EXCLUSIVE WEB-ONLY EPISODE! Fascism is not abstract and neither is anti-fascism. Contrary to what Senator Ted Cruz and his reactionary colleagues would have us believe, anti-fascism is not domestic terrorism but a set of tactics and activities designed to prevent the rise of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic hate and violence. Join us on RPM to hear from anti-fascist organizers from NYC-DSA and Outlive Them NYC, a group of anti-fascist Jews and allies. What is fascism? What is anti-fascism? And how can you get involved?

ICE’s reign of terror is tearing families apart as concentration camps of asylum seekers proliferate along the border. Trump has intensified the war on immigrants, but state violence directed against the workers of the world is a deeply rooted tradition of the American ruling class. Today we’re joined by Marvin Gonzalez, Elijah Stevens, and Britt Stern from the Immigrant Justice Working Group to discuss the collective struggle against the deportation apparatus and how we organize for the socialist horizon of a world with no borders.

Sixteen of us attended the DSA national convention in downtown Atlanta Aug. 2-4 as elected MADSA delegates, and a slew more volunteered to help make the event a success. We came from many different perspectives but shared a common goal: To continue the momentum that grew our organization from a brave remnant of about 7,000 members a few years ago to about 56,000 today, including 29 federal, state and local elected officials. We are fighting for social justice and economic democracy – can’t have one without the other we socialists say – and changing the political dialogue in this country. Our City of South Fulton comrade Councilman khalid gave both an opening and a closing speech, and several of us were quoted by the New York Times, the Atlanta Constitution, the Guardian (UK), CNN and other news outlets. We passed too many resolutions to summarize easily here; come to our monthly meeting Aug 24 for a report. Photo: Steve Eberhardt

You’re listening to Revolutions Per Minute on WBAI, a socialist radio show and podcast from members of New York City Democratic Socialists of America.The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with 56,000 members nationwide. Every two years we have a national convention to decide important questions about the direction of our organization and vote for our sixteen-member National Political Committee, who serve as our nationwide leadership.

Last weekend our special correspondent Michael Carter was down in Atlanta with our 1,056 delegates from around the country met to democratically decide these questions and meet their comrades from throughout the country and the world.

Michael: In this episode, we hear from organizers and activists around the country as well as from members of the NYC-DSA delegation to the convention about their experience and about what it means to run an organization democratically.

We have on-the-ground interviews with elected socialists Maryland House Rep Gabriel Acevero, Chicago City Council Member Byron Sigcho-Lopez, Peekskill City Councilwoman Vanessa Agudelo, North Dakota state legislator Ruth Buffalo, Oregon school board member Brandy Fortsen, who is the first nonbinary person elected to public office in the United States, and several delegates to the convention.

We also spoke with delegates organizing for socialism in other spheres of struggle. We’ll share with you their experience participating in organizational democracy in order to build a multi-racial workers’ democracy across the world.

Last but definitely not least, we will be hearing from newly elected National Political Committee member Tawny Tidwell.

What is “The Budget”?

Ohio’s government has four budgets it needs to allocate during each general assembly: Transportation, Capital Expenditures, the Bureau of Workers Compensation, and the operating budget. These four budgets added up divvy up approximately $128.3 billion of tax revenue and federal funds to every public agency, project, and investment in the state. While some projects, known usually as “line items” or “items” are specialized, the vast majority of the $128.3 billion is allocated in the operating budget, otherwise known simply as “The Budget.”

Why Should I Care About The Budget?

While most of the headlines we see about legislation are federal, state government plays a much larger role in your daily life. The Budget is a two-year plan set forth by the governor, the Ohio House of Representatives, and the Ohio Senate to spend all of the money we receive from the federal government. In a state gerrymandered to favor conservatives, this takes the shape of public agencies having to defend their workers and budgets against “deficit hawks” eager for an opportunity to grandstand. From keystone projects to office supplies, constant scrutiny is applied in an endless game of demonstrating that each legislator is the best lapdog for their donors’ interests. To counteract this, public institutions are reduced to selling necessities such as healthcare and education as sound investments in hopes of avoiding getting sacrificed on the altar of “trimming fat.”

The Budget, while mainly a fiscal document, has slowly ballooned into a legislative bill as well. While not the original intent, operating budgets have become a way for legislators to bargain with each other to add on legislation not at all relevant to the daily business of running the state in exchange for votes. At best, these additions are hyper-local pet projects that legislators can campaign on in the district. At worst, lawmakers can tack unpopular legislation onto the multi-thousand page document in an attempt to sneak it past voters. One of the best examples of this is regarding a small piece of language added into the 2014 biennial budget which increased the minimum distance needed between a wind turbine and private property. Added in the dead of night by the Republican Caucus, this small change has effectively strangled wind energy in Ohio in the crib. Operating budgets are the largest single piece of legislation each of Ohio’s General Assemblies undergoes and at 2,602 pages, this year’s budget is no different.

As socialists, The Budget is more than a vehicle for endless cuts and legislation too contentious to be considered by itself: it is a tool of class warfare. Time and time again, our operating budgets have dismantled programs meant for the working class and funneled wealth upwards to the rich. Legislators slash statewide supports while introducing or protecting relief for their own districts, highlighting neoliberalism’s an abject failure. Operating budgets are contradictory, disjointed and chaotic documents, completely representative of the economic system that dictates it. If we want to build a society that works for all of us instead of a moneyed few, we need to be able to understand and communicate exactly how Ohio is failing its working families. Thankfully, all this information is public record. We just need to read it.

 Crisis Pregnancy Centers

About a month ago, when the Ohio budget was still being debated, you might’ve heard about the $5 million being allocated for anti-abortion, fake women’s health clinics, also known as Crisis Pregnancy Centers. There was a lot of push-back against this, as there should’ve been. These anti-abortion clinics are private entities that often push a fundamentalist Christian, life-begins-at-conception rhetoric. Even if they don’t explicitly tell pregnant people that if they get an abortion they’ll be damned to hell, these fake clinics spread misinformation and outright lies about abortion and reproductive health. For a bit more on fake clinics, check out this other blog post I wrote. 

On July 18th, the Ohio budget was finally signed by Gov. DeWine. In the budget’s final form, that $5 million for crisis pregnancy centers wasn’t reallocated, as many wished it could be. Instead, it went up to $7.5 million. Ohio is definitely in crisis when it comes to reproductive health — our infant mortality rate is 25% higher than the national average, with black babies being three times more likely to not reach their first birthday. Why not funnel even a portion of that $7.5 million towards repairing this extreme racial disparity in infant mortality? It doesn’t seem very “pro-life” to spend millions of taxpayers dollars on scaring pregnant people away from the option of abortion and then ignore the babies that are already being born. Our reproductive health crisis is not one that will be solved by crisis pregnancy centers, and these “clinics” and their state-sanctioned financial support will just make outcomes for pregnant people, especially those who are POC or low-income, even worse. The $7.5 million in Ohio’s state budget for crisis pregnancy centers is about more than a conservative mission to “protect” fetuses. It’s about controlling bodies (namely black and brown, and/or female bodies) and restricting reproductive healthcare from those who need it the most.

The FY 2020-2021 Ohio Budget and Education – Missed Opportunities and Attacks on Public Education

When he signed Ohio’s biennial budget on July 18th, Governor DeWine touted its investment in the future, including additional spending in the public education budget. In fact, that was one of the reasons why the majority of Democrats in the state house, and all but one Democrat in the state senate joined Republicans to support the budget. However, when you look at the details you see that the legislature has failed – again – to address equity in public education funding, while simultaneously inserting giveaways to private religious schools and unaccountable charter schools. Even their shining achievement, $675 million in new funding split over two years for student wellness programs, doesn’t even bring our total spending on K-12 public education to what it was in 2010 before John Kasich took office. And that’s before even adjusting for inflation.

Unconstitutional School Funding

In March 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in DeRolph v. State that Ohio’s public school funding formula was unconstitutional because it relied too heavily on property taxes and produced “unequal, inefficient, and inadequate results.” While low-income urban and rural districts were impacted by this discrepancy the most, even wealthier districts struggled with the burden on local taxes due to the state’s failure to provide adequate funding.

Twenty-two years and three more court rulings later, and Ohio’s school funding formula is still unconstitutional because of its reliance on property taxes. In addition to being unconstitutional, the school funding formula has been fundamentally broken in recent years with fewer than 20% of the districts receiving what the formula dictates, and the remaining districts receiving a “capped” or “guaranteed” amount, i.e. the floor or the ceiling of potential school funding. 

It looked like the legislature might finally address this issue with a school funding formula that was moving through the legislature simultaneously with the state budget. Unfortunately the new formula disproportionately assisted large suburban school districts, many of which had been capped under the current policy, and did a lot less to help urban and rural school districts that are dealing with higher rates of poverty. The formula would have cost Ohio an additional $1.1 billion in education spending, nearly double the amount that the DeWine administration had proposed adding to the K-12 school budget. 

While there were legitimate concerns about education spending equity, Republicans and conservative Democrats were also skeptical of the overall price tag, and those issues combined to kill the formula and instead cement support for DeWine’s education spending, which is earmarked for specific student wellness programs. While that funding will be useful, it’s pitifully small, comes with too many limitations, and unlike a fixed funding formula, it does not give districts the expectation of being able to count on that money beyond the two-year budget cycle, preventing them from making the investments their schools need. 

Attacks on Public Education

As mentioned earlier, the Budget, “while mainly a fiscal document, has slowly ballooned into a legislative bill as well,” and nowhere is that more true than in education policy. The legislature inserted giveaways to private and charter schools that have the effect of weakening public education and lowering the standards for students and educators. 

First, provisions were inserted that weaken accountability for charter schools, making it harder to close down charter schools with serious performance issues. This is a policy change that never could have passed on its own merits. In the wake of the ECOT charter school scandal, when Ohio was defrauded for nearly $200 million, it is politically toxic to make it harder to close down a failing charter school. That’s why non-appropriations policies like this end up in the Budget —  because the Budget is the only “must-pass” piece of legislation. 

Likewise, a $50 million expansion of private school vouchers that had failed to even make it out of committee in the previous General Assembly was added into the Budget. This policy will expand both the grade years covered by Ohio’s private school vouchers and expand the pool of potential voucher recipients. The result will drain public school budgets around the state. 

What Now?

If you’re mad about what you’ve just read, you’re not alone. Come to a happy hour (every Tuesday at 7 PM at the Rehab Tavern) to learn more about what DSA is doing to push back on this agenda.

And if you’re wondering whether there’s a CPC in your area, visit https://www.exposefakeclinics.com/cpc for an interactive map of fake clinics across the US. More than ever, we need to be building awareness of how harmful CPCs are.

The American political establishment has a long history of cynical attacks based on race, gender, national origin, sexuality and more to divide working people against each other. President Trump’s recent statements are the latest chapter in that shameful history. While the animus dividing our society didn’t begin with President Trump, we are seeing from him now a dangerous escalation in targeting both specific elected officials and entire communities, such as the recent ICE raids on undocumented persons. The President, clearly unbothered by the humanitarian disaster he’s created at the border and many other crises, has taken time to attack Representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, and Ayanna Pressley.

While President Trump has gleefully had TV sparring matches with many prominent Democrats, these women and their agenda clearly pose an existential threat for him and his political establishment. His attacks this week included telling these women to “go back” to the country they came from. All of them are American citizens and three were born here.

Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America makes clear our full support for Reps. Omar, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortes, and Pressley and our opposition to these attacks by Trump and the Republican Party. Most Republican party officials and Republican media outlets have sadly and predictably either joined with Trump or excused his actions.

We also denounce statements by Democratic Party members drawing false equivalence between Trump and these representatives, or implying that their anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist positions warrant such attacks. We also encourage the progressive caucus to stand united in solidarity, and not cave to any pressure to denounce each other.

This kind of dehumanizing language doesn’t belong in a locker room, let alone the halls of power. We would defend anyone against attacks like these, but the political and personal courage of these representatives deserves particular acknowledgement. They are at the forefront of the struggle to democratize the economy, rebuild and strengthen our safety net, and protect the vulnerable.

We invite people disgusted by these attacks to not just work towards President Trump’s removal next fall, but to also join us right now — organizing against facism, racism, neoliberalism, xenophobia, and every other form of oppression that has empowered him and his accomplices.

Georgia organizations wishing to co-sign this statement can send an email to info@madsa.ga.

You’re listening to Revolutions Per Minute on WBAI, a socialist radio show and podcast from members of New York City Democratic Socialists of America. NYC-DSA is the biggest chapter of the largest socialist organization in the United States. We are run by our 5,500+ members and organizers who are working together to build democratic socialism in all five boroughs.

You’re listening to Revolutions Per Minute on WBAI, a socialist radio show and podcast from members of New York City Democratic Socialists of America. NYC-DSA is the biggest chapter of the largest socialist organization in the United States. We are run by our 5,500+ members and organizers who are working together to build democratic socialism in all five boroughs

https://act.dsausa.org/donate/membership/
https://www.socialists.nyc/events?view=calendar&month=07-2019

Hundreds protested the Trump administration’s atrocious treatment of legal asylum seekers and other immigrants, especially children, at the “Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps” at Plaza Fiesta in Chamblee July 12, despite the heat and a rain shower. The New Sanctuary Movement of Alanta and about two dozen social justice and immigrant rights organizations sponsored the event, joined by other progressive organizations and many MADSA members. Ga. Representative (District 99) and candidate for Congress Brenda Lopez Romero was keynote speaker. Other speakers included several faith leaders; Roxana Chicas of New Sanctuary; Carlos Medina of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR); two candidates for the U.S. Senate: former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry; and Amilcar Valencia, Executive Director of El Refugio, among others. See Lopez Romero’s speech here.

The Lights for Liberty event took place as Atlanta braced for a weekend of raids on immigrant families announced by President Trump. GLAHR is organizing “ICEwatch” patrols to follow (not confront) ICE and document its activities. Some MADSA members participated Saturday morning. “Ice patrol with GLAHR was great,” says Jeff R. “They’re going all this week in the morning and they think immigration raids will start [Sunday].”

ICEwatch patrols meet 6am at the GLAHR office. To volunteer, contact Kevin Joachin (229-646-0045). Members please say you’re with DSA. Do not volunteer if you are undocumented.

Another protest against the immigrant concentration camps: “Never Again,” will take place at noon on Monday July 15 in front of the ICE office in downtown Atlanta, in coordination with actions nationwide led by Jewish groups, including some against banks that finance the private detention centers.

In 2017 Jabari Brisport ran a powerful, insurgent campaign as a socialist for New York City Council. He didn’t win, but since then NYC DSA has an impressive string of electoral victories. Has NYC DSA built enough electoral power to get socialists elected to City Council? What about the White House?