Are you fed up with rising rents, low wages, climate inaction, and billionaires hoarding more while we struggle with less? You’re not alone — and you’re not powerless.

We would like to invite you in learning about Democratic Socialism to our Mass Intro event that we are holding on July 27th at the DAAC! Our chapter has existed since 2017 and among other things, we have focused on issues including Labor, Housing, Trans rights, the Environment, Medicare for All, and fighting for the working class in general. 

We will have tacos, speakers, and music that we can all sing along to. Come celebrate Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Mayor’s Democratic Primary and help build our own Socialist movement in West Michigan.

This event is perfect for:
✅ Newcomers curious about what democratic socialism really means
✅ Anyone ready to get involved in building a better, more just world
✅ Existing members looking to reconnect or bring a friend

Together we can create a better world for all of us if we all work towards building our chapter and collaborating on future projects and events.

Solidarity!

The post Fight Fascism/Build Socialism: Intro to the GRDSA appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Americans are taught to venerate July 4th as a turning point not only in the history of the Americas, but in human history itself. It supposedly represents the founding of the first modern republic, a nation destined to lead the world into an unparalleled golden age of freedom.

At one time, celebrations of the Fourth of July also included some celebration of universal rights. These include the idea that the United States is defined by its constitution, that there are some things that the government shouldn’t be allowed to do, and that every person is entitled to basic rights under the law. It also included the idea that democratic governance is a good in itself, applicable not only to those living within the borders of the United States, but of everyone in the world yearning to breathe free.

Next year, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The celebrations will be overseen by Donald Trump, the single most selfish, myopic, and authoritarian man ever to hold the office of President of the United States. They will take place in the context of his active attempts to destroy American democracy and remake it in his own image.

To the degree that the United States was ever a ‘revolutionary’ republic, that promise is now a distant memory. Any pretext of universalism that one existed (in spite of the many serious flaws of the American experiment) is gone. Republicans have replaced it with a ‘blood and soil’ conception of what it means to be an American, and Democrats are so preoccupied with civility politics that they abandoned the question of what it means to be an American decades ago.

The Independence Day holiday is still inexorably tied to the existence of the United States of America as a nation-state, and to the current policies of its leadership. Furthermore, it can never be extricated from the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade and indigenous genocide, which loom large over any founding myth of the United States. The national founding holiday of the United States of America will never be a day celebrating universal human freedom. That is why, as socialists, we must look to other inspirations for our struggle.

***

Three centuries ago, the European concept of a ‘state’ was inextricable from the concept of its sovereign. In the traditional understanding, the Christian god granted the absolute right to rule a territory to a hereditary monarch. A few exceptions to this rule existed, but they were mostly carved out to protect the traditional rights of institutions such as the Catholic Church and powerful merchant guilds. The concept of a state that derived its legitimacy from a universal idea like self-governance was laughable, and apologists for absolutism openly scoffed at the idea that a state could exist independent from a monarch as anything more than a short-lived and chaotic experiment.

The social force that broke the back of this idea was not the American Revolution. The idea of a merchant republic was familiar to those in Europe during that time, and the notion that the British colonial government of America would be replaced by an oligarchy of wealthy merchants and slave owners was considered radical but not inconceivable by the powers of the Old World.

The more revolutionary project was the one that started in France in 1789. It grew from a demand for equal formal representation for the Third Estate (largely comprising the French middle class) into a radically new conception of what a ‘state’ should be. The storming of the notorious Bastille prison on July 14, 1789 marked a watershed moment in human history. For the first time, the destruction of the old, absolutist European order became not only possible, but inevitable.

The French Revolution was not only a political revolution, but a social one. It sought not to make peace with the old European order, but to abolish it entirely. Its experiments in radical democracy, secular government, and an unyielding demand that the powerful answer for their crimes served as the inspiration for two centuries of popular resistance to colonial, monarchical, and oppressive forms of government.

Over the next two centuries, popular uprisings and mass movements around the world dismantled the power of monarchy to dominate human affairs. This was most notable in the periods following the two world wars, when revolutionary and anti-colonial movements toppled monarchs and freed peoples from foreign dominion. Today, over 80% of the world’s governments have abandoned hereditary monarchy, and a significant portion of the remaining countries maintain a monarch only as a constitutional symbol with little or no political power.

***

The French Revolution informed and influenced nearly every leftist movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Karl Marx called it “the most colossal revolution that history has ever known.” During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were intimately familiar with the details of each stage of the French Revolution. They openly considered themselves the successors to the radical left-wing Jacobin faction, for whom the American socialist magazine of record is named.

The modern French Fifth Republic also traces its roots back to 1789, but the ideals of the period represent something far greater, and we can celebrate the history of republicanism without having to defer to nationalist propaganda or a founding myth. Nor do we as socialists have to apologize for the revolutionary violence of the early French republicans. As noted American humorist Mark Twain wrote in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court:

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

As free people, it is our right and responsibility to choose what to celebrate in this world. The principles of self governance, universal human rights, freedom from arbitrary rule, and anti-monarchism are the basis for modern socialism. Even as we confront the new horrors of a global system in crisis, we must also remember and celebrate the victories that have brought us to this point. There is no better time to start than right now.

Vive le monde républicain.

The post No Kings appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

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On April 1st, 2024, I received notification that a project for which I was a research assistant had been completely defunded. I was fired, and the future of the project remained uncertain. Our funding came from the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration (CCERC) which was established from federal COVID relief funds to address pressing issues in Connecticut’s public schools and provide jobs to Connecticut researchers. Usually, I’d console myself and try to find hope for the future, but it was hard to feel that there was a future for researchers like me, who think people deserve better. Despite this hopelessness, I joined the DSA Education Justice working group: a coalition of educators, librarians, students, parents, and more that seeks to improve public education from a socialist lens. There is power and strength in the unity this working group provides. I found consolation with others who reassured me that they still see the value in research.