Submission from a member of Cleveland DSA

An “hourly rate of pay” is such a universal practice that it might even seem strange to question it. Even a salaried worker’s pay is usually derived from an hourly rate, which is theoretically superfluous. It cannot have always been this way; it’s only within the last few years or so that reliable timekeeping devices became truly widespread. So where did the arbitrary standard of hourly pay originate?

The answer lies in the advent of the modern factory system. If you were to time travel to any era before the rise of mass industry (which was, at risk of offending any sticklers for historical precision, roughly around the 17th century), asking anyone what they were paid for each hour they worked would likely yield a rather perplexed response. Let’s say you were to go to a 15th century blacksmith and say “I want to pay you to make horseshoes for me for one hour. What would you charge me?” They would likely respond, “What are you talking about? Just buy the horseshoes! They’re 15 shillings a piece.” (I don’t know how much a horseshoe costs or what a shilling was worth)

Being the persistent time-traveler that you are, let’s say you pressed the issue and insisted on paying this blacksmith for an hour of their work. The metalworker might actually become indignant and snap back with “Just buy the damn horseshoes, you weirdo! Why do you need to know when I’m working on them? Why do you want to control my time? Who do you think you are, a king? And what do you think I am, your slave?”

Ye olde blacksmith is right, if you think about it. Being paid “by the piece” makes far more sense than setting an arbitrary timeframe that determines compensation for a generalized concept of “work” or “labor”. Wouldn’t it make more sense for a barista to be paid by how many drinks they make and sell, or for an assembly line worker to be paid by the number of parts they complete? It could actually allow for more accurate and fair compensation, in theory.

Therein lies the rub; or partially, at least. By paying per hour of work rather than pieces or parts delivered, business owners can avoid paying workers more when they produce more. Instead, they keep the extra value generated as profit. Karl Marx would have described this practice as one of the many ways that capitalists ensure a “higher rate of relative surplus value” for themselves, or, more generally, a higher rate of profit relative to their competitors.

So how did this blatantly exploitative method of compensation become the norm? One could argue that it was partially born out of practical necessity, although that logic disregards the power imbalance between capitalists and workers. “Paying per piece”, or paying a worker for what they produced, was the universal norm until factories expanded the scope and accelerated the rate of production. Before machines and assembly lines, complex manufacturing and fabrication was carried out by small workshops of “artisans” with years of training and practice specializing in a specific trade or handicraft. These workshops or guilds earned an income by selling their wares, with the younger apprentices paying a fee for training and access to the guild’s equipment.

This all changed when the factory system came into play. Suddenly, manufacturing, fabrication, and the processing of raw materials could be aided by machines which required little or no training to operate. The concept of an “unskilled” worker is a myth, of course; the workers who ran these machines were required to develop the skill to do so. But the fact that a new employee could be taught the basics of operating a metal press in a matter of minutes dramatically undercut the value of the years of training and practice that would have been required to perform the same task by hand. Consequently, it allowed for a massive increase in productivity.

In the factory system, the number of workers involved jumped from the handful of artisans in a workshop to dozens or even hundreds of workers on a factory floor. And with so many individual employees, a new problem arose: how was the factory owner supposed to keep track of what each of these workers were producing in order to compensate them according to the traditional “pay-per-part” standard? There were so many workers, each producing at different rates, that a whole team of accountants would be required to calculate their payment if it were based on the amount each of the factory workers produced.

“Pay an entire staff just to be able to pay another staff? But that would cut into profits!” griped the capitalists, “To hell with that! Let’s just pay them all the same wages by the day.” And so it was. Factory workers were paid a set amount per day, regardless of how productive they were. This led to a windfall of new authority that capitalists could wield over workers. “So how long is a full day?” a worker may ask. “Why, 16 hours, of course,” smiled the quick-thinking factory owner, wanting to maximize the amount of time his machines were operational. “And not a second less, or you won’t get paid.”

In a pre-union era, workers were in no position to argue or protest. The capitalists were quick to point out that employees were “free” to seek work in a different factory; nevermind that other factories were obliged to adopt the same exploitative, cost-cutting practice in order to stay competitive in the market. Moreover, the artisanal guild system of production was quickly driven out of business by the exploitative and highly profitable practices of the factories. Managerial overreach and abuse grew more and more commonplace, and the workers’ options shrank just as quickly. So they began to band together and form a resistance.

Workers’ rebellions had occurred sporadically throughout history; european miners fought back against tyrannical mine owners during the renaissance, disgruntled sailors have mutinied against abusive ship captains for millenia, etc. The organization of industrial era factory workers into early unions, however, is the origin of the modern workers’ movement as we understand it today. Their trials and tribulations are dramatic and heroic, and their efforts deserve study and admiration. But let’s keep our focus on the origin of hourly pay.

Along with generally abusive and corrupt managerial practices, some of the primary grievances of these early factory workers were unfair compensation and strict time requirements. Factory employees were routinely docked pay for “slacking” or not technically completing “a full day” of work, in spite of toiling in the factory for hours upon hours. On top of that, factory owners were known to slow down clocks, lie about compensation, withhold pay, and myriad other petty tyrannies.

So an obvious early target for these disgruntled factory workers was the clock. “Look,” they argued, “If I’m scheduled to work for 16 hours and I have to leave 15 minutes before the shift ends because I lost a half finger in the hydraulic lathe, you should still have to pay me for the time I worked.” The factory owners resisted but eventually caved to social, economic, and political pressure brought on by strikes, demonstrations, coordinated work stoppages, etc. So thanks to the diligence of these militant worker organizations, capitalists were forced to pay by the hour instead of the day, a dramatic improvement from the far-more-easily-abused day rate standard.

But today, we haven’t progressed any further. Sure, unions have won many more material improvements for workers, all of which are achievements that are to be lauded. Yet “pay-by-production” versus “pay-by-hour” isn’t really part of the mainstream labor rights conversation outside of the handful of nerds who read books by David Graeber and the like. Workers today produce far more than they are actually compensated for, and the fact that they’re paid by the hour instead of the day gives them little comfort or protection.

If we truly want to shift how we think about work and compensation, if we truly want to chip away at the foundations of capitalism’s means of working class exploitation, this should be one of our prime targets. And needless to say, moving from hourly pay to a more ethical system of compensation based on production would not end the exploitation of labor, just as raising the minimum wage wouldn’t end it either. But reframing the argument in this manner forces capitalists to engage in debate on our terms and not the other way around. At the very least, it gives us a more honest and accurate understanding of the economic injustices wrought by our economic system.

The post Why do we get paid by the hour? appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Resolution to Adopt an International Solidarity Working Group

Whereas, the accelerated Zionist genocide in Palestine has been ongoing for over nine months with still no end in sight, much less the likelihood of decolonization any time in the near future,

Whereas, while we must not slow down in our work on Palestine and BDS, there are also many other countries, colonies, and populations that require our attention,

Whereas, imperialism, “the highest stage of capitalism,” is a global system led by the United States,

Whereas, we likely cannot, nor should we aspire to, create freedom for ourselves without also freeing our comrades around the globe,

Be it resolved, the ad hoc Tampa DSA Palestine Solidarity Committee will henceforth be known as the International Solidarity Working Group.

International Solidarity Working Group Charter and Mission

Charter

The International Solidarity Working Group shall be a Standing Committee governed by the Tampa DSA Bylaws.

Mission

Recognizing that no person is “alien” or “illegal,” we will seek to build solidarity with foreign nationals, migrants, refugees, and colonized and indigenous people both outside and within “official” U.S. borders, while drawing attention to and promoting awareness of the crimes, military and otherwise, historical and ongoing, of the U.S.-led capitalist Empire against our non-American comrades.

Objectives

1. Appoint Liaisons to the DSA International Committee
2. Coordinate with other DSA chapters and other local and national organizations with whom we align.
3. Curate and provide educational materials and actionable items to the chapter at-large, other WG’s when appropriate, and the general public.

Members

Membership to the International Solidarity Working Group is limited to DSA Members In Good Standing. Membership in the ISWG is closed. Tampa DSA members can request membership in the ISWG, after which, and no longer than a week after the request, the ISWG will determine whether they will be granted membership by their own vote. The ISWG should not deny membership unless it is believed or found that such membership would be disruptive to the work of the committee.

The post Resolution and Charter: International Solidarity Working Group appeared first on Tampa DSA.

By Travis Wayne

Chapter Co-Chair

Our New Strategy centers the fight for democracy in socialist struggle here in North Carolina. There’s a good reason for that: North Carolina is uniquely undemocratic. The Jim Crow structure was less dismantled here than even much of the South. The state’s electoral map is torn to shreds by the gerrymandering knives of the ruling class while city councils are preempted from legislating reforms to benefit workers or tenants. The government calls itself “democratic” while there’s no democracy in sight.

We are denied democracy in the workplace and the home, too. Decisions over both are made by elites without even paying lip-service to democracy. Collective bargaining in the public sector is banned and only 3% of the workforce is unionized. The bosses run most workplaces as dictatorships while landlords – often the same bosses with real estate portfolios – control the home. The home includes our housing, but also our community and the land itself. Landlords let parasitic institutions like anti-abortion centers prey on student tenants as long as those parasites pay up, then destroy the land they stole with development for the rich, then set our rent hundreds of dollars higher than even their beloved Invisible Hand. Thanks to landlords, there’s no democratic decision-making over our home: our housing, our community, our land.

We need both internal and external democracy. Fortunately, both are deeply linked. Growing a democratic culture requires our chapter to test our ideas, to decide on action through discussion and debate, but also to increase participation by caring for each other better and incorporating more and more members – particularly those of color – into active protagonist roles as organizers in the organization participating in decision-making. A democratic culture strengthens us all and gives us more power to fight for democracy at three sites of struggle.

Three Sites of Struggle

Government, workplace, and home are all controlled undemocratically in North Carolina – and those are the arenas where we have to fight. These are not random. They are concrete sites of struggle. We draw a distinction between issues and sites of struggle. Issues bring in and activate people politically while sites of struggle are the arenas in which issues are fought. We contest the state government’s lack of democracy from the ballot and city council by running on issues; workers are galvanized to organize by issues, not only wages but racial inequities and sexual harassment and the other forms of oppression enabled by authoritarian power dynamics; we are currently campaigning against landlords by fighting them at the home in our housing (through tenants organizing against their displacement with one another in the Triangle Tenant Union, a housing issue), in the community (to target anti-abortion centers, a socialist feminist issue), and over the land (by defending both DSA-endorsed city councillor Mary Black from their real estate lobby and public land from private corporations like Wake Stone, an ecosocialist issue). DSA is both at its best and uniquely equipped as the largest socialist organization to cross-pollinate across the movement ecosystem, synthesizing and strategizing in all arenas at once, democratically deciding what to do as a party in formation and motion. 

Sites of struggle are arenas in time as well as space. The reason for that is best summarized in the best quote I’ve ever read about organizing: “you have one body and twenty-four hours in a day. An organizer asks what you’ll do with them, concretely, now.” That’s why they try so hard to control our bodies by doing things like incarcerating us, by evicting us, by forcing us to work to survive, by attacking gender-affirming healthcare. It’s not just about our bodies; in the vestiges of the 8-hour workday, we move from the home (housing) to the workplace and back to the home (community). Unless we’re part of a democratic organization like a union or a cooperative or a mass organization, we are denied democracy at every hour of our daily lives. Both bosses and landlords extract profit not only from us in spaces like the workplace and the home; they suck the marrow out from our minutes and hours, too. And they always seek to find more ways to transform our time into profits for themselves. As the ruling class attacked the 8-hour workday, they forced us into contract work and side hustles and double jobs that literally steal more and more of our space and time. We have less time to socialize with one another, to create new worlds through art and love and community. We have less time to organize.

We have to fight everywhere we’re being attacked by the ruling class. We need to build working class organization in all sites of struggle: government, workplace, and home. That means building DSA, as a mass organization in our local chapter, and challenging the legitimacy of the undemocratic state legislature as per our New Strategy. But we can’t stop there. We have to fight for democracy in our workplace and in our home. We have to be socialists everywhere, which means we have to fight for democracy everywhere.

Growing a Democratic Culture

Socialist struggle requires growing a democratic culture. Democratic culture means sharpening our analysis together by debating ideas. Democratic culture means competing for positions, as we test out those ideas and trade the baton of leadership in the beginning of decades-long relationships. Democratic culture means expanding ways for members to participate in decision-making over the chapter through integrating debate and discussion at every level of meeting and chapter business. Democratic culture means supporting formations of sections and associations that create new points of entry for working people into the chapter. One example is the Caregivers Section, which meets at a more accessible time for caregivers and creates a space for workers our chapter would otherwise not accommodate, through decisions made for and by socialist caregivers directly. These are all needed to grow.

Democratic culture also means being laser-eyed on expanding participation in decision-making to more and more people. This is crucial. A room of five people may be able to vote on something, but a room of five people has less democratic legitimacy than a room of fifteen. The weight of a decision made democratically is directly translatable to how many people commit to that decision – and how many people it touches that are embedded in their homes, in their workplaces, in their communities. That’s why we have to direct ask for direct asks’ sake.

One way we grow democratic culture is through creating better systems of care to support ourselves and each other. People tend to participate more when they feel heard, welcomed, seen. People participate when they feel comfortable. Comfort isn’t just the product of materially meeting the needs of people, but also sitting with discomfort when generative conflict appears in the life of mass organization. We need to understand our movement as a continuum across decades into the future. We must and will be with one another, literally, for much of our lifetimes. We need to find generative ways to resolve inevitable conflict and methods to address each other’s emotional and social needs. Right now, we have a tradition of mutual aid not shared by all other chapters and the queer and trans solidarity working group is actively discussing how unfilled needs for mutual aid in the queer community presents a need that we should organize around. We also have moved towards more of a culture of restorative repair. These are good starting points to build from, which we must, since multiple core members of our chapter have suffered acute depression in the past year that has nearly stolen their lives. We can’t take accountability for holistic mental health for comrades struggling in their own minds, but we can provide care and support in more active and intentional ways that treats our comrades suffering through mental health crises as wounded comrades – injured on the frontlines of struggle. We need to find ways to be able to better practice care for each other if we want to grow a democratic culture and participation through the decades ahead. 

Our chapter has two separate conversations currently happening that actually belong in the same conversation: how we increase democracy and how we become a more diverse organization. If we want to increase the power of our own internal democracy, and the weight of democratic decisions, we need to increase the participation of diverse groups that experience the most oppressive exploitation within the shackles of racial capitalism. DSA self-organized from a relatively specific and disproportionately white chunk of the working class: downwardly-mobile, young white-collar workers. Expanding beyond that segment is in the material interest of the people united. The decisions made by a handful of people – especially from the same sliver of the working class, especially receiving the wages of whiteness – in a room is a lot less representative and powerful than a movement of the masses can organize. We do have to address internal biases that, as Angela Davis analyzes in “Women, Race, and Class” that we recently read, divide the people by design and benefit the white supremacist ruling class we haven’t dislodged since Reconstruction. We do have to learn from socialists of color, particularly Black socialists, who have experimented with organization and theory informed by lived experience white socialists don’t share. We can and will become more representative as we create spaces organized with socialists of color (like No Appetite for Apartheid), intentional recruitment through direct asks to join our organization, and by rooting ourselves in democratic struggle with and alongside the Black working class that has fought the struggle for democracy since Black workers organized the general strike that destroyed slavery. 

The Struggle for Democracy 

Growing a democratic culture lets us concretely expand our capacity because it allows us to bring more and more people into decision-making. That’s more and more people shaping and participating in struggle, if decision-making translates to action, which is the responsibility of member leadership to mobilize people into doing through both meetings and active one-on-ones with active members who take on more and more decision-making. A democratic culture gives us more power to fight for democracy; internal democracy allows us to fight more for democracy. 

Rather than focus on the fight for democracy in government, which we discussed as a chapter at length in formulating the New Strategy, I’ll focus on democratic struggle in the workplace and the home. We have made significant strides over the years in integrating with the militant layer of the local labor movement through becoming rank-and-file activists in our workplaces, targeting strategic jobs as salts, and forming relationships with other rank-and-file workers through struggle and social life. But that’s been with untapped potential, turbulent participation in the labor working group, a capacity drain without rising leadership, and a local Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) in need of support. We need to commit our space and time to that work as a collective while also taking seriously the need to experiment as socialist individuals in our workplaces, with our bodies and our eight hours. Every workplace is different and every workplace presents challenges. That means confronting contradiction head-on and persevering in organizing through those challenges. If there’s no social fabric, we knit one by inviting coworkers to bars or remote hang-outs; if there’s no militancy, we build it slowly, block by block, relationship by relationship. We become an organization of organizers, doing mass work ourselves, organizing at our own workplaces even if it means starting slow in our own workplaces or taking strategic jobs to further the movement particularly during moments of unemployment. This is how we fight for democracy in the workplace on all fronts at the rank-and-file level in which we must embed. We build the militant layer in the labor movement even as we organize the labor movement to expand in North Carolina. That is how we struggle for democracy in the workplace because that’s how we increase the number of workers with direct democratic decision-making in their own workplaces.

We fight for democracy in the home through different methods that suit different parts of the home. In our housing, landlords control the supply with the same absolute power that they control the rent. They lump both together as the “market.” That means the landlords determine which tenants are housed or unhoused, which, given the necessity of a Housing First framework for wellness, means the landlords largely decide the position of the tenant in relation to other systems of oppression and cycles of trauma. They also determine the rent and the conditions and who gets displaced. Building democratic control over our homes happens through organizing with our neighbors. Sometimes, we share a landlord. Sometimes, we don’t. But in the Triangle, where land trusts tend to be governed with far less tenant control than democracy requires and neighborhoods are fragmented between different parts of the Landlord Cartel, organizing tenant councils only under the same landlords is simply insufficient. We have to find ways to build collective power, and thus leverage, with tenants from a far larger diversity of tenant experiences and incorporate that diversity into democratic decision-making within our tenant unions. We bring more people into movement by winning concessions from landlords together, whether that be rent reductions or defenses from eviction, even as we keep our eyes on the prize that tenant power can build towards: the total decommodification of housing. The removal of housing from the profit motive itself entails land where there are no lords, where people democratically control the housing supply to meet the needs of everyone.

One important cleavage in the landlord class that we can exploit to build democratic power is the NIMBY-YIMBY binary. The binary does not serve tenants whatsoever. The poor excuse for a redbaiting letter targeting DSA member Mary Black sent to the Wake County Democratic Party by Zionists reveals the two issues the Democratic Party finds most controversial: Palestine and “housing issues.” That’s because the Democrats aren’t rooted in the working class. They have more consensus on social issues, the terms of which are set by social movements, than they do on more fundamental questions of who controls the home. Prominent local Democrats can be found all over the place on the spectrum between Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) and Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY). This spectrum is a completely false dichotomy, since both NIMBY and YIMBY politics are landlord politics. They split the landlord class itself, as some landlords seek to build developments (cheered on by YIMBYs) and other landlords seek to entrench the value of their housing to the exclusion of others (supported by NIMBYs). But the fact that the landlord class is split means the Democrats are structurally incapable of mobilizing around tenant issues, even when questions like how high the rent will be and whether someone will be evicted impact people at the most visceral of levels. The cleavage presents an opening for a socialist path to be tread by the tenant as protagonist. The democratic road in the home is paved with the cobblestones of tenant organization that already has significant momentum in North Carolina. 

As socialist individuals, we must become organizers of our apartment complexes and neighborhoods. This is in some ways the original, bread and butter politics that the bourgeoisie distracted us from by channeling politics into elections every few years at the expense of everything else. That means practicing mass work where we’re living or moving to where we’re needed, same as in the workplace. Organizing under the conditions of complete landlord control also means embracing experimentation. That includes not only organizing tenants in different ways, but also finding new ways to practice socialist politics around housing. One way would be for cadre elected officials to build relationships with tenants facing eviction and then mobilize community members en masse to block an eviction – especially if the elected official ends up arrested. This helps us to stigmatize evictions through press and propaganda, increasing the costs of evicting tenants on landlords, while also defending tenants that are disproportionately Black women materially and building our credibility as DSA with tenants directly. Socialists are uniquely equipped to take advantage of the landlord class’s own cleavage on housing.

Fighting for democracy in the parts of the home that are the community and the land requires tightly-organized, escalating pressure campaigns that target identified antagonists. Civil rights organizing presents solid models for effective campaigns of this nature that led to dramatic change in democratic struggle. In our own chapter, our socialist feminist working group recently escalated from pickets to pressure on the landlord that leases space to our target. In other words, the landlord became our secondary target. Continuing to apply strategic pressure on this base-level secondary target, if we see the tactic to success, will present a model for us to follow in our local conditions. 

The same applies in larger fights with the landlord class as well: the Stop RDU campaign and Duke Respect Durham campaigns. Stop RDU is a campaign to keep the land public – subject to democratic control – and protect its treasures from a trade between corporations, from a landlord to a boss, from RDU to Wake Stone. Winning requires building a base and then escalating actions on our target, incorporating more people into decision-making at all steps of that process, extending democratic control where right now there is only landlord control. 

Similarly, our campaign alongside Duke Respect Durham coalition partners to make Duke University pay up to the community is a fight against Duke University, a landlord that happens to own 11% of the land in Durham. Popular pressure to force Duke to pay will require a momentous level of tight organization across the coalition, which calls for more people to be assigned as bottom-liners from DSA as well as one-on-one organizing conversations with coalition partners to identify bottom-liners across their organizational ranks as well. That’s the immediate need. Long-term, however, Duke Respect Durham is a beacon for the potential to unite a community against its chief landlord and extract concessions collectively from that landlord. A tall order, possible only through shared capacity with dozens of other organizations with which we’ve built relationships, and also one with explosive potential.

Socialists Everywhere Always

As you’ve probably noticed, the three sites of struggle bleed into one another just like movement ideas flow together. We are tenants at home, workers when we go to work, and community participants and caretakers of land all at oscillating and different points of our lives – both broadly and daily. We have to fight for democracy at all three sites of struggle, which means we have to think as socialists throughout all parts of our lives in which we are already embedded. This is how we maximize our potential as an organization of organizers, but also as a collective, the most promising foundation for a working class party that the state has seen in decades.

Democratic struggle means fighting for democracy in government through the New Strategy, challenging the undemocratic nature of the state, even as we organize for democracy in the workplace and the home. The bosses control the workplace; the landlords control the home, including housing, community, and land. We have to adapt our strategy in democratic struggle to the conditions of all of these sites of struggle in which we fight. In the workplace, we can organize unions with our coworkers and neighbors. Our housing is the same, even if tactics may change. But the landlords are also the opponent in the community and the land. On those turfs, we need different tactics – specifically, campaigns based on escalation that lead to more and more people in the community and caring for the land participating in democratic decision-making over their home. This is how we carry out democratic struggle in all parts of the home, not just our housing. 

Growing a democratic culture creates the conditions for us to fight for democracy better. A democratic culture creates more ownership over our collective project and incorporates more people into decision-making, while also holding space with and for one another as comrades through better systems of care. Finally, we can foster a more democratic culture by doing the work we need to do to make DSA a more diverse organization that more closely represents the entire working class to which we belong and that we aim to emancipate.

Inspired by DSA Cleveland’s resolution, “Winning the Battle for Democracy,” DSA San Diego adopted the following resolution on July 28, 2024: UPDATE: DSA has since published its 2024 Workers Deserve More program, which states: “Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and [...]

Read More... from DSA San Diego Passes Resolution “For a Democratic Constitution”

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Tonight on Revolutions Per Minute, we travel to the United Kingdom, where far-right riots have swept the country. We ask Alex Roberts, a UK-based organizer and host of the anti-fascist podcast 12 Rules for WHAT, how communities can fight back. We also speak to Paolo Gerbaudo, a senior research fellow at Complutense University in Madrid, on the role of social media in contemporary politics. 

By Rose L, aka Rosenriot

Let it be known, I did everything I was supposed to do. 

2017 was a different time. I still thought I was cis. I did not want children. I knew I wasn’t fit to be a mother. I have health conditions that I didn’t ever want passed down. I was abstinent at the time, but had been previously sexually assaulted. I knew getting pregnant wasn’t going to always be my decision. 

So I did the responsible thing and I pursued sterilization. I went to my OBGYN, who had cared for me for the prior 10 years. The nurse came in to see me, and asked me about the nature of my visit. I told her I wanted sterilization. I’d done my research. I was sure. The nurse smiled and said, “I can’t imagine that being an issue. The doctor is a huge feminist.” I was so relieved. 

The doctor came in. She sat down and proceeded to lecture me on what a disastrous procedure I was considering. What if I changed my mind? What would my future husband think? What if my inability to bear a child affected my desirability?

I was crushed. But I persisted. There were other doctors. I was eventually able to find a doctor willing to perform a sterilization on me. A male doctor, in fact, who only asked me three questions: Was I sound of body? Yes. Was I sound of mind? Debatable but yes. And did I want this? Absolutely, yes. A month later, I received a tubal ligation and uterine ablation, the latter being a doctor recommendation to ease my period, as I would no longer have use for a menstrual cycle.

But again, 2017 was a different time. Republicans had not yet started proposing total abortion bans. So when my doctor warned me that I would have an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy from my procedure, I didn't even blink an eye. I was so naive then. 

Since getting my procedure, 14 states have passed total abortion bans. These bans not only criminalize abortions, they often conflate ectopic pregnancies with viable fetuses. The truth is that ectopic pregnancy by definition is not viable, as the fertilized egg plants itself outside of the womb. Ectopic is also medically and factually an abortion. 

Lately Republicans have tried to redefine abortion to not include cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening medical conditions such as ectopic pregnancies. When being questioned by Rep. Ayanna Pressley about ectopic pregnancies, Erin Hawley, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a known hate-group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, used such rhetoric: “That’s not an abortion because it does not have the intent to end the life of the child.” This misunderstands abortion: abortion is not subject to intent. It is objectively a medical procedure, and a safe one at that.

Abortion bans often prohibit doctors from prescribing methotrexate in the early stages of an ectopic pregnancy to abort the unviable egg and to save the pregnant person. Without early intervention, an ectopic pregnancy can result in hemorrhage, sepsis, or organ failure. These can only be prevented by abortive surgery, a surgery doctors are now terrified to perform for fear it will violate their state’s abortion laws. These laws put doctors in the position of going to prison for saving a pregnant person’s life. It puts the pregnant person in the position of dying, waiting on the operating table for help that will never come.

I did everything right in 2017, but Republicans would still have me and others like me dead. They’ve consistently moved the goalposts of what is acceptable behavior for people with uteruses, pushing it farther and farther to outlaw exceptions for ectopic pregnancy, to outlaw exceptions for incest, to outlaw exceptions for rape, to outlaw contraception, to make sure that everyone with a uterus slowly but surely loses their bodily autonomy.

But Republicans didn’t stop there. When I came out as trans and nonbinary in 2019, I was still in the state of Tennessee. There were only a handful of doctors willing to prescribe Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT, a treatment I wished to pursue in my transition. At least when I found a doctor for my sterilization, I only had to wait a month. For HRT, the waitlists for these doctors were years long, with spots only opening up as trans patients moved away or passed away, either of old age or by their own hand. And many did pass away by their own hand, as increasingly oppressive laws around trans people passed left and right without any consideration for their quality of life or existence.

And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Our right to exist, autonomous, as we are, as we choose to be. 

I hear controversy in the pro-choice movement about using terms like “pregnant people” or “people with uteruses” and whether trans people deserve to be included or considered the same way as cis women are in this struggle. But the fact of the matter is, when we’re in the hospital, and I’m bleeding out from an ectopic pregnancy, and you’re giving birth to a child you were forced to have because there were no abortion clinics in your area, it’s not going to matter that you’re cis and I’m trans; that you’re a woman, and I’m not. It’s going to matter that we had wombs and we tried to use them in ways that were unacceptable to the heteronormative cisnormative patriarchal establishment.

Trans or cis, our bodily autonomies are intertwined. Our right to exist unyielding is intertwined. It might be easy for you, if you are a cishet ally, to think that the shooting at Club Q doesn’t affect you. That bills like SB49 aka the “Don’t Say Gay” bill have nothing to do with you. That drag shows being protested by Proud Boys are a problem, but not your problem. But my people, queer and trans people, are canaries in the coal mine. If you think violence against abortion clinics and feminist spaces won’t increase too, if you think violence in general will not increase, you haven’t been paying attention. Any deviation from the path that Conservative Evangelical fascists would prescribe to you will be met with extreme violence.

In just the last few months I have watched my fellow drag performers, of all genders, be targeted by hate groups. I myself was targeted by Libs of TikTok for a drag brunch I wasn’t even in, a drag brunch that Proud Boys showed up to, heavily armed, threatening my fellow performers. I watched a livestream of Proud Boys protesting Naomi Dix in Moore County, before shooting up a power station and cutting electricity to an entire population for days on end. After Club Q, I attended the Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil in Raleigh and spoke the name “Daniel Davis Aston”, a bartender at Club Q, before major news outlets had even grabbed hold of his name. I learned he was one of the victims through a drag performer I knew from Colorado Springs. That drag performer said when he moved to Colorado Springs, Daniel was the first friend he made there, and Daniel even helped him obtain top surgery. Daniel’s mother said his death is “a nightmare that you can't wake up from.”

We are about to be in that neverending nightmare, too. Violence will increase against all marginalized peoples. No longer is this a fight for women’s rights or trans rights. In fact, our greatest mistake was ever thinking these fights were separate. The struggles of all those marginalized and targeted by Conservatives and Christo-Fascism are united. They will not stop until trans and queer people are dead or conforming, they will not stop until women are dead or conforming, they will not stop until Black people are dead or conforming, they will not stop.

So it’s time for us to begin. It’s time for us to embrace the intersectional approach they know will defeat them, that they try everything to dissuade. If we continue to fight this fight separately, we will not survive. 

NC Triangle DSA has several ways to get involved with the intersectional fight facing us. The Socialist Feminist Working Group is making headway on shutting down a local Crisis Pregnancy Center, aka Anti-Abortion Center, via pickets and escalations. The Queer and Trans Solidarity Working Group is focusing on building mutual aid support networks for Queer folk in the Triangle to rely on whether the federal or state governments are blue or red or fallen. These, and several other Working Groups, fall under our chapter’s Priority Campaign, a resolution voted on by our chapter to increase our focus on bodily autonomy issues. 

We must unite. We must realize that many of us here are both oppressed and oppressor, and to unlearn the systems of supremacy that make us perpetuate harm into our communities. We must learn how to protect ourselves, to heal ourselves, to create the skills that help us cultivate safety. 

The time for awareness is over. The time for action is now.

About the Author:

Rose L (they/them), also known by their drag persona ROSENRIOT, is a member of NCTDSA, activist, and queer performer living and working in Central NC. They’ve lived in the South for over half their life, and can be found working on sewing and craft projects in places you wouldn’t expect sewing or crafting to occur.

If Grand Rapids wants to meet the goals of 62% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and 100% by 2050, bold action is needed now! Will you send a message of support for GR Climate Coalition’s Beyond a Number: A Call For Bold Climate Action in Grand Rapids?

Grand Rapids’ emission reduction goals are the floor, not the ceiling. They can only be met with meaningful policies and adequate funding. Officials may turn away from these to save money in the short term or embrace the familiar status quo. But we can not wait any longer. Our representatives must make good on their promises.

Making sure our representatives know where we stand on the climate crisis is necessary now more than ever. Our City Leaders are most likely to act when the public exerts pressure on them.

Climate chaos is no longer just a specter on the horizon. It is here. It’ll get worse if we don’t act fast. Extreme heat and weather will increase cost of living and leave those who are already struggling with high prices even farther behind. We must not leave individual residents to solve the problems caused by systemic injustice and policy failures.

The GR Climate Coalition recently kicked off Beyond a Number with an Open Letter to the City Commission. The GRDSA is proud to have signed on to that letter. Now it’s your turn to take action and send a message to City Leaders to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emission.

The post Tell Grand Rapids City Leaders the Time is Now for Bold Climate Action! appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

We have a few vacancies on NPEC right now and so are opening up applications on an expedited basis until August 15. 

Thank you for your interest in joining DSA’s National Political Education Committee! We’re excited to have you help develop our national political education program.

We’re taking applications through August 15th, 2024 . Applications are reviewed by NPEC’s Steering Committee and appointed by the NPC. These applications will be for the remainder of  this current term is May 1, 2024 – April 30, 2025. Applicants will be notified of acceptance via e-mail by the end of August.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org

by Saige Smith

Robinson recently released a new ad appearing to take a more moderate stance on abortion. His stance on abortion hasn’t changed; he’s only fine tuned his talking points in the wake of the upcoming election.

WATCH NOW: Mark Robinson’s new campaign ad:#ncpol #ncgov pic.twitter.com/TgLurZnpLQ

— Mark Robinson (@markrobinsonNC) August 2, 2024

Mark Robinson has been vocal about his extreme anti-abortion beliefs for years. He previously said “Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down” and “If I had all the power right now, let’s say I was the governor and I had a willing legislature, we could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason,” yet in the ad he pivots to supporting “commonsense” legislation with “exceptions.”

This ad is a perfect encapsulation of the GOP’s post-Dobbs rhetorical strategy. This article is going to detail how and why this is just the latest attempt by the anti-abortion movement to save face now that the harsh reality of abortion bans has really come to light post-Dobbs. The anti-abortion movement thrives off of abortion stigmatization, medical misinformation, and emotionally charged rhetoric, and this 30 second ad is full of it.

Fueling abortion stigma

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “that’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape … Which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported”

While neither Robinson went into detail about Yolanda’s abortion during the short ad, it’s important to note a few things. Research shows that people experience a mix of positive and negative emotions in the days after having an abortion, with relief predominating. The intensity of all emotions diminishes over time, mostly over the first year. The vast majority – 95% – of people who get abortions said that it was the right decision for them. People who are denied abortions have worse physical and mental health and worse economic outcomes than those who seek and receive abortions.

Mark starts by contributing to the idea that abortion itself is a difficult decision. Abortion is sometimes difficult and sometimes not – there are many nuances around having an abortion. Every decision to have an abortion is unique, individual, and deserving of respect. Just like they were able to decide to have an abortion 30 years ago, all people should be trusted to make the reproductive healthcare decisions that are best for them — including abortion — on their timeline and with the resources they need.

The beginning of the ad further implies that abortion is something regretful and shameful and therefore the wrong decision to make. Abortion stigma is perpetuated by abortion restrictions and inevitably leads to criminalization even when there are no authorizing statutes. Abortion stigma is everywhere, whether it’s the protesters at the clinic harassing you on your way in for your appointment, your parents threatening to kick you out, a teacher you confide in who tells you that’s not something you should talk about, a toxic romantic partner pressuring you against what you want for your pregnancy, the societal pressure to become a mother while ostracizing child-free people, or the laws creating barriers to abortion care.

The anti-abortion movement’s post-Dobbs rhetorical pivot

More and more horror stories have emerged since the overturn of Roe v Wade of people being forced to carry doomed pregnancies, give birth in a car after being turned away from the emergency room, or forced to travel out of state for abortion care – and the anti-abortion movement knows this.

Post-Dobbs, Republicans have had to deal with how unpopular and harmful their abortion bans are. Rather than admitting that pregnancy is too complex to legislate and addressing how these bans are detrimental to pregnant people, the anti-abortion movement is focusing on fine-tuning their talking points: by focusing on exceptions in abortion bans that do not work; moving away from calling abortion bans “bans” and instead calling abortion bans “commonsense consensus” or “compromise”; and performative amendments that do nothing but attempt to repair their image.

By design, exceptions do NOT work

On paper, abortion bans may include exceptions, but in reality, these exceptions are nothing more than PR points for the anti-abortion politicians who pass these nightmare bans. These supposed “exceptions” are intentionally vague and narrowly defined so that it’s impractical to actually use them — and that’s the point. When Republicans fall back on how the current ban has “commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape”, this is a rhetorical strategy to defer the actual problem — the wide-ranging harm caused by banning abortion — and pivot to appealing to the less stigmatized reasons people get abortions.

In North Carolina, abortion is banned after 12 weeks with a few vague exceptions up to 20 weeks. For example, North Carolina’s exception for the life of the mother defines a medical emergency as the following (emphasis mine):

“Medical emergency. – A condition which, in reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of the pregnant woman as to necessitate the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or for which a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function, not including any psychological or emotional conditions. For purposes of this definition, no condition shall be deemed a medical emergency if based on a claim or diagnosis that the woman will engage in conduct which would result in her death or in substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function”.

The language used does not define what exactly constitutes a “major bodily function,” nor what constitutes a “substantial and irreversible physical impairment” to a major bodily function. This intentionally vague language puts physicians in a bind when pregnant patients need an abortion for health reasons. It shifts the decision away from the medical providers and patients and over to the facility’s lawyers. The second part of this definition shows how Republicans anticipate that abortion bans will make people suicidal, so they specifically outline that abortions are not allowed to preserve psychological or emotional well-being of the mother.

How much of an “exception” is it if people have to wait for their vital signs to crash before they’re legally allowed treatment? How much permanent harm to one’s organs is an acceptable trade-off? Exactly how close to death does one have to get to so they can receive treatment?

As Jessica Valenti pointed out, “This is all by design; Republicans deliberately write in exceptions that will be near-impossible to use. So why in the world aren’t Democrats shouting as much from the rooftops? Instead, they’re giving Republicans a tremendous gift: The ability to point to exceptions that no one can actually use as proof that they’re ‘softening’ on abortion … If the exceptions meant to save people’s lives aren’t usable, what makes anyone think those for rape and incest would be?”

Reporting requirements and time limits place barriers in the way of survivors of sexual assault seeking abortion care in states with abortion bans. When you add in a culture that doesn’t believe victims about sexual violence, the purpose and ineffectiveness of rape and incest exceptions become more evident. When the state forces victims to provide proof of their assault to receive healthcare, the state inevitably creates policy that protects sexual abusers. This is the side that wants you to think that they’re the moderate ones.

Compromise? Who? Common sense? Where?

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “That’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported”

Calling North Carolina’s 12 week abortion ban “common sense” and intentionally not calling it a ban are tactics we saw sprout up last year when the NC Senate was hearing debate over S.B.20. As Jessica Valenti pointed out, “Bill sponsor Sen. Joyce Krawiec says, ‘this is a pro-life plan, not an abortion ban.’ (Let that sink for a moment: Republicans are so afraid of abortion rights’ popularity, they’re not even willing to call their bans ‘bans’ anymore.)”. Mandating humiliating, burdensome, and time sensitive barriers to healthcare is far from “common sense”. Going directly against medical providers warnings about the harms caused when abortion is banned is not “common sense”.

Post-Dobbs, polling shows that the vast majority of Americans want abortion legal: over 80% of Americans don’t want pregnancy to be legislated, 78% of Americans believe the decision to have an abortion should be left between the patient and doctor, and 7 in 10 voters support access to abortion medication. Republicans began to really embrace the stance that they believe in exceptions for abortions to make it seem like they are willing to compromise to appeal to moderate voters in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v Wade. In reality, they aren’t compromising on “common sense” legislation – they’re compromising the health and well-being of the very people they’re claiming to protect.

Medical Misinfo: late-term abortion edition

In true Republican fashion, Mark mentions “late-term abortions” at the end of the ad. The anti-abortion movement thrives off of emotionally-inflammatory rhetoric and abortion stigma, which are two characteristics of the phrase “late-term abortion”. This was Mark’s subtle way of appealing to moderate voters with extremist policy that’s been rhetorically watered down to make it more palatable in order to gain votes come November. 

“30 years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision – we had an abortion. It was like this solid pain between us that we never spoke of”. Then his wife, Yolanda Robinson, states “it’s something that stays with you forever”. Mark Robinson continues, “That’s why I stand by our current law. It provides commonsense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest, and rape which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m Governor, mothers in need will be supported.”

The phrase “late-term abortion” is a political buzzword that anti-abortion proponents have latched onto as a talking point to demonize abortions later in pregnancy when the vast majority (98.7%) of abortions are before 21 weeks. The anti-abortion movement has a reputation for using stigmatizing, emotionally-charged rhetoric to justify banning abortion and to ostracize the people who get and provide abortions. Anti-abortion opponents made up the phrase “late-term abortion” and embrace it because they define it however they want as a part of their language war.

According to experts like the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), the term “late-term abortion” has no medical significance and is not used in a clinical setting or to describe the delivery of abortion care later in pregnancy. When health care providers use language like “full term” and “late term” in the context of pregnancy, they’re talking about how far along the pregnancy is (with “full term” meaning between 39 and 40 weeks and “late term” meaning 41+ weeks). It’s important to note that they do not use these terms to categorize types of abortion care. 

The reasons people seek abortions later in pregnancy include medical concerns such as fetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment, as well as barriers to care that cause delays in obtaining an abortion. What’s cruel is delaying and denying people the healthcare they need.

Despite all this, leaders in the anti-abortion movement can’t even agree on exactly when a ‘late-term abortion’ supposedly happens. It seems to be determined by whatever Republican or anti-abortion organization writing the bill wants it to be.

For example, in 2021, congressional Republicans sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (model legislation created by the National Right to Life Committee), a bill that determined abortions after 20 weeks to be “late-term”. The next year, they sponsored the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act,” that determined “late-term” after 15 weeks. The anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute claims the phrase is appropriate for abortions performed after only 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Taking a page out of the playbook

Since abortion bans are highly unpopular and harmful, Mark Robinson is using the rhetorical tactics directly from the post-Dobbs playbook. It’s easier to fine-tune an extreme candidate’s political messaging in the months before the election than it is to address the wide-ranging devastation caused by their own policies that harm the people they claim to protect.

For years, Mark Robinson has been vocal about his anti-abortion stance by perpetuating abortion stigma and medical misinformation, and this pre-election rhetorical shift is no different. Don’t let him fool you. As he said, if it were up to him, we would have a total abortion ban with no exceptions. Remember this in November when you go to the voting booth, and remember to donate to the local abortion fund.

Read on Craftivist the Activist!