Russia Out of Ukraine — Solidarity with Ukraine’s People!
International Women’s Day 2022
This past Sunday we—along with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Pensacola Dream Defenders, a speaker from the Poor People's Campaign, and passionate members of the public—held a rally for International Women's Day (IWD). We rallied around the history of women, gender non-conforming, and non-binary individuals' struggle and the ongoing fight against bigotry & injustice. We rally because we are tired, we are hurting, and we are angry. Angry that those in power continue to show us who they are by denying us justice and stripping us of our humanity.
As many speakers pointed out, the struggles faced are systemic issues that cannot be fixed alone. They weave through our lives and intersect where they cannot be untangled from one another. We must recognize that true women's liberation is tied to the liberation of all, and more specifically, to the liberation of the most marginalized.
It is clear that poor and working class women, gender non-conforming people, & non-binary people continue to suffer under capitalism. As rent and utility prices skyrocket; as those in office write and pass anti-trans & anti-abortion legislation; as black, brown, & trans people are murdered, dehumanized, and denied true justice: we, the people, are under attack.
As we watch brave educators in Minnesota strike and rally in the streets today, we are reminded of the working class history of IWD & how it started. Beginning in 1909, American socialists started the national holiday to honor striking garment workers in NYC. The following year the holiday came to have an international impact as a million working class people around the world, lead by German communist feminist Clara Zetkin and other activists, followed the lead of the American socialists in demanding equality & liberation for all. The holiday’s tradition was solidified in 1917 when the Soviet Union declared it a holiday at the urging of Alexendra Kollontai & Lenin.
As we look through the lens of history & witness over a century of struggle, we see that IWD finds its roots in the working class fight for liberation. We must honor this day by realizing our collective power and using that power to organize. To demand better for all working class people. So, when they show us who they are, when they tell us they will continue our suffering and profit off of our pain: we tell them no, we organize, and we show them who we are.
In Solidarity,
Faith & Travis
Imperialism Series Part 5: Imperialism and China: Socialist Perspectives
The rise of China in the early twenty-first century has unsettled the geopolitical status quo and raised the prospect of a multipolar world order after three decades of unchecked US imperialist hegemony. While some socialists welcome this challenge as a boon for anti-imperialism, others insist (or fear) that the rising China intends to become an imperialist power rather than combat imperialism worldwide. Such disagreements are often underwritten by differing diagnoses of whether China is a socialist or capitalist state and differing assessments of China’s real impact on the world’s peoples, which give rise to a range of orientations from “Neither Washington Nor Beijing” to “Critical Support for Beijing.”
Our final module of our Imperialism Study Series presents various socialist perspectives on the questions of imperialism in China, Chinese imperialism abroad (if such a thing exists), and the US-China rivalry.
At play in the module’s readings are a complex set of factors: (1) the relationship between China and the Global North; (2) the relationship between China and the Global South; (3) the impact of China’s rise on the historically exploitative relationship between Global North and Global South. We can provide no easy answers, but there is undoubtedly much to learn and discuss.
Recommended Reading
This module was compiled by NTDSA as a supplement to the DSA-LA Imperialism Reader used for the first four modules of this study series, and it revolves around five readings, which you can access in the Google Doc “Module 5: Imperialism and China: Socialist Perspectives.” The readings are:
- “The US-China Rivalry Is About Capitalist Competition,” Ho-Fung Hung
- “China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery?,” Minqi Li
- “Neither Washington Nor Beijing,” Ashely Smith and Kevin Lin
- “Neither Washington Nor Beijing?,” Carlos Martinez
- “Can the Chinese Diaspora Speak?,” The Qiao Collective
Were you unable to attend the first four sessions? No problem! You can review the content from Module 1: Is Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism?, Module 2: America’s Ascent as an Imperial Power, Module 3: The National Question, and Module 4: Imperialism Today.
Interested in attending our Socialist Night School sessions? Check our calendar for upcoming session dates.
Phil Ochs: The Radical Singer/Songwriter of the New Left
By Pinellas DSA member Bruce Nissen
Editors note: at the end of this post, you will find a link to a presentation by Bruce Nissen on this subject, as a supplement to this post.
As a DSA member who is over 70 years old, I’m finding that a lot of my young comrades are very curious about what it was like in the 1960s and early 1970s. And, mystifying to me, a number of them are fascinated by tales I can tell of my “radical student days” during those years. I’ve never thought my own life was all that interesting, but I will admit that the late 1960s were indeed very, very interesting times. I am very grateful that I came to political maturity in that period; it certainly shaped the trajectory of rest of my life.
One enormous part of the 1960s campus milieu was the music. Especially folk music and rock music were integral to the emerging “youth culture,” and some of it took on a decidedly political tone. Here I want to highlight one very radical singer-songwriter of the time who apparently very few of my younger friends have ever heard of. I saw him live numerous times; he was a major radicalizing force to me and many others. He was one of my heroes.
His name was Phil Ochs. He was a contemporary of Bob Dylan and they both emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early/mid-sixties. Dylan of course went on to fame and fortune and a long life. Phil had a much more tragic trajectory; he took his own life in 1976 when at the bottom of one of his manic-depressive cycles. Despite this sad ending, Phil was an incredible songwriter and performer who influenced many of us at the time.
What I want to do here is introduce my younger DSA comrades to Phil Ochs, primarily through exposure to his songs and performances. What follows is a series of links to YouTube videos of Phil Ochs performances.
Many (although not all) of Phil’s songs were topical commentaries on the events of the day. With the Vietnam War raging, opposition to that war was a common Phil Ochs topic. Here is Draft Dodger Rag, one of the first of his songs I ever heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFOUkipI4U
Another anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement was his song I Ain’t Marching Anymore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRU_ruqnR6Q
And as the war dragged on into the 1970s, his song The War is Over was his attempt to hasten its demise. Here he is performing it live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOs9xYUjY4I
Of course, the Vietnam War was not his only target. Here is his anthem against police, I Kill Therefore I Am: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQBLBvi67fw
Some of his music consisted of tributes to those songwriters who had gone before him who he admired. One was Woody Guthrie, America’s troubadour who wrote This Land is Your Land and many other songs, and who was much more radical than the sanitized version of him that has been passed down to us. Here is Phil’s salute to Woody, Bound for Glory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xONuHXndRuI
Another radical singer/songwriter of earlier vintage that he greatly admired was Joe Hill, the organizer for the radical union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies). Here is Phil’s song The Ballad of Joe Hill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kozWk8Ff_Xg
Not all of Phil Och’s songs were overtly political. He also wrote some haunting ballads that are more personal. Here I want to simply highlight two that have been covered by many other artists. First up, perhaps his most beautiful song of all time, Changes (this one has a lot of great pictures of Phil in the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlVfVBFdMaM
And his There But for Fortune has also been covered by many other artists and folksingers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smlg7sPUmRs
There are so many more Phil Ochs songs that are burned into my brain, but I fear that this could go on too long, so I won’t put any more in this article. In his final years, as his life was unravelling he went through a “gold lame suit” Elvis Presley-Merle Haggard phase that failed to connect his radical politics with his gestures toward American pop culture: his old fans hated it and apolitical pop music fans did not pick up on his music at all. Near the end he wrote some extremely poignant and revealing songs, like Crucifixion, Another Age, My Life, Chords of Fame and others. You can find almost all of these and many more on YouTube. In addition a fair bit of his music is possible to buy. There is a documentary film on his life There But for Fortune and folk musicians still celebrate his life and legacy through tribute get-togethers around the country.
He was an extremely flawed human being. But at the time he was my hero. I’m hard pressed to think of any contemporary vocal artists today who play a similar role to the one he played in the 1964–1974 period. I believe my young DSA comrades would benefit from an acquaintance with his work.
A presentation on the subject by the author can be found here: https://youtu.be/JFMPEfUoz6s
What’s Really Behind Attacks on the Teaching of America’s Racial History
When Socialism Came to Reading, Pennsylvania
Counterpoint to Weekly Update’s Ukraine Statement
