September 10, 2020 20:55

By James J. Jackson, Jr

Comrades, the time is now!

Like many of you, I was thrilled when our chapter received the phenomenal news that the Sacramento Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Charter Amendment, will appear on the November ballot as Measure C.

This means that after years of hard work, draining legal battles, and intense coalition building, Sacramento will finally have the chance to vote for Real Rent Control.

This is a great victory, one that almost makes up for the fact that the Strong Mayor initiative (Measure A) will also be on the November ballot.

But the fact that both Real Rent Control and Strong Mayor are on the same ballot might be one of the greatest opportunities presented to us as a chapter. We have the chance to defeat the neoliberal opportunism of Mayor Darrell Steinberg and his capitalist cronies not once, but twice!

If we can defeat Strong Mayor and win Real Rent Control in the same election then not only will the working class of Sacramento win twice, but we will have shown that democratic socialism is a force to be reckoned with in Sacramento.

In order to make that happen we need all hands on deck. This might frustrate some of you to hear because it has been such a long battle, but getting the rent control measure on the ballot was the easy part. Now the hard work begins.

Katie Valenzuela, our democratic socialist city council member-elect, has grouped together a coalition that is taking initiative to both fight against Measure A and in favor of Measure C, in addition to fighting for a budget that reflects the needs of Sacramento’s working class. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out The People’s Budget Sacramento!

We need to offer these campaigns all the help and resources we are capable of giving as a chapter, and the connections between defeating Strong Mayor and winning Real Rent Control should be made explicit in our platform as a chapter.

And we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that Strong Mayor will easily be defeated nor that Rent Control will be easily won. While clearly very unpopular with activist groups like ours, the amount of money behind the Strong Mayor and Anti Rent Control campaigns are in the millions. The only thing that defeats big money in an election is dedicated and intentional organization, this is where we come in.

Our chapter has a duty to our history, our ideals, and to the material needs of Sacramento to show our class power. This can be done not once but twice in this election, but it won’t happen at all if we do not organize as intentionally and as intensely as possible.

This means we must do at least two things:

1. We must never stop mounting public pressure on our community leaders to get them to oppose Strong Mayor and to support Real Rent Control. Whether it is our union, our organization, or our elected officials, we have to keep the pressure on.

2. We must engage our members in these campaigns in a way that does not put the burden of labor on anyone individually but shares it collectively. Meaning we don’t just passively ask our members to vote or rally them into anti Steinberg frenzies but instead we must be intentional by giving members the resources they need to get involved. If we are too passive in this moment we risk losing not once, but twice.

Our victory is in our hands comrades. Socialists love to say “We have a world to win.” Well, this is one of those chances to win a piece of that world. It’s not every election that you get the opportunity to reject neoliberalism twice on the same ballot. Let’s not waste this opportunity.

So comrades, get to phone-banking, fill up public comment at every city council meeting, and give everything you can to these campaigns. This is our chance to show Darrell Steinberg that Sacramento is not a neoliberal city, we are a democratic socialist one!

Let us take action and campaign like we have never campaigned before!

Comrades, the time is now.

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.

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

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in New York City 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.

Our latest episode of "Heart of a Heartless World" is a recording of the latest webinar put on by the Religion & Socialist working group. On July 16th, Linda Sarsour, the co-founder of Until Freedom and former co-chair of the Women’s March, spoke with Rev. Andrew Wilkes, a pastor, policy director, and member of Religious Socialism’s editorial group, about how faith traditions can help undergird abolition, undo structural racism, and push toward a fundamental restructuring of our political economy. This Thursday, August 20th, at 7:30pm EDT, Rev. Wilkes will be in conversation with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, National Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, on how to build an inclusive movement for economic justice. We hope you enjoy the podcast, and can join us at the webinar! Go here to RSVP: https://act.dsausa.org/survey/Building_Inclusive_Movement_Economic_Justice_Liz_Theoharris/

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

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 websites revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or rednet.socialists.nyc as well as on twitter @nycRPM.

The Champlain Valley DSA is excited to announce the endorsement of an excellent slate of candidates for the 2020 elections. Meet the candidates below.
We will also be hosting a Meet the Candidates webinar with endorsed candidates for the state legislature on Monday, July 27. Register for the webinar or tune in live on Facebook.
Finally, don't forget to request your absentee ballot today and help get these candidates into the State House.

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.)