Portland DSA’s Plan to elect socialists in the Rose City

Portland DSA members met Sunday March 12th for our General Meeting, and ratified a new Endorsement Policy for the chapter. A slideshow explaining the policy can be found here. The authors of the new policy, Wallace Milner and Spencer Mann, explain their perspective on the policy and its purpose.

Sunday March 12th, Portland DSA took an important step towards electing socialists to City Council with the passage of a new chapter endorsement policy. This comes at an essential time for electoral organizing in Portland. With the implementation of city charter reform, instituting ranked choice voting and multi-member districts for City Council elections, the 2024 election cycle presents an extraordinary opportunity for Portland DSA to disrupt the capitalist municipal order, and our new policy enables us to meet the moment.

Our new policy is designed to enable the chapter to run committed, cadre candidates for office. It aims to help us run campaigns in a way which builds the chapter, leverage the rank and file power we’ve built through our orientation to labor, maximize the coalition work and field organizing we’ve done through ERA (Eviction Representation for All) and UPNOW (Universal Preschool Now), and elect socialists who will put forward a socialist vision for society and fight for our politics in state and city government.

Socialist representatives should be expected to build DSA, advance socialist politics, and draw a clear distinction between themselves and capitalist politicians. At the same time, we must also prepare our candidates to run competitive campaigns if they are going to take power. This endorsement policy aims to balance these two commitments, providing tactical flexibility and political accountability.

How Will Endorsement Work?

1. To apply for an endorsement, a candidate will begin by filling out an application form on our website.
2. When this application is received, the SC will share the information to the membership, and will also share a nominating signature form.
3. If a candidate gets 25 nominating signatures from members in good standing, the candidate is sent a questionnaire, and the endorsement advances to a vote at a general meeting.
4. At the general meeting, the candidate will present themselves to the membership and there will be a Q and A and then a debate. According to our chapter bylaws, a candidate will need 2/3rds of the vote to receive an endorsement.

Two Types of Endorsement

This new policy creates two paths of endorsement — an external endorsement and a cadre endorsement. When applying, a candidate picks which type of endorsement to apply for.

A cadre candidate comes from a background of organizing in DSA. Their campaign is run as a chapter project, and they are held to a very high standard. An external candidate is one where DSA is one part of a wider coalition supporting a candidate.

Cadre candidates have additional expectations. They are required to meet with the chapter twice a month, to brand themselves as a democratic socialist in all their literature, and to form a socialist caucus in the legislative body they are elected to. External candidates will be encouraged to do all these things, but they won’t necessarily be required to. They will be asked about their stance and plans on these topics, and the chapter will decide if their answers are acceptable.

External and cadre candidates will also be presented differently in public campaigns. Cadre candidates are expected to be fully and uncompromisingly representatives of DSA’s politics, platform, and decisions made through internal chapter democracy. For external candidates, DSA will be part of a coalition of other political forces supporting them, and DSA campaigns will have an independent orientation, simultaneously being a part of the coalition and being the best fighters for the cause, while also clearly and distinctly articulating our own socialist principles and building our organization.

This setup is designed to strengthen democratic debate in the chapter. It empowers the members to decide whether candidates meet the standard for endorsement at the cadre or external level and emphasizes electoral accountability. It enables the chapter to exercise tactical flexibility based on the nature of the campaign and ensures membership control over cadre representatives.

Socialists in Office Committee (SIOC)

Our new policy creates a socialists in office committee. Their job is to coordinate with campaigns, candidates, and officeholders in order to apply our standards and politics to nuanced situations, recommend suitable actions to leadership and membership, and empower our elected officials, candidates, campaigns, and membership to build socialist power.

The socialist movement faces two, twin challenges — the danger of sectarianism, where one fails to build up our movements beyond small isolated groups, and the danger of opportunism, where one prioritizes the short term gains of a campaign over the long term principles of a movement.

The role of the SIOC is to address these dangers by supporting candidates and holding them accountable. The committee will meet regularly with any endorsed candidates or elected officials. In these meetings, they will strategize, enforce DSA policy, and figure out how our actions can be coordinated. When an officeholder has a big campaign, the SIOC can help them figure out how to mobilize members. When the chapter has a big campaign, the SIOC can make sure the officeholder supports it.

If a candidate violates DSA values or policy, the SIOC is empowered to make a recommendation to a general meeting or the steering committee. Of course, the ultimate decision rests with a general meeting, which, as our highest decision making body, can decide to alter our relationship to candidates.

The SIOC will ensure a strong connection between the chapter and candidates/officeholders, making sure our actions are coordinated, our ideas are shared, and our goals are pursued.

Building Socialist Power in Portland

The left in the United States has been dealing with difficult conditions since 2020. While the resurgence of labor energy is one of the most optimistic trends in the past two decades, there has been a broad decrease in energy and participation since the height of the BLM uprising and the Sanders campaigns.

In this new political moment, socialists need to adopt more deliberate, public facing campaigns with clear strategies to build our organizations. Candidate accountability, a united front approach to coalition work, and the clear expression of socialist politics are the cornerstones of a successful socialist and movement building electoral strategy.

Our new policy will facilitate a series of powerful, principled, and bold campaigns for 2024 and beyond, which we believe will enable us to win elections, grow the chapter, and advance socialism in Portland. As socialists, we have a world to win. The 2024 City Council elections will be a key test for our movement, and the passage of this policy has begun to prepare us for the challenge.

Portland DSA’s Plan to elect socialists in the Rose City

Portland DSA members met Sunday March 12th for our General Meeting, and ratified a new Endorsement Policy for the chapter. A slideshow explaining the policy can be found here. The authors of the new policy, Wallace Milner and Spencer Mann, explain their perspective on the policy and its purpose.

Sunday March 12th, Portland DSA took an important step towards electing socialists to City Council with the passage of a new chapter endorsement policy. This comes at an essential time for electoral organizing in Portland. With the implementation of city charter reform, instituting ranked choice voting and multi-member districts for City Council elections, the 2024 election cycle presents an extraordinary opportunity for Portland DSA to disrupt the capitalist municipal order, and our new policy enables us to meet the moment.

Our new policy is designed to enable the chapter to run committed, cadre candidates for office. It aims to help us run campaigns in a way which builds the chapter, leverage the rank and file power we’ve built through our orientation to labor, maximize the coalition work and field organizing we’ve done through ERA (Eviction Representation for All) and UPNOW (Universal Preschool Now), and elect socialists who will put forward a socialist vision for society and fight for our politics in state and city government.

Socialist representatives should be expected to build DSA, advance socialist politics, and draw a clear distinction between themselves and capitalist politicians. At the same time, we must also prepare our candidates to run competitive campaigns if they are going to take power. This endorsement policy aims to balance these two commitments, providing tactical flexibility and political accountability.

How Will Endorsement Work?

1. To apply for an endorsement, a candidate will begin by filling out an application form on our website.
2. When this application is received, the SC will share the information to the membership, and will also share a nominating signature form.
3. If a candidate gets 25 nominating signatures from members in good standing, the candidate is sent a questionnaire, and the endorsement advances to a vote at a general meeting.
4. At the general meeting, the candidate will present themselves to the membership and there will be a Q and A and then a debate. According to our chapter bylaws, a candidate will need 2/3rds of the vote to receive an endorsement.

Two Types of Endorsement

This new policy creates two paths of endorsement — an external endorsement and a cadre endorsement. When applying, a candidate picks which type of endorsement to apply for.

A cadre candidate comes from a background of organizing in DSA. Their campaign is run as a chapter project, and they are held to a very high standard. An external candidate is one where DSA is one part of a wider coalition supporting a candidate.

Cadre candidates have additional expectations. They are required to meet with the chapter twice a month, to brand themselves as a democratic socialist in all their literature, and to form a socialist caucus in the legislative body they are elected to. External candidates will be encouraged to do all these things, but they won’t necessarily be required to. They will be asked about their stance and plans on these topics, and the chapter will decide if their answers are acceptable.

External and cadre candidates will also be presented differently in public campaigns. Cadre candidates are expected to be fully and uncompromisingly representatives of DSA’s politics, platform, and decisions made through internal chapter democracy. For external candidates, DSA will be part of a coalition of other political forces supporting them, and DSA campaigns will have an independent orientation, simultaneously being a part of the coalition and being the best fighters for the cause, while also clearly and distinctly articulating our own socialist principles and building our organization.

This setup is designed to strengthen democratic debate in the chapter. It empowers the members to decide whether candidates meet the standard for endorsement at the cadre or external level and emphasizes electoral accountability. It enables the chapter to exercise tactical flexibility based on the nature of the campaign and ensures membership control over cadre representatives.

Socialists in Office Committee (SIOC)

Our new policy creates a socialists in office committee. Their job is to coordinate with campaigns, candidates, and officeholders in order to apply our standards and politics to nuanced situations, recommend suitable actions to leadership and membership, and empower our elected officials, candidates, campaigns, and membership to build socialist power.

The socialist movement faces two, twin challenges — the danger of sectarianism, where one fails to build up our movements beyond small isolated groups, and the danger of opportunism, where one prioritizes the short term gains of a campaign over the long term principles of a movement.

The role of the SIOC is to address these dangers by supporting candidates and holding them accountable. The committee will meet regularly with any endorsed candidates or elected officials. In these meetings, they will strategize, enforce DSA policy, and figure out how our actions can be coordinated. When an officeholder has a big campaign, the SIOC can help them figure out how to mobilize members. When the chapter has a big campaign, the SIOC can make sure the officeholder supports it.

If a candidate violates DSA values or policy, the SIOC is empowered to make a recommendation to a general meeting or the steering committee. Of course, the ultimate decision rests with a general meeting, which, as our highest decision making body, can decide to alter our relationship to candidates.

The SIOC will ensure a strong connection between the chapter and candidates/officeholders, making sure our actions are coordinated, our ideas are shared, and our goals are pursued.

Building Socialist Power in Portland

The left in the United States has been dealing with difficult conditions since 2020. While the resurgence of labor energy is one of the most optimistic trends in the past two decades, there has been a broad decrease in energy and participation since the height of the BLM uprising and the Sanders campaigns.

In this new political moment, socialists need to adopt more deliberate, public facing campaigns with clear strategies to build our organizations. Candidate accountability, a united front approach to coalition work, and the clear expression of socialist politics are the cornerstones of a successful socialist and movement building electoral strategy.

Our new policy will facilitate a series of powerful, principled, and bold campaigns for 2024 and beyond, which we believe will enable us to win elections, grow the chapter, and advance socialism in Portland. As socialists, we have a world to win. The 2024 City Council elections will be a key test for our movement, and the passage of this policy has begun to prepare us for the challenge.

March 13-27 marks Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2023, a period of global mobilization to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and build support for the Palestinian struggle to end Israel’s brutal system of apartheid, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing. The International Affairs Working Group of CT DSA invites you to a series of events to learn more about Palestine and how you can get involved in the global solidarity movement:

Tuesday March 21 @ 4pm, “The Time that Remains” movie screening & discussion at Southern Connecticut State University.

“The Time That Remains” is a film about the Israeli occupation of Palestine from 1948 to present. We will have a post-film discussion with speakers from the anti-Zionist Jewish congregation Mending Minyan; the International Affairs Working Group of CT DSA; and the student organization Yalies for Palestine. 

The screening will take place on the SCSU campus. RSVP here for the room number and directions to find the building:

RSVP: https://link.ctdsa.org/iaw23scsu

Wednesday March 22 @ 5 pm, “Boycott” movie screening & discussion at the New Haven Public Library.

Join us for a screening of “Boycott”, a film about the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that engage in BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction), a set of non-violent tactics to put pressure on the Israeli occupation modeled after the international movement against the South African apartheid. We will have a post-film discussion on the broader implications of these laws for legal repression of social movements. Some states have already used the anti-BDS laws as templates for laws to restrict advocacy for issues, including divestment from fossil fuels, abortion, and gender affirming care.

The screening will take place in the Main branch of the New Haven Public Library, 133 Elm Street.

RSVP: https://link.ctdsa.org/iaw23boycott

Sunday March 25 @ 6.30 pm, Palestine Solidarity Potluck

Join us for a social potluck bringing together organizers and community members who stand in solidarity with Palestine! This will be a chance to meet each other, break fast together for those observing Ramadan, chat in an informal space, and build relationships that strengthen our movement. Please bring food or a beverage to share, if you are able.

The potluck will take place at Black and Brown Power Center, 928 Chapel St, New Haven.

RSVP: https://link.ctdsa.org/iaw23potluck

DSA’s National Political Education Committee (NPEC) invites political educators and activists from DSA chapters, OCs and National Committees to participate in a collective research project on Political Education in Social, Labor & Political Movements.

To submit an entry:

Those interested in participating can reach out to NPEC at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org for more information and to make sure the topic of interest is still available and makes sense for the project.

Entries should include your name, email address, and chapter/OC/national committee, and answer the below information in a presentation similar to example entries:

• What social movement or political theories of education are you reporting on?
• Briefly describe this movement or theory: Its objective, active dates, notable participants, and any notable efforts or achievements.
• Briefly describe this movement’s or theory’s program or ideas for internal political education.
• Briefly describe movement or theory’s program or ideas for external education program.
• Please share 1-5 relevant links to documents, websites, or information that would be useful for those looking more deeply into this practice and theory.
• Please share up to several graphics (photos, logos, promotional materials)
• Please share any additional information here. 
• Other – Please include any notes or queries to NPEC.
• Submit entry to: politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org.

To the NPC of Democratic Socialists of America, the publishers of Democratic Left, and the Rutgers University community,

Central NJ DSA and North NJ DSA were alarmed to see that Democratic Left, a publication of the Democratic Socialists of America, recently published a piece by Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway, a man notorious for fighting against union demands.¹While this article has since been taken down and replaced, we are calling on Democratic Left to publish pieces by Rutgers educators and workers who are involved in its union contract campaigns. It is imperative that the DSA uplift the voices of working people, especially those challenging men like Holloway and the values they uphold. Going forward, it is vital that the NPC and Democratic Left do not undercut the labor and housing work of local chapters.

Central NJ and North NJ DSA are deeply involved in solidarity work with the Rutgers University unions, like AAUP-AFT, PTLFC-AAUP-AFT, BHSNJ-AAUP, URA-AFT, and other unions that represent the thousands of workers at Rutgers University that are working without a contract. Some of those workers are our own members. As an employer, Rutgers University has failed to bargain in good faith or offer dignified terms for the workers.

The decision to feature Holloway’s introduction to the 2023 edition of The Souls of Black Folk is a severe misjudgment on behalf of the editorial team at Democratic Left, in light of Holloway’s obstinate resistance to recognize the validity of union organizing and workers’ demands. As president of Rutgers, Holloway has been breaking the power of campus unions, even recently releasing a statement pitting workers against students and their families. He has been running the University for the benefit of predatory developers and business interests, without regard for the needs of the workers, students, or surrounding communities. None of these despicable actions are new – Holloway has established himself as an anti-union zealot as a dean at Yale, before his time at Rutgers, dragging with him a history of brutal and unnecessary layoffs.

Throughout the union contract campaign at Rutgers, our chapters have been striving, alongside the unions, to bring together faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members into a broad coalition against Holloway’s vision of a corporate university. Furthermore, we have united unions’ struggle with local tenant struggles, and built strong connections that we will leverage in our chapter’s long term work. President Holloway is a representative of the system we stand against. In direct opposition to the coalition-building work of our local chapters, we were shocked to learn that Democratic Left chose to publish an article written by Holloway and centering his views on socialism on the same day as the Rutgers’ unions rallied in Newark. This decision undermined the important solidarity and coalition work of our chapters. It is evident there was little research done into Holloway’s work before Democratic Left published this piece and the negligence to properly evaluate the credentials of a writer and historian shows a profound lack of coordination between National DSA and local chapters.

On February 28th, the faculty union held a rally in Newark to denounce the university administration for their greed and intransigence, to show unity among workers and the broader community, and to begin the union’s historic strike vote. It was a powerful event, the culmination of many months of enduring work, and DSA showed up in force to connect with fellow workers and offer our vision of a just and dignified society, a society in which educators and workers at Rutgers are compensated for their labor that sustains the university as a place for education and learning. Holloway’s vision, alongside others in his administration, is to find ways to pay workers as little as possible, all the while speaking about fairness in the most superficial terms.

President Holloway, who receives a salary of $1.2 million dollars, is hypocritical for reflecting on the legacy of socialist luminary W.E.B. DuBois while the workers he is responsible for negotiating with struggle to pay their bills.² In his 1918 article, “The Black Man and the Unions,” DuBois lauds the power of unionizing. “Collective bargaining has, undoubtedly, raised modern labor from something like chattel slavery to the threshold of industrial freedom, and in this advance of labor white and black have shared.”³

It was a mistake to invite Holloway to provide the introduction to The Souls of Black Folk because of his long history of failing to live up to the standards set forth by DuBois’ work and writings and by the other authors involved, who themselves represent a radical and more just vision of society. It bears reiterating that Holloway’s trail of destruction for everyday working people at the institutions he’s been part of extends far. Examples once more include Holloway’s disastrous tenure as Dean of Yale College during the 2017 hunger strikes of Yale graduate workers demanding better wages and working conditions, as Provost of Northwestern University amidst the 2019 “discussions” surrounding racist visiting lecturer Satoshi Kanazawa, and currently President of Rutgers during the Covid-19 pandemic when he laid off more than a thousand union workers as part of a broader “austerity” while him and others retained their own exorbitant salaries.⁴Resisting calls for divestment at Rutgers, Holloway has also strengthened institutional ties to Israel and the American military-industrial complex through a tech partnership with Tel Aviv University, opening the door to taxpayer funded weapons research.⁵ Holloway fails to achieve the wisdom and fraternity championed by DuBois. If he wants to live up to the socialist and anti-imperialist vision of DuBois, Holloway must settle a fair contract with the workers, and end the displacement and exploitation of the local communities.

For these reasons and more, we are reiterating our demand for President Holloway to quit pitting worker power against a prosperous Rutgers University and working class New Jerseyans and for Democratic Left, part of our own organization, DSA, to publish the insights and analysis of Rutgers workers.

In Solidarity,

Central New Jersey DSA
North New Jersey DSA

1. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/another-black-history-month-ends-what-will-we-do/ ↩
2. https://www.nj.com/education/2020/01/12m-a-house-and-a-car-what-are-the-other-perks-the-new-rutgers-president-will-receive.html ↩
3. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-black-man-and-the-unions/ ↩
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/why-yale-graduate-students-are-on-a-hunger-strike.html, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/01/24/campus/holloway-defends-academic-freedom-saying-kanazawas-removal-would-make-matters-worse/, https://www.nj.com/opinion/2023/01/rutgers-prioritizes-union-busting-and-gaslighting-public-health-care-workers-opinion.html ↩
5. https://bdsmovement.net/news/academia-weapons-and-occupation-how-tel-aviv-university-serves-interests-israeli-military-and ↩

Teachers and Community Defeat Stealth OUSD School Closure and Layoff Plan

By Michael Sebastian

On Tuesday February 28, with only 24 hours notice, OUSD board president Mike Hutchinson called a special meeting to consider resolutions relating to “Budget Adjustments” and a “Classified Employee Reduction in Work Force.” These resolutions, which Hutchinson negotiated in private with the district superintendent in the midst of teacher contract talks, would have cut 100 classified positions (translators, social workers, restorative justice counselors), enacted a district-wide hiring freeze, and merged ten schools in the district. Rapid-response organizing by Oakland teachers and the community helped defeat both resolutions, with candidates endorsed by the Oakland Education Association (OEA), Bachelor, Brouhard, and Williams, voting against. Board member Thompson joined Board President Hutchinson in the votes, while board member Davis abstained. 

Tuesday’s emergency meeting comes on the heels of the recent victory reversing planned school closures. Hutchinson had supported that earlier resolution, but angered many when he joined the superintendent in bringing forward the latest austerity proposal. At a time when OUSD has ample funding, the community loudly rejected the idea of cutting resources, schools, and jobs for the district instead of directing that funding to meet the needs of our students, as demanded by OEA.

OEA has presented the district with a list of common good demands to strengthen Oakland’s public schools and protect students as they bargain for a new contract. The resolutions presented on Tuesday are viewed as pitting teachers against other staff employees in order to unfairly strengthen the district’s hand at the bargaining table. “Tuesday’s proposal, cutting mainly from SEIU and AFSCME jobs within the district, was meant to create false antagonism between workers and weaken support for teachers and their demands,” said Lexi Ross, who co-chairs East Bay DSA’s OEA solidarity group. “OUSD has received $54 million in new state funding this year. Allocating that funding to fulfill teacher’s demands and cutting from the bloated administrative budget would eliminate any need for the cuts presented on Tuesday.” 

The magnitude of OUSD’s administrative expenditures has been a major point of contention. Comparing Oakland’s administrative budget to Santa Ana Unified, a district with 10,000 more students, Oakland spends $20 million more on administrative salaries. Instead of cutting needed jobs and resources from our schools, the district could “chop from the top”, cut the administrative bloat and be able to provide the common good demands that OEA is bargaining for.

At the meeting, community members voiced unanimous opposition to the cuts. Most public comments expressed dismay and exasperation that the district continues to fight to defund our schools when there are safety and resource issues district wide. Many mentioned the egregious amount that OUSD spends on administrative positions and its central office. Shane Ruiz, co-chair of East Bay DSA had this warning for board members voting in support of this budget at Tuesday’s meeting: “Networks are forming, people are watching, and come November people will be held accountable.”

The district’s efforts to pit educators against other essential school workers, and its claims that a long-deserved raise for teachers must come at the cost of layoffs, school closures or mergers may run afoul of state labor laws. Last year, OEA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) when Budget and Finance Director Lisa Grant Dawson sent an email stating that the district would have to close and merge 12 schools to give teachers a raise. 

In a recent Oaklandside article, followed by a Facebook live stream, Mike Hutchinson stated: “Unfortunately for our budget, it’s a zero-sum game. In order for us to create resources to prioritize new and different things, we have to create those resources by making budget adjustments.” On his Facebook live stream Hutchinson also claimed that he was going to deliver an “historic” raise for teachers, but unless the budget with layoffs was approved the district wouldn’t have the money for those raises. Statements like these could set up an impasse similar to the unfair labor practice charge that OEA filed last year. 

The current round of contract negotiations have apparently stalled, with the district not meeting with OEA, the teachers’ union, since February 15, due to a lack of new proposals to bargain over. With little to show for months of negotiations with the district, OEA and its sister union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, are planning to walk out of “PD” or professional development sessions to attend simultaneous community rallies.

The community is invited to join educators at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Wednesday, March 15 from 2pm-6pm to demand that OUSD bargain in good faith.

Introductory Note

While there are many notable events in the 1950s and early 1960s leading to the development and radicalization of the Ethiopian student movement (ESM),¹ the first public expression of the ESM as a leftist and Marxist-Leninist movement was in 1965, “when students came out on to the street with the revolutionary slogan of ‘Land to the Tiller’… a turning point in the history of the student movement.”² 

The 1965 protests for “Land to the Tiller” were followed by yearly uprisings in 1966, 1967, and 1968, each with its own demands, culminating in the major student uprising in 1969. In the second semester, students annually confronted “the powers that be on a variety of social and political issues.” The slogan for May 1966 was “Is poverty a crime?” and the demonstrations that year were the first confrontations with police. The students became the victors of the “Battle of Ras Makonnen Bridge,” giving as good as they got and immediately winning their demand for closure of what became known as the Shola Concentration Camp.³ The estimated 2,000 students that participated in the action carried signs that read “Rich Are Getting Richer, Poor Are Getting Poorer,” “Poverty is Crime in Ethiopia,” and “Close the Shola Concentration Camp,” in reaction to reports of inhumane conditions at the camp in Shola where panhandlers and other poor people rounded up from streets of Addis Ababa were detained.^4,5

In April 1967, the third successive year of protests mostly centered on the Arat Kilo campus rather than the main campus in Seddest Kilo. In an apparent reaction to the two previous years’ protests, the government promulgated “a law that students argued made public demonstrations virtually impossible by laying a number of preconditions, including the issuance of a permit by the Ministry of Interior.”⁶ The day before the law was to go into effect on April 11, students organized a demonstration that gathered between 1,500 and 1,700 people at the Arat Kilo campus but were prevented from leaving by police who had surrounded the campus. The police eventually stormed the campus using tear gas and clubs to attack “indiscriminately not only the students … but also faculty and foreign students who were not part of [the protest].”⁷

Ultimately, however, while it no doubt played a part, it was not student activism and agitation that directly triggered the 1974 revolution; it was the 1973 famine.⁸ According to Elleni Centime Zeleke:

The very spontaneity of the popular movements of 1974 also meant that the various [student] groups involved were not able to develop their own organisation and political leadership before the soldiers pushed forward to monopolise power.

The student movement, it would appear, was ill prepared for the sudden onset of the revolution and not ready to take advantage of the natural mass uprising. Bahru Zewde writes:

In short, the Ethiopian student movement produced many militant adherents of Marxism-Leninism but few theoreticians who were able to interpret the Ethiopian reality through the creative application of Marxist theory… What occurred was to all intents and purposes a transmutation of the religious orthodoxy of the classical tradition… into a Marxist orthodoxy, or continuation of dogma by other means. Agitprop, more than theory, was to be the hallmark of the Ethiopian student movement. The overriding preoccupation of the movement’s leaders was to mobilize students for the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle, and Marxist-Leninist writings provided a ready-made justification for such militant opposition.9

Nonetheless, the political parties that dominated the immediate post-1974 period were founded from the ESM. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) was started by Ethiopian students in exile in the US, Europe, and Algiers, while the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON) came out of the Ethiopian Student Union in Europe (ESUE).¹⁰ Unfortunately a split within the movement, along with the rise of the Derg as a military junta, set the stage for the liquidation of the leadership of both parties.

Before the bloody purge of 1976–1978 in which EPRP and MEISON were both essentially eliminated, an immediate legacy of the student movement was the fact that the military regime adopted a number of proposals from the movement’s demands,¹¹ including the land reform program and the creation of peasant associations.¹² The ESM’s most enduring legacy may be that it served as the initiation and proving ground for many of the debates and conflicts that would dominate the post-revolution era. Not only does almost every Ethiopian political party of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—including the TPLF and EPRDF, which came to power between 1991 and 2018—trace their roots to 1974 and their membership come from the ESM, the questions that dominate the modern era also trace their roots to before the revolution and to the writings and debates that were part of the discourse of the multi-locale ESM. To this day, these questions, especially the question of the multi-nation, multi-ethnic, and multilingual nature of Ethiopia, i.e., the “national question,” dictates much of the politics.

Internal Political Education Program

The Ethiopian student movement’s most prominent internal political education programs were its several publications. Each geographical wing of the movement—in North America, in Europe, and in Ethiopia—had several publications that produced varied essays, reports, and other writings on a wide range of topics. However, these publications did not function and are not read solely as an internal political education apparatus, and therefore are discussed in more detail in the next section on the movement’s external political education programs.

But perhaps a discrete example of an internal political education program within the movement was the Political Education Program (PEP). The Ethiopian Students Association in North America (ESANA), later the Ethiopian Students Union in North America (ESUNA), launched PEP at its 16th congress in 1968 with Dessalegn Rahmato as its coordinator. A resolution at the 16th congress in New Haven, Connecticut,¹³ called for the creation of a reading list on “revolutionary ideology.” Such lists created in subsequent years included writings not only by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, but also Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, C.L.R. James, Isaac Deutscher, Andre Gunder Frank, Régis Debray, Leo Huberman, and Paul Sweezy. A 1970 bibliography of writings on Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and Vietnamese revolutions—in an intentional effort to focus on revolutions as opposed to theory—also included general declarations stating “anything by Giap is recommended” and “all books by Fanon are recommended.”¹⁴

On the internal political education of the movement in Europe, Bahru writes:

While I have not been able to come across an equivalent documentation on the European side, it is nonetheless a well-known fact that there were study groups in the various branches of ESUE. The ABCs of Marxism-Leninism as well as detailed discussions of such topical issues as the national question and the woman question were regularly discussed in such chapters. The general practice was for random selection of presenters to initiate discussions so that all members would come prepared.15

External Political Education Program

The ESM’s most ubiquitous and sustained form of external political education was its publications. Elleni writes:

In the years between 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America organized themselves into a number of student unions… [which] articulated a new radical social agenda for the burgeoning Ethiopian nation-state. Each of these student unions produced journals that attempted to explore the relationship between social theory and social change as it might apply to the case of building a socialist Ethiopia. The titles of these journals include Challenge, Struggle, and Combat. What is most remarkable about these journals is that, collectively, they became the venues where the policy outcomes of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution were first articulated and argued over. In these journals we witness the development of the ideas and thoughts of much of the leadership that participated in the Ethiopian revolution after 1974, and can begin to understand the divisions that influenced the different political parties in the post-1974 period.16

Below is a description of some of the most notable publications of the movement:

• News and Views (N&V) was “[t]he most famous and enduring student paper of the home-based student movement.” N&V was founded in part as a continuation and in part to replace the earlier Newsletter by the students at the University College of Addis Ababa (UCAA), the predecessor of Haile Selassie I University (later Addis Ababa University). The UCAA Newsletter had been criticized for the publication’s self-professed avoidance of coverage “in matters of politics, religion, and race.” In subsequent years, News and Views began to offer more professionalized coverage of issues managed by journalism students advised by their professor. However, authors maintained their anonymity by publishing under assumed pen names such as “Tamariw” (“the Student”), “Lelaw Tamari” (“the other Student”), or “Tayaqiw” (“the Enquirer”). The use of pseudonyms continued into the 1970s and became a commonplace practice in student activism in Ethiopia and the diaspora. A notable column in N&V was “That will Be the Day, When…,” a satirical lamentation from students that appeared regularly on the newsletter.¹⁷ However, N&V more often butted heads with UCAA and its Jesuit administration, or even the student union under whose auspices it was organized, than engage in the larger discourse as it originally set out to do in the editorial in its first issue in 1959. The first series of News and Views spanned until 1964 and the second series, after a hiatus, was published from December 1965 to June 1966.¹⁸

[More to come as research continues]

• Challenge…
• Struggle…
• Combat…
• Democracia and Voice of the Masses…
  

—Abel Amene
MDC DSA

Endnotes

¹ See Chapter 4 of Bahru 2014, “The Process of Radicalization”
² Bahru 2014, p. 128
³ Ibid, p. 139–140
⁴ Legesse 1979, p. 33
⁵ Ibid. This was done to present Addis Ababa as the ideal location for the headquarters of the Organization of African Unity, which was being formed at the time. The operation was intensified ahead of visits by foreign dignitaries.
⁶  Bahru 2014, p. 142, cites Balsvik 1985, p. 183
⁷ Ibid, p. 143
⁸ Ibid, p. 42
⁹ Ibid, p. 138
¹⁰  Elleni 2020, p. 87
¹¹ Ibid, p. 50
¹² Ibid, p. 2
¹³ Bahru 2010, p. 66
¹⁴ Bahru 2014, p. 135–137.
¹⁵ Ibid, p. 137
¹⁶ Elleni 2020, p. 87
¹⁷ Bahru 2014, p. 79
¹⁸ Ibid, p. 80–81, 291

Bibliography

• Legesse Lemma (1979), “The Ethiopian Student Movement 1960-1974: A Challenge to the Monarchy and Imperialism in Ethiopia”, Northeast African Studies, 1 (2): 31–46.
• Balsvik, Randi Ronning (1985), Haile Sellassie’s Students, African Studies Center, Michigan State University [out of print]
• Messay Kebede (2008), Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960–1974, University Rochester Press, [Note this book and author is heavily criticized by below books and other academics]
• Bahru Zewde (2010), Documenting the Ethiopian Student Movement, African Books Collective
• Bahru Zewde (2014), The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960–1974, Boydell & Brewer
• Elleni Centime Zeleke (2020), Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016, Haymarket Books
  • See also Elleni’s presentation at the University of Washington: “Ethiopia in Theory, Theory as Memoir”

The runoff election April 4 is a pivotal time for workers in Chicago to choose the direction of the city. The Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America urges voters to reject Paul Vallas, a former Republican whose political record is one of destroying public assets and promoting corporate profit, not serving the people.

Paul Vallas has a long history of turning public goods into private profits for friends and donors, at people of color’s expense. His tenure running school districts is one of privatization, charter schools, and union-busting. He wrote the playbook for school privatization in Chicago, replacing neighborhood schools with those run privately for profit. In Philadelphia, he carried out a Republican agenda, marrying his privatization efforts with efforts to favor churches over other groups in seeking community partnerships, encouraging after-school prayer groups. In New Orleans, he took advantage of Hurricane Katrina to implement a for-profit education model with equally disastrous outcomes: New Orleans public schools have an average math proficiency of 17%, and an average reading proficiency of 30%. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, he continued his stock standard project of privatization until a judge removed him from the job for his lack of legal qualification for the job.

His actions as a politician, both during this mayoral campaign and before, is no departure from his pro-capitalist, anti-working family career as a school district destroyer. For instance:

• Vallas sides with the wealthy and would not increase taxes on big corporations to reduce inequality or homelessness. 
• Vallas would abandon the guaranteed income pilot program that, while inadequate, did offer relief to a number of poor Chicagoans.
• Even as neighboring states eliminate the right to an abortion, Vallas would not guarantee funds to defend that right. He has openly stated that he opposes abortion.
• Vallas opposed mask mandates and spoke at a rally to reopen schools in March 2021, when over a thousand people were dying every day in the U.S. 
• Vallas has appeared at multiple events for Awake Illinois, a right-wing homophobic and transphobic organization funded by GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein. At the March 2021 rally, Vallas said that Shannon Adcock, the hard right Republican founder of Awake Illinois, should run for governor and unseat J.B. Pritzker.
• A year after endorsing Republican Darren Bailey for governor, the Chicago FOP endorsed and donated thousands to Vallas, who wants to return to failed “tough-on-crime” policies.

Vallas’s campaign, and the administration he hopes to run, would see the unholy marriage of the capitalist class that supported Bruce Rauner and Rahm Emanuel with the white reactionary Chicago machine structures that kept both Daleys in power for so long. They are unified in their goal to shift money away from public goods like schools, health care, and transportation, and into greater incarceration and privatization.

Vallas will spend the next five weeks trying to reassure working class Chicagoans that he’s the common sense, safe choice, and that his record is being mischaracterized. We, as a working-class organization, will hold him accountable for the harm he has caused working people, especially people of color. Chicago DSA urges our members and all working class people to talk to friends, families, and coworkers about the dangers of Paul Vallas. As we canvass for our endorsees in the runoffs, we will also be talking to our neighbors about the unique threat Vallas poses to the working class. We also urge our members, coalition partners, and every left, progressive, and working-class-based organization in the City of Chicago to escalate tactics against Vallas and his allies, including bird-dogging as many campaign events as possible before April 4th and making Paul Vallas and his allies answer for their political record. 

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