key role. Some in DSA have raised the question of whether the Rainbow Coalition will be a tool only for ethnic political interests or become a broadly based multi-issue grassroots movement. Our response to the Rainbow can help shape the answer.”

Manning Marable, divorced from DSA following the 1984 Presidential election, noted the profound need for a progressive program to address rising rates of Black impoverishment: “In New York City, between 1980 and 1992, 87,000 private-sector jobs were lost. During the same time period, the number of African-Americans living below the poverty level increased from 520,000 to 664,000 people. The average black family in New York City now earns $24,000 annually, compared to over $40,000 a year for whites.”

Cornel West and the Development of DSA’s Anti-Racist Politics

In 1985, Cornel West–Chair of the Afro-American Commission preceding Aljuwani–developed a pamphlet for DSA’s strategic position on racism titled “Towards a Socialist Theory of Racism.” West laid out the following questions addressing DSA’s orientation to race: “What is the relationship between the struggle against racism and socialist theory and practice in the United States? Why should people of color active in antiracist movements take democratic socialism seriously? And how can American socialists today learn from inadequate attempts by socialists in the past to understand the complexity of racism?”

West criticized socialist movements that placed “racism under the general rubric of working-class exploitation…At the turn of the century, this position was put forward by many leading figures in the Socialist party, particularly Eugene Debs. Debs believed that white racism against peoples of color was solely a “divide-and-conquer strategy” of the ruling class and that any attention to its operations “apart from the general labor problem” would constitute racism in reverse.” West criticized this position as an “analysis that confines itself to oppression in the workplace overlooks racism’s operation in other spheres of life.”

He also criticized a conception of racism that “acknowledges the specific operation of racism within the workplace… but remains silent about these operations outside the workplace. This viewpoint holds that peoples of color are subjected both to general working-class exploitation and to a specific “super-exploitation” resulting from less access to jobs and lower wages. On the practical plane, this perspective accented a more intense struggle against racism than did Debs’ viewpoint, and yet it still limited this struggle to the workplace.”

West presented an alternative theory of racism for DSA, arguing the “racist practices result not only from general and specific working-class exploitation but also from xenophobic attitudes that are not strictly reducible to class exploitation. From this perspective, racist attitudes have a life and logic of their own, dependent upon psychological factors and cultural practices…To put it somewhat crudely, the capitalist mode of production constitutes just one of the significant structural constraints determining what forms racism takes in a particular historical period. Other key structural constraints include the state, bureaucratic modes of control, and the cultural practices of ordinary people. The specific forms that racism takes depend on choices people make within these structural constraints.”

West placed the “whitening” of DSA between its first and second National convention in the context of a historical “black suspicion of white-dominated political movements (no matter how progressive)” due to “the distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of color…”

He elaborated that this disparity was amplified by “the disproportionate white middle-class composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the participation by peoples of color,” and pointed out the paradox that “this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to antiracist struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist movement. Progressive organizations often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to attract a critical mass of people of color because of their current predominately white racial and cultural composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily-white, and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join.”

West thought that “the only effective way the contemporary democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because the bulk of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans) is to be sensitized to the critical importance of antiracist struggles. This “conscientization” cannot take place either by reinforcing agonized white consciences by means of guilt, nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no practical implications.” He further argued that “a major focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead democratic socialists to act upon their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the world; it also will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within concrete contexts of struggle. This interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and the realization of two overlapping goals: democratic socialism and antiracism.”

West’s piece became the primary anti-racist text of DSA, and whether followed or not, would serve as the road map to steer the organization forward.