Following a grueling presidential campaign and a gut-wrenching election night, our worst fears have been realized.

Donald Trump will once again be the next president of the United States.

The scale of Kamala Harris’s loss has been stunning. Not only did she manage to lose all seven swing states in the Electoral College, she is also very likely the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the popular vote to a Republican in twenty years.

Harris deserves much of the blame for Democrats’ defeat. She replaced an unpopular incumbent at the last minute, and instead of running on a radically different platform than her predecessor, she stuck to Biden’s extremely unambitious strategy. She refused to break with Biden on Israel despite the dire moral imperative of ending a genocide and the severe unpopularity of his position. She campaigned with far-right Republican politicians instead of shoring up support among the Democratic base. Perhaps most importantly, she failed to promise that anything of substance would change if she were elected president at a time when most Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.

Despite the valiant and selfless efforts of millions of progressives and socialists to prevent Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Harris made it clear from the beginning that her campaign took the Left’s support for granted, and she repeatedly ignored its warnings that her centrist platform would alienate key constituencies.

The most radical utterance of the campaign, Tim Walz’s impromptu October 9 remark that the electoral college “needs to go”, was immediately shot down by the Harris campaign. The Democrats’ pathological aversion to risk has made their platform all but untenable, especially now that Republicans are on the verge of cementing long-term control over our broken electoral and political system.

Even though Harris’s tack to the center is clearly to blame for her defeat, the Left will suffer relentless attacks over the next four years. Democrats will use the party’s brief flirtation with mild social democracy in 2020 as a scapegoat, claiming the positions Harris was “forced” to take to compete in the primary that year poisoned her image with moderate voters.

Republicans, meanwhile, have plans to unleash a different type of attack altogether.

***

Over the coming months, there will be thousands of articles in the liberal press detailing the exact kinds of harm Trump is likely to inflict on our country and the world during his second term. All of it needs to be taken seriously. He has promised to pursue personal vendettas and to use the military to crush protests. He seeks to purge the federal bureaucracy and administrative state of competent leadership and radically transform the national economy to suit himself and his supporters among a certain subset of the capitalist class. He plans to target millions of immigrants and refugees using a vast militarized police apparatus. He is likely to renege on his promise not to sign a law banning abortion nationwide. He and his inner circle have enthusiastically supported and even proposed expanding Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. He has pledged to actively sabotage the fight against climate change, primarily out of spite. And on and on and on it goes.

This is a grave moment in the history of American democracy. Trump will use the power of the state in unprecedented ways to target his perceived enemies and to entrench right-wing dominance over the American political system. Many of the freedoms we currently enjoy under the Constitution are likely to be curtailed, and some will be abolished altogether.

Democrats have spent the past five years assuring us that there is no “other side” to a Trump victory. Either the anti-Trump coalition wins, or democracy dies. There is no contingency, no plan to rally against the onslaught of nightmares we’ve been warned endlessly against.

And yet, we are still here.

***

The American far right is gleefully preparing for what they see as their final victory, and much of their strategy depends on intimidating their enemies into silence. They want the Left to go into hiding, to flee the country, to stop speaking out for fear of retribution, and to abandon the political sphere to right-wing extremism.

In the frenzied time between this catastrophe of an election and Inauguration Day, we must guard against overestimating the power of the far right. It is easy to imagine that they are capable of anything, and the vague perception that they can get away with literally any crime and ignore all existing law will pre-emptively demobilize opposition to the incoming administration.

As soon as Trump takes the Oath of Office, the far-right will be hampered by its own unpopularity, infighting, and incompetence. Trump will surround himself with the same sycophantic and profoundly incompetent medley of toadies and conmen, and they will spend much of their time propping up a man who does not have the faculties to govern.

Trump’s return to the White House is likely to be a farce of Ronald Reagan’s second term, during which an ailing president increasingly unable to lead was puppeted by a ghoulish cast of right-wing charlatans. Unfortunately, Trump’s prospective cabinet makes Reagan’s rotating cast of misfits look like Boy Scouts. We don’t know exactly what horrible things they will try to do once the MAGA right grips the levers of power once again, but we must prepare however we can.

***

Liberalism has proven once and for all that it cannot save American democracy. Neither Biden nor Harris considered any serious reforms to our economic and political system, not even vastly popular ones. The multiracial working class will bear the brunt of their failure to act. The only alternative to the coming barbarism is to organize.

We must join together in opposition to Trump’s efforts to undermine American democracy. The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and it is committed to opposing fascism and supporting the working people of all nations. There are hundreds of other progressive and left-wing groups across this country that will take up the fight to defend our communities and our people. In the aftermath of this catastrophe, we have no option but to protect one another.

The coming years will be difficult. Laws will be written to target the most vulnerable among us. Democratic structures will be damaged and will not easily bounce back. Regional and global conflicts will intensify in ways that cannot be reversed. Environmental damage will be wrought that cannot be undone. People will die who cannot be brought back to life.

But we are still here, and we still deserve a better world. We have no choice but to press on.

The post We are still here appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

The 2024 election is over. Now is the time to continue building power in our workplaces.

The post Building Power at Work appeared first on EWOC.

By Adam S

DSA is an organizational chimera–– a delightful and dazzling yet fragile and baffling assemblage of different pieces all in one–– and I think we should talk about it.

Allow me to explain.

Socialists have historically been divided between those who believe socialism can be guided along, or even instituted, by governments, and those who believe socialism must be built by working class organizations made up of working class people. In the nineteenth century, these hostilities were on full display in the rifts that broke out between social democratic parties who sought a parliamentary road to socialism through a combination of legislation and trade union activities and anarchist-oriented syndicalists who thought that, "by organizing industrially," they could form "the structure of the new society within the shell of the old," to quote the Industrial Workers of the World. 

Democratic Socialists of America does not fit neatly into either of these camps. On the one hand, we are not a syndicalist organization, and much of our membership is not directly based in the trade union movement. But neither are we a political party, though we do endorse candidates and intervene in elections. Instead, we operate on many political fronts simultaneously –– we are a union incubator, a civil rights group, and an electoral machine all at once. In this way we are an organizational chimera: multiple different pieces all assembled into one collective, rapidly growing, rapidly changing body.

This also causes DSA to function as a social network for the Left. Those who recognize the need for a change in our economic system join DSA at a higher rate than than any other socialist organization in the United States, learn about and connect with similarly minded people, and, in the best cases, engage in the hard work of organizing for a better world. This has the benefit of imbuing our work with a coherent alternative to neoliberal or reactionary thinking and is an invaluable means of identifying the social origin of many ills that affect modern life under the capitalist system. It is also the primary aspect that unifies the disparate pieces that make up DSA. 

However, DSA’s function as a social network means that socialists are often connected to campaigns through DSA, rather than in or by DSA. This causes problems with retaining focus on DSA’s organizational core, and in the long run this jeopardizes the substantial gains that DSA has made in membership and influence since 2016. 

Members joining an organization who end up working for other organizations do not easily retain their original, rather than inherited, responsibilities. This is just a description, not an attack on the good work that is being done: yours truly is certainly guilty of this to a certain extent. But it means that some appendages to DSA take on an importance that can be substantially different from work that builds DSA. 

This conundrum has affected the work of some working groups within DSA, including the Labor Working Group. The Labor Working Group has provided support to an array of efforts in the Triangle area and beyond, including supporting CWA workers on strike, supporting REI workers organizing to unionize and gain recognition, providing a forum for grad students at UNC and Duke to connect with fellow socialists, and providing extensive support to the Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, perhaps the single most exciting and dynamic grassroots Amazon union in the entire country. 

At the same time, the Labor Working Group has struggled to retain membership to develop its core competencies, leaving its main leaders under-supported and over-worked on internal DSA matters even as their members plug in and rapidly spin off to provide consistent support to external campaigns. 

To provide one concrete example of how these contradictions harm DSA’s ability to do even its most important work, at the very same time that CAUSE began collecting cards to take their campaign to the next level, the key members of the Labor Working Group, which has had a priority resolution in force providing invaluable support to workers on that campaign for almost a year, had so little support that they were considering dissolving. Even now, its future remains uncertain, and even if the work is reshaped in new ways, the conflicts between internal growth and external organizing will likely remain. Again, the problem here is not with those who took on leadership responsibilities within the working group, but that so few did. 

So what is the path forward? How can we make this chimera into something more elegant? A few solutions have been offered. Some have suggested that the working group model is out of date and that encouraging people to meet regularly on general thematic topics like “labor,” “socialist feminism,” or “ecosocialism” rather than specific campaigns risks burning people out. There is some truth to the idea that committees should be task-oriented. Yet at the same time, that diagnosis does not address the wider problem of DSA being a “forum through” rather than a “hub of” organizing. Saying our dear chimera should have functional pieces does not itself knit it into a more unified body.

Others have suggested that members should be doing more as workers, organizing directly in their own workplaces and communities around specific ways to build power. This suggestion is especially relevant for contexts like union building or tenant organizing where the task is very specific. 

Yet not all workers are able to organize in this way, either because they do not have the capacity to organize their tenants or are not employed somewhere that gives the ability to organize. This means that the exhortation of members to organize does not always make sense. Workers join an organization because of what they can do for the organization, not just themselves. Saying our wonderful chimera’s individual pieces should, amoeba-like, have their own organizational ecosystems, is at odds with why it was ever assembled. 

What is common to both these approaches is arguably the idea that solving this problem–– making DSA a hub rather than a forum–– will require a change in the relation of DSA members to DSA itself, an alteration in the significance of what members believe they are joining for. It will require that members come to understand that they are joining DSA at least as much for themselves as for other people, and to change their conditions, as the conditions of their fellow workers. It will also require that they understand that DSA does not exist by fiat –– it is only empowered when we do the hard work of strengthening it ourselves.

This entails becoming an organization that conceives of collective solidarity as also a personal act placing each individual’s own experiences alongside those of other members in the movement for socialism, and not as external to, or supportive of, some other movement. The paradox is, seen in this way, arguably that DSA members must see ourselves as members of the socialist movement in the way we live our lives, not as abstract bringers of support to something beyond or above us, not as representatives bringing some exalted sense of “socialism” to fellow workers in our communities, but as individuals bringing the energy of solidarity into all that we do for DSA as well as through it. 

The hybridity of DSA can also be a source of strength. By building a community of socialists engaged in struggle across many fronts, we can channel our energies collectively to transform our communities, our unions, and our political systems for the better. We can connect the struggles our members face across different arenas into a single unified movement, and we can live lives that give expression to our goals in many ways rather than pigeonholing ourselves into narrow manifestations of political engagement. 

In doing this, DSA can realize the promise it holds of being a way for workers to build collective power with one another and build a new world within the shell of the old, made–– like a chimera–– out of many pieces, the pieces of our daily lives.

By Ben Cabral

Speaker from Solidarity Rally

BOSTON – After multiple waves of strikes by UNITE HERE Local 26 hotel workers across the city, the militant labor actions are starting to bear fruit.

On Sunday October 20th, workers at Omni Hotel properties in Boston voted unanimously to ratify their new contract. This brings to an end the open-ended strike by over 600 Omni Boston Seaport and Omni Parker House workers that  began on Monday, October 14th.

According to a union rep, the newly ratified contract guarantees a $10/hour and $5/hour raise for non-tipped and tipped workers respectively over the next 4 years, maintains worker healthcare benefits, establishes Junteenth holiday for workers starting in 2026, and adds new hiring and severance protections, a package which addresses all of the workers’ core demands.

UNITE HERE Workers on the Picket Line

This is a clear victory for the Omni hotel workers that will no doubt serve as inspiration for other UNITE HERE labor struggles. The union built quickly on the good news and maintained its momentum, organizing a solidarity rally held on Friday, October 25th at Statler Park designed to pressure Hilton hotel properties to meet the demands of their workers as well.

The Teamsters truck made an appearance at the rally as a show of solidarity between the Teamsters Local 25 and UNITE HERE Local 26 workers. 

Teamsters Local 25 truck provides support at UNITE HERE rally.

Multiple workers came up to the  stage on the Teamsters truck to give powerful speeches about Local 26’s “one city, one standard” principle, meaning all Local 26 workers should have the same high standards in their contract across all hotel properties, and they called on Hilton to meet the standard set by the Omni workers.  

This call was met quickly,  with striking Hilton workers reaching a tentative agreement with Hilton on Tuesday October 29, and then voting to ratify their new contract  on Thursday, October 31.

Speaker from the Statler Park Solidarity Rally

The contract met all of the union’s core demands and matched the standard set by the Omni workers’ contract, including a $10/hour raise over 4 years for non-tipped workers, maintaining healthcare benefits, and improving hiring and severance protections, all coming in the wake of a 24 day open ended strike by Hilton workers.

The contract victories, won through militant industrial action, are the latest example of the revival of a fighting spirit in the US labor movement, and show in dollars and cents to the workers of Boston what can be won through the power of unionization and labor action. 

Ben is an engineer and a member of Boston DSA with a background in independent journalism.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass. This statement was republished by Working Mass with permissions from the Massachusetts Uncommitted Coalition.

We are Uncommitted Massachusetts. We will not vote for genocide and we are not alone.

With less than a week left before the U.S. elections, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have reached new depths of cruelty. The UN’s top humanitarian official has warned that the “entire population of Northern Gaza is at risk of dying.” Israel has cut off almost all humanitarian aid to Northern Gaza, burned patients alive (again), detained the medical staff of Northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital, and is expelling Palestinians en masse. Biden threatened “implications” for future weapons transfers unless Israel “reverse[s] the downward humanitarian trajectory,” to take effect 10 days after the Presidential elections. Israel has since only intensified its unlawful attacks. We call bullshit.

We, the leadership of the Massachusetts Uncommitted, like millions of people across the country, pledge to vote third-party unless Biden and Harris implement an immediate arms embargo against Israel. Given the choice between genocide and fascism, we choose neither. We are not alone.

In September, Uncommitted Movement leadership formally urged supporters not to vote third party. Their statement lulled the Democrats into a false sense of security. But that position is not reflected at the party base. Last week, hundreds of demonstrators rattled Harris at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Grassroots coalitions and Uncommitted chapters in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin have committed to withholding their votes unless Harris commits to an immediate arms embargo against Israel. Muslim leaders–including the American Muslim Election Taskforce, Muslim scholars, and more than 50 Black Muslim leaders– also urge voters to support third-party presidential candidates who support a permanent ceasefire and arms embargo. 

There’s still time for Harris to pivot and endorse an arms embargo. The move could mobilize supporters, while the narrow window would also likely spare the risk of substantial backlash which would harm her chances. It also happens to be the right thing to do, and what voters want. 

The Israeli assault on Gaza has been unpopular with the US public since November 2023, when 2 out of 3 Americans and even a majority of Republicans supported a ceasefire. A June CBS poll showed that 61% of Americans and 77% of Democrats opposed sending more weapons to Israel. A recent national poll showed that if Harris embraced a suspension of U.S. arms shipments and diplomatic support for Israel “until there was a cease-fire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza,” her support would grow from 44% to 49%. But Harris has repeatedly asserted that she will not support an arms embargo. 

Those of us committed to ending the genocide are more than ordinary voters. We have spent the last few months organizing our communities, workplaces, schools, universities, and congregations. In just five days, our volunteer-powered effort in Massachusetts turned out over 60,000 people to the polls to vote “no preference” in the primary, ultimately securing a delegate. The Uncommitted movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters in the spring, and ultimately united 300 “ceasefire delegates” (10% of delegates) at the Democratic National Convention, to support our cause. Our unprecedented mobilization could turn out voters to help Democrats win a tight race. Instead, the Harris-Walz ticket risks losing a high-stakes election for ignoring the base of the party.

Democratic Party operatives will accuse us of helping Trump – but it is Harris, Biden, and the rest of the party leadership who put their victory at risk by ignoring the calls of the overwhelming majority of their base for an end to the genocide. We recognize the profound damage a president can cause by spouting authoritarianism and unabashed racism from our nation’s highest office. Another Trump presidency could bring another wave of discriminatory policies, and anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim hate-mongering. We must organize opposition to violent and discriminatory policies regardless of which administration is trying to enact them. We must also ask ourselves what it means to say “never again,” as our tax dollars aid and abet what the International Court of Justice calls a “plausible” genocide. Dare we vote for the ongoing decimation of an entire society in the name of “the lesser evil”? 

As the dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza reaches unfathomable depths, we urge the Democratic Party to take heed. Opposing genocide is not a “single issue.” The experience of witnessing a genocide on social media has galvanized Americans of all stripes–especially those who have experienced some form of oppression. We have seen the tears of Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of the last standing hospital in North Gaza before it was forced to close under Israeli siege, as he explained that his staff could no longer care for patients and that he was forced to bury his own son in the hospital yard. We have seen the bodies of adults and children, shredded with weapons supplied by our own tax dollars. We have seen Israel’s torture camps and Israeli officials defend soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner. We have seen stone-faced Vice President Kamala Harris, explain that it’s normal to have “strong feelings” about genocide and that many people “who care about this issue” also “care about bringing down the price of groceries.” 

Gaza cannot be disconnected from the other issues that Americans care about. Just days after hurricanes devastated the southeastern US, FEMA announced a $8 billion dollar shortfall on hurricane relief. On the same day, Israel received $8.7 billion of military funding from the US. As a new report shows, our government has spent a record 17.8 billion in military aid to Israel in the past year. 

Instead of funding death and destruction, we should be paying for education, healthcare, and a sustainable future. We stand on the brink of an escalating war that President Biden and Vice President Harris say they have been “working around the clock” to stop. The Harris-Biden administration expects us to believe that the most powerful man in the world can’t stop a genocide for which he supplies 70% of the weapons.

Whether or not we live in a democracy is up to us, the citizens. Democracy does not begin and end with elections between Democrats and Republicans. We must devote ourselves to a long-term project that builds power in our communities and workplaces, laying the groundwork for an independent, working-class political party. We must also build a movement to reduce the stranglehold of the two parties on our elections by implementing reforms like open or nonpartisan primaries, ranked-choice voting, and electing our President by popular vote by eliminating the archaic Electoral College, which a majority of Americans support. 

Regardless of who wins the election, we are here for the long haul. Democracy is at stake. The planet is at stake. For over 10 years, nearly 2 out of 3 Americans have agreed that it is time for a third party. It’s time to build the future we wish to live.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, November 5 (9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.): All Day GOTV with Team Jackie (In person at 3389 26th St.)

Tuesday, November 5 (9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.): All Day GOTV with the Dean Team (In person at 1630 Haight)

Wednesday, November 6 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Board Game Night (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, November 7 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, November 7 (6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, November 7 (7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Palestine and Socialism Study Group: Session 3 (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, November 8 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, November 8 (3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Canvass (In person, location TBD)

Saturday, November 9 (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (In person at Cafe La Boheme, 3318 24th St.)

Saturday, November 9 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Food Serve (Castro, location TBD)

Monday, November 11 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, November 11 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at 220 Golden Gate)

Monday, November 11 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, November 13 (6:45 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): November General Meeting (Zoom and in person at 2973 16th St., Suite 300)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

It’s Election Day – Get Out the Vote!

Join comrades on the Dean and Jackie campaigns for the final Get Out the Vote (GOTV) push today! We are getting out the vote across the entirety of Districts 5 and 9 for our endorsed candidates and reminding folks to vote yes on L for transit funding and yes on 5 and 33 for affordable housing and rent control.

Volunteer dispatching will be happening all day from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. today. We will be knocking on doors and making calls to remind folks to turn in their ballots and raising DSA’s profile with our own brochures promoting yes on Props 5 and 33. Our campaigns have been building up momentum for over a year and we are finally at the finish line. We are well positioned to finish strong across the city—only 20% of ballots have been submitted so far!

Limited edition merch is on the line! If you volunteer for an entire day, you’ll earn a 2024 Socialist Power Grab long sleeve t-shirt as a badge of honor to show off your contributions to the struggle.

Join at the Dean HQ at 1630 Haight St or the Jackie HQ at 3389 26th St to plug in. See you there!

Get Out in the Field and Get a T-Shirt!

If you’ve been considering doing some door-knocking but haven’t yet found the right motivation, let this be it! DSA SF is giving out free t-shirts exclusive to volunteers who meet either (or both!) of the following criteria:

• you’ve completed 6 field shifts for a candidate campaign between October 11th and election day on November 5th
• you’ve one a full day of Get Out the Vote work for one of our candidate campaigns in the days right before the election

T-shirts will be arriving soon, and we can’t wait to give them out, so let’s give it our all and show SF the power of socialist organizing and get this socialist power grab done!

Tenderloin Healing Circle

We’d like to invite you (yes, you!) to join the Tenderloin Healing Circle every 2nd and 4th Monday of the month! We serve food right before the meeting at 6:00 p.m., and meet from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 220 Golden Gate Avenue.

This is a free healing circle for the neighborhood. Join other Tenderloin folks for support, hope, and food. All are welcome. The venue is wheelchair accessible, bathrooms are available, and masks are encouraged.

Organizing Against State Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

The Bay Area Popular Convention will be hosting an event called Organizing Against State Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement at the Alliance for Social and Economic Justice at 2973 16th St., Room 301 or on Zoom on November 16th, 2024 from 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Join the event and learn more about the process of continuing solidarity with Palestine in the face of increased repression.

No Appetite for Apartheid in SF!

Inspired by long-standing Palestinian boycott tactics and the BDS call, the Palestine Solidarity Anti-Imperialist Working Group are canvassing local stores and asking them to pledge to become Apartheid-Free by dropping products from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and colonization of Palestine. It’s time to turn up the heat on this apartheid regime and take apartheid off our plates!

Want to show your support? Sign our Apartheid-Free Pledge so business owners know how popular this movement is with their local customers. After signing the pledge, we would love to see you at any of our upcoming campaign strategy sessions and canvassing days. Check dsasf.org/events for updates.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

 

Every four years, working class Utahns are faced with the same “options” for president, a conservative Democrat creeping further right, a deranged Republican set on crushing the working class and marginalized people on behalf of our oppressors, and a few minor party candidates more interested in validating their vanity than actually winning. Since the undemocratic electoral college makes it so Utah will almost certainly go to Trump, the national Democratic Party has completely abandoned Utahns who reject the fascist Republican party. Similarly, the ultra-right supermajority in the State Legislature, which is filled to the brim with landlords (including Sen. Kirk Cullimore, who evicts more people than anyone in the state of Utah) and open neo-Nazis (including Rep. Trevor Lee, who self identifies as a “Deseret Nationalist,” a Mormon-flavored brand of Nazism), has undemocratically gerrymandered state and congressional districts so they choose their voters, and working class Utahns are not actually represented in the government. Because of this, the Democratic Party in Utah has stopped even pretending to try. These choices seem impossible, and for many working class Utahns, voting doesn’t seem worth the effort.

If elected, both Donald Trump and Republican gubernatorial candidate Spencer Cox would be a disaster for the working class of Utah and attack the people of Salt Lake City for the crime of being more progressive than the corrupt state government. As described in “Project 2025,” the extreme right Republicans plan to end civil rights for minority groups, destroy the already weak social safety net and public education, eliminate bodily autonomy for women and queer people, poison the environment, dangerously deregulate businesses, and crush dissent and target immigrants and people of color through an authoritarian police state commanded by a Trump dictatorship. Trump and the State Legislature have vocally supported this plan, and Cox silently subscribes to it. Trump, Cox, and the State Legislature want to make Utah unlivable for everyone who is not a wealthy, white, cisgender/heterosexual, Mormon man.

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are no real alternative. They have embraced Trump’s racist border wall and Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Harris would repeat destructive policies carried out under previous administrations like mass deportations and global imperialist warfare. She has alienated the progressives and young people who made her vice president in the first place to court the most reactionary forces in our country, such as war-criminal Dick Cheney, architect of the illegal Iraq war and overseer of the torture and abuse of thousands of Iraqis and political dissidents within America. She has no intention of ceasing oil drilling or fracking, and likely will not reverse the deregulation of businesses that defined the Trump years that has made even our basic needs like food more dangerous for consumers. The threat of a Trump presidency is possible because of her deliberate political choices. Should Trump win, it will be entirely the fault of Kamala Harris and the Democratic party that enabled her behavior.

Both candidates uncritically support Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Both candidates serve the ruling class at the expense of the working class. This impossible  “choice” is why millions across the country and thousands here in Utah are itching for an alternative.

Salt Lake DSA has made no recommendation to our members on who to vote for president. Many of our members are voting for candidates that support Palestinian liberation, and some are plugging their nose and voting tactically to defeat Trump. How our members choose to vote is the least important thing Salt Lake DSA members will do over the next four years.

As democratic socialists, we understand that the multi-racial working class has been on the defensive for far too long, and it is time we as a class go on the offensive against our oppressors. We reject the false dichotomy of the Republican and Democratic factions of the ruling class. The ruling class wants us to feel hopeless and alienated from each other– and we reject that as well. We choose solidarity. We understand that only a mass movement of the working and marginalized majority can fundamentally change our lives for the better. We must organize in our workplaces, our apartment buildings, our schools, and our communities. We must organize unions and strikes to build worker power in a state that has the 5th lowest union density in the country. We must carry out campaigns to build working class power and defend our rights outside of and from the corrupt State Legislature. We must organize boycotts against Israeli goods, and work to overturn Utah’s unconstitutional ban on citizens’ right to criticize the genocidal state of Israel. We must hold protests, sit-ins, and marches. Everything we must do as a class to achieve our liberation will require powerful labor and tenant unions, student groups, parent groups, and community coalitions. It will also require running more candidates for office that understand the problems the working class faces and want to build a party of our own to solve those problems.

Salt Lake DSA is building a party that fights for real working class democracy, abolition of the carceral state and white supremacy, dignified union jobs and wages, Medicare for all, education for all, housing for all, a just transition to a climate conscious economy, an end to the U.S. war machine and exploitation of the Global South, a free Palestine – and the transformation of our economy from capitalist exploitation to collective liberation. Workers in Utah deserve more; we deserve a party of our own, and Salt Lake DSA is building the party the multi-racial working class of Utah deserve.

Regardless of what happens or who wins tonight, the sun will rise tomorrow morning; and as long as the sun continues to rise, Salt Lake DSA will continue to organize and fight for the working class and all marginalized people in Utah. Join us in fighting for our future.

The post We Choose Solidarity: Salt Lake DSA Statement on the 2024 Election first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

Re-posted from votenopreferencema.org — We are Uncommitted Massachusetts. We will not vote for genocide and we are not alone.

With less than a week left before the U.S. elections, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have reached new depths of cruelty. The UN’s top humanitarian official has warned that the “entire population of Northern Gaza is at risk of dying.” Israel has cut off almost all humanitarian aid to Northern Gaza, burned patients alive (again), detained the medical staff of Northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital, and is expelling Palestinians en masse. Biden threatened “implications” for future weapons transfers unless Israel “reverse[s] the downward humanitarian trajectory,” to take effect 10 days after the Presidential elections. Israel has since only intensified its unlawful attacks. We call bullshit.

We, the leadership of the Massachusetts Uncommitted, like millions of people across the country, pledge to vote third-party unless Biden and Harris implement an immediate arms embargo against Israel. Given the choice between genocide and fascism, we choose neither. We are not alone.

In September, Uncommitted Movement leadership formally urged supporters not to vote third party. Their statement lulled the Democrats into a false sense of security. But that position is not reflected at the party base. Last week, hundreds of demonstrators rattled Harris at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Grassroots coalitions and Uncommitted chapters in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin have committed to withholding their votes unless Harris commits to an immediate arms embargo against Israel. Muslim leaders–including the American Muslim Election Taskforce, Muslim scholars, and more than 50 Black Muslim leaders– also urge voters to support third-party presidential candidates who support a permanent ceasefire and arms embargo. 

There’s still time for Harris to pivot and endorse an arms embargo. The move could mobilize supporters, while the narrow window would also likely spare the risk of substantial backlash which would harm her chances. It also happens to be the right thing to do, and what voters want. 

The Israeli assault on Gaza has been unpopular with the US public since November 2023, when 2 out of 3 Americans and even a majority of Republicans supported a ceasefire. A June CBS poll showed that 61% of Americans and 77% of Democrats opposed sending more weapons to Israel. A recent national poll showed that if Harris embraced a suspension of U.S. arms shipments and diplomatic support for Israel “until there was a cease-fire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza,” her support would grow from 44% to 49%. But Harris has repeatedly asserted that she will not support an arms embargo. 

Those of us committed to ending the genocide are more than ordinary voters. We have spent the last few months organizing our communities, workplaces, schools, universities, and congregations. In just five days, our volunteer-powered effort in Massachusetts turned out over 60,000 people to the polls to vote “no preference” in the primary, ultimately securing a delegate. The Uncommitted movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters in the spring, and ultimately united 300 “ceasefire delegates” (10% of delegates) at the Democratic National Convention, to support our cause. Our unprecedented mobilization could turn out voters to help Democrats win a tight race. Instead, the Harris-Walz ticket risks losing a high-stakes election for ignoring the base of the party.

Democratic Party operatives will accuse us of helping Trump – but it is Harris, Biden, and the rest of the party leadership who put their victory at risk by ignoring the calls of the overwhelming majority of their base for an end to the genocide. We recognize the profound damage a president can cause by spouting authoritarianism and unabashed racism from our nation’s highest office. Another Trump presidency could bring another wave of discriminatory policies, and anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim hate-mongering. We must organize opposition to violent and discriminatory policies regardless of which administration is trying to enact them. We must also ask ourselves what it means to say “never again,” as our tax dollars aid and abet what the International Court of Justice calls a “plausible” genocide. Dare we vote for the ongoing decimation of an entire society in the name of “the lesser evil”? 

As the dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza reaches unfathomable depths, we urge the Democratic Party to take heed. Opposing genocide is not a “single issue.” The experience of witnessing a genocide on social media has galvanized Americans of all stripes–especially those who have experienced some form of oppression. We have seen the tears of Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of the last standing hospital in North Gaza before it was forced to close under Israeli siege, as he explained that his staff could no longer care for patients and that he was forced to bury his own son in the hospital yard. We have seen the bodies of adults and children, shredded with weapons supplied by our own tax dollars. We have seen Israel’s torture camps and Israeli officials defend soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner. We have seen stone-faced Vice President Kamala Harris, explain that it’s normal to have “strong feelings” about genocide and that many people “who care about this issue” also “care about bringing down the price of groceries.” 

Gaza cannot be disconnected from the other issues that Americans care about. Just days after hurricanes devastated the southeastern US, FEMA announced a $8 billion dollar shortfall on hurricane relief. On the same day, Israel received $8.7 billion of military funding from the US. As a new report shows, our government has spent a record 17.8 billion in military aid to Israel in the past year. 

Instead of funding death and destruction, we should be paying for education, healthcare, and a sustainable future. We stand on the brink of an escalating war that President Biden and Vice President Harris say they have been “working around the clock” to stop. The Harris-Biden administration expects us to believe that the most powerful man in the world can’t stop a genocide for which he supplies 70% of the weapons.

Whether or not we live in a democracy is up to us, the citizens. Democracy does not begin and end with elections between Democrats and Republicans. We must devote ourselves to a long-term project that builds power in our communities and workplaces, laying the groundwork for an independent, working-class political party. We must also build a movement to reduce the stranglehold of the two parties on our elections by implementing reforms like open or nonpartisan primaries, ranked-choice voting, and electing our President by popular vote by eliminating the archaic Electoral College, which a majority of Americans support. 
Regardless of who wins the election, we are here for the long haul. Democracy is at stake. The planet is at stake. For over 10 years, nearly 2 out of 3 Americans have agreed that it is time for a third party. It’s time to build the future we wish to live.

This article was originally written for the Delta Workers Organizing Committee newsletter, Blue Notes, by Pat G (Delta ramp worker and TCDSA member). While it is specific to Delta Air Lines, we include it here because a great number of generalized conclusions can be drawn from it. One ruling class myth is that somehow Wall […]