Only Socialism Defeats Barbarism
Statement from the Madison Area DSA Executive Committee on the 2024 Election
Donald Trump’s victory is a setback for the working class and will surely threaten our communities in countless ways. But it would not be possible without the failures of the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris’s focus on upholding a sorry status quo was not enough when voters are dissatisfied and disgusted with climate change, genocide, inflation, and our corrupt political system.
Workers deserve more. Workers deserve housing, Medicare for All, unions. Workers deserve a Green New Deal, taxes on the rich, an end to the US war machine. Workers deserve a party that fights for us, not the rich who exploit and divide us. Workers deserve socialism, and we won’t stop organizing until we get it.
Democrats lost, but DSA can and does win in down-ballot races throughout the country. Progressive and pro-worker ballot measures passed in several “red” states. Here in Madison, voters overwhelmingly passed budget referendums to fund our schools and city services. With those funds, we demand free school meals, affordable housing, sanctuary for immigrants, safety for trans people, and better pay for workers.
Only socialism and building mass movements and political organizations can defeat barbarism. Don’t despair – join DSA and organize for a better world with us! Come join us this week at one of the following events!
- Saturday 11/9 at The People’s Organizing Fair
- Sunday 11/10 at the Shout Your Abortion rally
- Tuesday 11/12 at our next Madison DSA monthly meeting
- Saturday 11/16 at our next New Member Orientation
Register for all of the above at https://madison-dsa.org/events/.
Statement from the Leadership Council following the 2024 general election
In the wake of the 2024 general election, many of us are feeling despair, grief, and anger over the results, especially at the national level. We had terrible options—between a wannabe fascist dictator and a neoliberal genocidaire in the Oval Office, neither outcome would be desirable for the working class in the United States. Unfortunately, the worst of all choices came to fruition. With the Senate, House, and SCOTUS also being captured by far-right forces, it is understandable to feel fear and hopelessness. But we will NOT let those feelings get the best of us. That’s how the oligarchy wins. Fear paralyzes, and apathy kills. The reality is, we’ve got work to do.
Change to the status quo doesn’t happen […]
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On the 2024 US national election
The results of the election are frightening and difficult to process.
DSA knows that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will be a terror on the working class while they remain in power. This terror will disproportionately impact already vulnerable communities, including people who are Black, indigenous, Hispanic, queer, immigrants, and more, as it did during the prior Trump term. The return of “Muslim bans”, gutting of carbon initiatives, an even more unabashedly reactionary Supreme Court, an unrepentantly hostile NLRB, an emboldened rightist paramilitary movement both in and out of the state — all these and more are in the offing. The Israeli settler state is celebrating, brazenly announcing its intention to permanently depopulate Northern Gaza of its already starved and shell-shocked residents. Project 2025, or some other iteration of right-wing state consolidation, may yet find its day in the sun, having shed some of the aura of liability.
Meanwhile, the current leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to produce a convincing alternative to the rise of fascism and plays into the right-wing agenda in critical and unacceptable ways. While the various causes that led to Kamala Harris’ defeat will be teased out in the weeks to come, we already know that the policy that “nothing will fundamentally change” of Biden and Harris has alienated the multiracial US working class, who do not see the Democratic Party as sufficiently fighting for their needs.
We know the US political system, irrespective of its official labels, ultimately serves capitalism, settler colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and cis-heteropatriarchy. These imperatives lock it into a death spiral that threatens the whole of human existence. The rate of spiral may ebb and flow under the hand of different nominal masters, but the direction remains the same — as long as these forms of domination exist unchallenged.
Many of us are disheartened. We are making space to mourn collectively, while recognizing our individual forms of heartbreak. We own the failures of the US Left to credibly point a way out of our deepening polycrisis, outside of its usual circles. We also know that, per Black abolitionist organizer and academic Mariame Kaba, “hope is a discipline.” Even when the future is uncertain or dangerous, we have the responsibility to believe that we will win. We will win a world where democracy flourishes, people’s basic needs are met, and working class people have the power.
We will only win when we are organized. And we will be organized only when working people striving for a better world can genuinely find a voice in Left political life.
Regardless of the election results, our task is to organize — to become a bigger and more skilled socialist movement, to contest for power, and win big for the working class.
The DSA 2024 Workers Deserve More platform is part of the path in which we can do that. Find out more here: https://2024.dsausa.org/
If you have never organized before, or if you have had to step away, we invite you to join Silicon Valley DSA or peer organizations fighting to make Silicon Valley a place where all working people can thrive.
At our upcoming chapter meeting on November 16 at 1pm we will talk about this as a community. Please join us, and let’s cry, laugh, argue, strategize, despair, celebrate, and above all struggle together – for the better world that can and must be.
In unity,
SVDSA Officers
The post On the 2024 US national election appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.
DSA SF’s Statement on the 2024 Presidential Election
Many people are rightly horrified by the election of Donald Trump, which will mean renewed attacks on immigrant, Transgender, Indigenous, Latinx, and Arab/Muslim communities and other oppressed groups. But the outcome of this presidential election was far from inevitable. The Democratic Party ran an unpopular candidate who abandoned working class voters, which led to the crueler face of capital coming into leadership for the next four years.
The Democratic Party and Biden’s administration failed to address the people’s needs in an election that largely became about the economy, and dismissed key constituents while increasing funding to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Their complacency caused the second Trump presidential term just as it caused the first – the right fills the vacuum left by their failures. The Democratic Party is unsuited for progress and we must build the alternative.
As socialists, it’s up to us to stop the descent into barbarism by building an organization by and for the working class. The rightward trajectory of both capitalist parties shows that we need an alternative to the future of war, militarism, and oppression on offer to us– a socialist alternative rooted in the struggle for liberation. The time is now. Join us in the fight for the new world.
dsasf.org/join
Now More Than Ever
by Jean Allen
The night Trump was elected, I sat on a bridge by the Genesee. Having forgotten my phone and keys, I sat in the rain horrified that this would mark the total end of the movement for Black Lives and the growing left at the time. I drank a half bottle of whiskey and ill advisedly asked a friend out and barely slept. That morning, my roommates and I shambled wordlessly to a local diner, where my roommate spoke the first words I heard during the ‘Trump Era’:
“I just read that we need Jazz now more than ever”.
I spent the next few months feeling directionless. All my political instincts said that Trump wouldn’t win in 2016 and he did. Was I correct about anything?
That feeling came to a close a few months later, when I called my little sister as she came home from the Airport Protests of the early Trump administration. Right after, she told me that she was so excited for the ways that graphic design could fit into activism. The conversation steadied me. Initially I felt a kind of snobby satisfaction—Oh, my sister thinks the Airport Protests are about her here, how typical of the young. I had a similar feeling we had laughing at the Jazz article, that people have taken this huge event and made it about them, unlike ourselves of course.
Reflecting on it, I was being taught a useful lesson. This essay will come out the weekend before the 2024 Election and I imagine you’re reading it after. I imagine that whatever the result, we will see a great many statements and a great many sentiments like this: That whatever crisis is happening is about them and their pre-existing interests and viewpoints. And it’s easy to take a kind of dismissive attitude towards that, viewing yourself as intelligently and critically responding to these same moments.
All of this is a lesson, and even the smartest snob can miss it. While crises do change people’s opinions, they only do so in ways guided by those people’s pre-existing beliefs and experiences. To quote scripture, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
Easy to say that, but creatively and empathetically applying it is our task as Marxists. No event comes into the world with its own explanation, it is on us to divine and explain it. Think about the narrative that once climate change starts affecting the U.S. indisputably, then we will gain support for green energy policy, because the crisis will give people a visceral understanding of the damage of climate change.
Except that is not the only thing happening in the wake of Hurricane Helene, or for that matter any hurricane since Katrina. For many people the hurricanes are not scientific events but moments of divine retribution or conspiracy. They think this because it sorts in with their pre-existing beliefs, and because they are told that by people they respect and love.
I think we still kind of cling to a hope that some event will happen that will change people’s ideas, that we will all spontaneously arrive in a park with the absolute correct plan already in mind, because that is easier than thinking about doing politics and slowly changing peoples’ minds. Alas, nothing does politics for us. We need to patiently explain our politics forever if we want people to share our grounded materialist interpretation of events. And that means organizing around each individual moment but it also means understanding the continuity between moments.
I do not know what will happen on November 5th. I have felt quite a bit of uncertainty around it. We can guess how either party will slot the lessons of its defeat into pre-existing beliefs. But either way, we can be confident that on the day after the election, people will still be getting evicted, they’ll be losing jobs, they’ll be deported, they’ll be getting killed by homophobes or the police. It’ll be another day in a dying and deadly empire. We must clearly focus on our collective task, now more than ever.
The post Now More Than Ever first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
DSA-LA Steering Committee Statement
Where do we go after election day? Donald Trump has won the presidential election, a campaign marked by vile fascism, nativism, and the demonization of immigrants and trans people, while serving only the billionaire class.
Neoliberal infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes. The consequences of this resurgent fascist right wing are life and death for the most vulnerable in our communities and across the globe. The Democratic establishment chose to pivot hard right at the expense of immigrants, Palestinians, LGBTQ+ folks, unions, and workers across the country. We cannot be shocked that the working people of this country turned their back on a failing party when that same party abandoned them.
Solidarity is a powerful force against the despair of this moment. It is our role as socialists to organize and show that another world is possible. Time and time again, DSA-LA fights the capitalist class and wins. We are beating the cops, landlords, and charter school billionaires spending millions to defeat us at the ballot box. We are expanding our power on local city councils and school boards through the victories of Ysabel Jurado, Konstantine Anthony, and Karla Griego. We are organizing in our workplaces and making clear that Los Angeles is a union town. Socialist demands are resonating across the multiracial working class of the city and now we must drive these forward with our expanded bloc.
This is why 4000 Angelenos call DSA our political home. It can be your home too. We have been building power since DSA’s exponential growth in 2016 and have forged a strong foundation to fight. With this power we can fight fascism and protect the most vulnerable in our communities. Together, we can organize to make Los Angeles a Sanctuary City and put a stop to ICE collusion with LAPD. Together, we can organize Starbucks and Amazon workers to build the labor movement in our city toward UAW’s call for a nationwide General Strike on May Day 2028 and realize the power of the working class.
This election is over. The work is just beginning. A better world is possible. Join DSA.
Boston DSA’s statement on the re-election of Donald Trump
A second Trump presidency will be disastrous for all working, marginalized, and oppressed peoples. The right wing agenda laid out in Project 2025 and supported by Trump and his allies seeks to strip away human rights from millions of Americans by banning abortion, criminalizing gender affirming healthcare, and deporting millions of immigrants.
Trump has also made clear he will govern for the benefit of his fellow billionaires, such as Elon Musk, who seek to abolish the National Labor Relations Board, which protects the right to unionize and holds employers accountable for workplace abuse and exploitation. Trump’s win is a victory for racism, sexism, transphobia, nativism, and the ruling class which profits while the rest of the world burns.
The blame for Trump’s win lies squarely with the increasingly centrist Democrats. As vile as Trump and his movement are, they could not have achieved their goals without the complacency and accommodation of Democrats and other “opposition” figures. The far right attack on trans rights accelerated under the Biden administration, and both Biden and Harris campaigned on immigration policies that would restrict refugees, increase deportations, and militarize the border beyond anything done by the Trump administration.
The Democrats’ obsequience to corporate donors and ruling-class interests demobilized the multi-racial working-class base that has always led the fight against Trumpism. Similarly, the Democrats’ active choice to be complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestine disillusioned many otherwise anti-Trump voters. By abandoning the working class in favor of millionaire donors, the Democratic Party lost an election that should have been a clear refutation of the dangerous and unpopular far-right.
Boston DSA will continue to work towards a party of and for the working class, one that is independent from the capitalist ruling class and establishment parties they control. As socialists, we know that no president – Democrat or Republican – is going to protect us or our communities. As democratic socialists, we know that workers deserve more – and it’s up to us to fight for it and win, no matter who’s in office.
That’s why Boston DSA has spent the last four years standing in solidarity with the entire working class – from Teamsters, to the UAW, to the BTU. It’s why we’ve helped flood the streets for Palestine, knocked on doors for socialist electeds, and helped tenants organize and fight back against landlords. We know electing Democrats or Republicans won’t get us trans rights, free abortion on demand, a Green New Deal, or Medicare for All – only mass movements of the working class, organized in our jobs, our streets, and our schools, can do that.
Despair is not a luxury we can afford.
If you’re ready to fight for a better world, join us.
JOIN BOSTON DSA: bdsa.us/join
CHAPTER ORIENTATIONS: bdsa.us/getengaged
WORKERS NEED A HAMMER:
SEATTLE DSA STATEMENT ON THE NOV. 5 GENERAL ELECTION
Last night, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for a second time. If you’re feeling angry, scared, or disillusioned with politics in the United States, you are not alone.
Dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party has never been clearer: the millions who voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 did not show up after years of broken promises and half-measures, and the Republicans won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years.
Seattle DSA reaffirms our stance against Trump and the racism, white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, islamophobia, Zionism, anti-semitism and capitalist interests he represents.
As socialists, we will always fight to oppose fascism regardless of the party that supports it.
For the last four years we’ve fought against the policies of a floundering Democratic party as it failed to defend bodily autonomy, armed and abetted a genocide, did nothing as the cost of living spiraled out of control, and left entire swaths of the country devastated by climate catastrophe.
At the same time, our efforts to build local power to fight back against the right wing have never been stronger.
Last night, in a landslide victory, we sent Shaun Scott to the Washington State legislature with over 67% of the vote by running on a socialist platform to tax the ultra rich, fund social housing, and prevent school closures.
To the north, our comrades in Everett won a historic raise in the minimum wage, a priority the Democratic Party has largely abandoned, and to the south, Portland DSA members elected both of their candidates for city council, running on our democratic socialist platform.
We are here for anyone who wants to fight for a better world post election; we have a lot of work to be done together. Seattle DSA is also fighting beyond electoral work. We are fighting to boycott Israeli apartheid, fund social housing by taxing massive corporations, organize our workplaces as we radicalize our unions, and we are planning what else we need to accomplish together in the coming years.
Join us to build a movement which can resist and beat Trump, and win real, material gains for workers in Washington and across the country. We aspire to be the instrument of our collective liberation, the hammer workers need and deserve to smash fascism and bring forth a new society founded on justice, dignity, and freedom.
Our Upcoming Events:
- Our post-election planning social this Saturday, 11 am at Cafe Red. We’ll talk about what we can do going forward to build power together in Seattle. https://actionnetwork.org/events/seattle-dsa-post-election-social/
- And for new or prospective members, join our new member orientation call on Zoom, this Sunday at 2 pm: https://actionnetwork.org/events/seattle-dsa-new-member-orientation
- You can see our full calendar of events on our website: seattledsa.org/calendar
Seattle DSA
The post WORKERS NEED A HAMMER: appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.
WA DSA Chapters Say: No Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement!
This is a joint statement from the following Washington DSA chapters: Seattle DSA, Tacoma DSA, Palouse DSA, Snohomish County DSA, …and growing.
On October 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) along with Canada designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization” and announced sanctions on the organization which “prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons.”
Our chapters regard this as an unacceptable form of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement and call for this decision to be reversed. Samidoun is one of the oldest and most well-established Palestinian advocacy organizations in the United States and performs vital work in reporting on the conditions of Palestinian prisoners held by the State of Israel and organizing for their liberation and more broadly in the Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialist movements.
Samidoun reports are widely cited by academics and human rights organizations as a reliable source of information on the appalling conditions and widespread abuse in Israeli prisons. Attempting to shut down their work by declaring them a “sham charity” is a blatant effort to deny the world one of the only reliable sources of knowledge of what happens to Palestinian prisoners behind Israeli prison walls.
Locally, Samidoun has been a beacon of light for many through this dark time. They led peaceful demonstrations in downtown Seattle every Saturday following Israel’s invasion of Gaza, engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, and have supported activists targeted with repression for their activism in support of the Palestinian people, including DSA members facing trial. They have demonstrated the meaning of the word “solidarity,” and now they need that from all of us. We stand with Samidoun against this fierce repression, just as they stand with the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held hostage by the Israeli government without trial.
To be abundantly clear, this is an attempt by the Department of the Treasury to censor, discredit, and undermine the entire movement for Palestinian solidarity. This decision should be understood as part of a broader pattern of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement that also includes the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism by governments, educational institutions, and other bodies in order to defame those who protest the genocide in Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon as antisemites. In this case, advocates for Palestinian rights are being accused of scamming donors and laundering money for the PFLP, a liberation force designated to be a “terrorist organization” by the US government. Samidoun denies “any material or organizational ties to entities listed on the terrorist lists of the United States, Canada or the European Union.”
The US also has a long track record of labeling anti-imperialist resistance groups as terrorist organizations, including South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) until 2008, while simultaneously allowing millions to be funneled through tax deductible non-profit organizations to fund imperialist terror, like the violence of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We reject this classification and will not allow this decision to weaken the bonds of solidarity with those fighting for a free Palestine. Our chapters remain committed to the liberation of Palestine and call for a reversal of the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions on Samidoun and an end to all repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement.
The post WA DSA Chapters Say: No Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement! appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.
[Media Advisory] Local Raleigh Organizations Hold Organizing Fair
Media Advisory
For Immediate Release
November 6th, 2024
Politics Beyond the Ballot Box
Local Raleigh Organizations Hold Organizing Fair
Moore Square, Raleigh, NC
November 9th, 2024 1-4PM
NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America, in collaboration with multiple local organizations dedicated to social justice, organized labor, and community support, will be hosting a public Organizing Fair in Moore Square in Raleigh on November 9th from 1-4pm. This will be an opportunity for community members to learn about the struggles in their area and the organizations involved in this vital work. With the end of the 2024 election, more Americans than before are paying attention to politics. But, we need to recognize that voting is only one of the essential ways we express our voices and advocate for our communities. Labor protections, civil rights, and peace cannot be advanced once every four years. They must be fought for every day, week, month, and year.
This organizing fair will be a place for passionate Triangle residents to become connected to these fights in their own backyard. The event will have tabling to create opportunities connecting community members with organizers, speeches from veteran organizers about next steps, and tables for community members to discuss the 2024 election and its consequences. Organizations participating include but are not limited to: Raleigh Mutual Aid Hub, The Southern Workers Assembly, Jewish Voices for Peace, Triangle Tenants Union, Meals for the Masses, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America.
“The strategy of showing up every few years to cast a vote clearly is insufficient. Workers are kept out of power no matter who is in charge. It does not need to be that way though- workers are really what makes everything run. Nothing is made without labor. We have power, we just have to be organized and conscious. This event is important because it is a first step towards realizing the power we can only claim if we get organized.” - Jody, IBEW member
We encourage all Triangle residents who care about this election to turn out and learn about how they can become involved in their community’s work. We cannot trust elected officials themselves to fix the growing problems our nation is experiencing. We have to do it ourselves. And there is no other place to get started like your own community.