The Portland Democratic Socialists of America expresses our outrage at the murder of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police Department. This murder is part of the systemic violence of police everywhere against people of color and the working class. We offer our condolences to the Nichols family, and we stand in solidarity with the black community of Memphis and with all others protesting for an end to police brutality and racist violence.

55 years ago, civil rights leader and democratic socialist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis while organizing with striking sanitation workers. As socialists, we recognize the essential task of grappling with the profound interactions of capitalism and racism. We believe that anti-racist organizing rooted in class struggle is how we can fight back.

Police are the armed wing of the capitalist state, and their role in society is to enforce exploitation. It is police who break strikes, evict families from their homes, harass the houseless, jail the poor, and attack those who are suffering. Police do not act as a service for public safety, but rather as an occupying army, hurting those who need help, and defending those who cause harm.

The only way to rid our society of the capitalist police is the self emancipation of the working class into a socialist society. Protests, no matter how powerful, will not be enough. To win black liberation, the working class and oppressed people must organize and take control of society. The best way forward is an alliance between organized labor and the movement for black liberation — the coordination of an independent, anti-racist, working-class movement that fights to overturn racial -capitalism at the workplace, in the streets, and on the ballot line.

To meet this moment, protest energy must develop into political movement which can sustain itself. We cannot rely on the ruling class to deliver reforms.

To that end, Portland DSA calls for the following initial steps:

1. The immediate reallocation of 50% of the PPB budget to fund housing, community services, education and healthcare
2. The immediate establishment of a democratically elected oversight board empowered to investigate officers and hold the PPB to account
3. End the war on drugs and tough on crime policies, provide full addiction care, and decriminalization of drug use
4. An end to the sweeps of homeless encampments and the public provision of shelter to those in need
5. The establishment of a labor slate for the 2024 city council elections, unified around proposals to reallocate money from the bloated police budget to provide for public services and fund housing, food, education, and healthcare.

This work must begin with public support for protests, and a movement to improve the lives of the most marginalized and oppressed. We must build a fighting socialist movement for black liberation.

Organized workers can overturn the racist, capitalist system. They can provide the winning leverage to Black Lives Matter.

The only way to win justice is to expand these protests into a mass movement. To achieve this, we must convince workers to join the struggle — unions and workers must become the strongest opponents of racism. This means a conscious project of reform within existing labor unions, and a coordination with organizations rooted in communities of color. We must also create our own, enduring socialist structures. And we must wholeheartedly support this protest movement.

With solidarity and shared struggle to guide us, a better world is possible.

In solidarity,

Portland DSA Steering Committee

Tax The Rich is a seasoned Portland DSA working group where we think about how to move money and power from the rich to the working class. We’re a rag-tag group of amateurs and academics – all levels of expertise (or lack thereof) are welcome! We have several main categories of the work we do: wealth taxes, work on the city budget, supporting coalition campaigns, and tax education.

So far, our wealth tax work has been remarkably successful! In 2021-2022, we saw the first $208 million dollars flow from the wealthy to fund universal preschool. Our universal preschool campaign, which we worked on beginning in 2018 and through the passage of the Preschool For All measure in November of 2020, is good for kids, families, and workers. Through our work on the preschool campaign, we learned that although the tax code is famously skewed in favor of the wealthy, given the democratic choice, Multnomah County voters are more than ready to change that.

We’re also not slowing down in our ballot measure and taxation policy work! We’re already working on our next wealth tax, which would tax extreme “intangible” wealth, which includes stocks and bonds. This type of wealth is currently only taxed when it’s sold, or sometimes through the estate/inheritance tax, which means that the wealthy hold onto their money tax-free. That’s not very fair when the rest of us pay taxes on our wealth via income taxes and property taxes.

Our proposed intangible wealth tax (or an “extreme wealth tax”, as we’ve taken to calling it),  would be a 1% tax on extreme wealth over 10 million dollars, bringing  in about 2.6 billion dollars in revenue annually. But, we still have work to do: most importantly, we’re still trying to figure out what the tax should fund. Our research crew has discussed what $10 million would mean for housing, preschool and education, mental health and addiction services, and more, but we’re still mulling any and all possibilities. If you have ideas of what this tax should fund, please reach out and tell us about them!

When we’re not coming up with new taxes, we’re working on other projects. One of our long-standing traditions is advocating around the city budget. Each spring, we do our best to let Portlanders know what’s in the proposed budget, and encourage people to take action. We make shareable and easily digestible social media content, create phone scripts that Portlanders can use to call the councilors, as well as template emails for the phone-shy. Some people even get empowered to testify in front of the council!

We can’t afford to step away from the budget work this year. Over the last few years, our conservative city council has decided to spend our hard-earned tax dollars in ways that make the Portland Police Bureau and the Portland Business Alliance very happy. With this year’s even more conservative city council, the budget is probably going to reflect their cozy relationships, rather than finding ways to serve the actual needs of Portlanders. Join us for our annual deep dive into the budget, and brainstorm ways to tell our council to fund a budget that serves all of us, not just the rich and powerful.

Of course, the fight towards economic justice is too big to do alone, and so we’re proud to support all fights that work towards a more just Oregon. We helped our friends at Eviction Representation For All by developing a capital gains tax that will fully fund legal representation for all renters in eviction court, as well as other tenant services. We’ll be doing our part to ensure that their measure is successful on the ballot this spring. Additionally, we’re finding ways to support OPAL’s very cool fareless Trimet campaign, which you can learn more about here.

Lastly, our educational work is central to much of what we do. Our goal across our social media pages is to make tax policy interesting and maybe even fun. We mostly do that through social media content: we’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! After all, it’s hard to convince people that we need to change tax policy unless they understand how and why it’s broken in the first place.

If any of this work sounds interesting to you, we’d love to have you! We’re really excited about our February social, which is at 8pm on Thursday, February 9th at Worker’s Tap: come hang out! Of course, we also have our regular meetings every second Thursday of the month at 6:30pm. These meetings are hybrid, so you can join us in person at the IWW, or virtually over Zoom, whichever works better for your schedule.  If you have any questions or comments for us, feel free to reach out to co-chairs Emerson or Lauren on Mattermost, or email us at taxtherichpdx@gmail.com!

CW: Graphic descriptions of police violence The footage of Tyre Nichols being killed at the hands of Memphis PD captures the murderous function of police in all its brutality. The […]

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Drag is an art with deep roots in New York City’s queer communities of color that has much to offer to all people who are interested in liberating themselves from traditional and patriarchal ideas of gender. That’s part of why it’s become a target of the organized far-right both here in NYC and nationally, with public libraries and other community venues facing protests over their regularly offered drag performances and story hours. Local politicians have also experienced far-right threats for merely expressing support for drag. On tonight’s edition of Revolutions per Minute, we’re live with Drag Story Hour NYC storyteller Oliver and  organizer and parent Desiree to discuss the many aspects of drag, and how New Yorkers have come together to reject the far-right threat and show the beauty and power of queer community.  

To learn more about Drag Story Hour NYC, visit dshnyc.org. 

January 17, 2023

The Charlotte Metro Democratic Socialists of America steering committee calls on the CATS bus system contractor RATP DEV USA to accept CATS workers’ collective bargaining demands.

Over the last few months of negotiation, CATS’s contractor has been trying to push a raw deal on bus operators. The company is threatening to cut pensions, remove dependents from their health insurance coverage, and ignore bus operator’s safety concerns. After years of pandemic and inflation it’s unconscionable that an employer would threaten to stop covering medical expenses for loved ones, and pretend a raise below inflation would make up for this. 

The bus operators have voted 254-14 to strike, which may begin as early as February 6th if the company continues to ignore their workers’ concerns. This strike will undeniably inconvenience many people who depend on public transit. We are disappointed that CATS and many local media sources have framed this as the fault of the workers. The workers are going on strike to defend the benefits they currently have and win the dignity we all deserve. It’s the company’s  focus on profits over their workers that is threatening to hurt riders.
As climate change increasingly threatens society, we need to do everything we can to cut back on emissions. This includes investing in our public transportation and the workers who operate it. If we let our city and its contractor keep mistreating the workers and families that keep the buses running, we’re going to struggle to find enough workers to keep up with the transit expansions we’ll need to avoid the worst of climate change.

We stand with our bus operators and their authorization to strike. A win for them is a win for all of us. It’s a win for public transportation, a win against climate change, and most importantly, a win against capitalist exploitation.

Solidarity Forever!

Charlotte Metro Democratic Socialists of America Steering Committee

By Michael Sebastian

Parker students marched with teachers and DSA members to Markham Elementary School last year to protest the closure of their school. (Photo: Stephanie Hung)

On January 11, Oakland’s educators and the community scored a signal victory in their years-long fight to end the closure and privatization of public schools. Within days of being seated on the school board, two new members endorsed by the Oakland Education Association, Valarie Bachelor and Jennifer Brouhard, joined a 4-3 majority to overturn last year’s school closure plan.

The closures faced mass opposition from parents, teachers and students, prompting protests and packed town halls. More than 2,000 attended last year’s virtual school board meeting on February 9, when the board voted to approve the closures. Public comments were unanimously opposed, arguing that the closures fell disproportionately on low-income, majority-black districts in Oakland, and were not needed in the face of a record budget surplus in California and a district superintendent with a base salary of $294,000. “OUSD has had a pattern of targeting schools with black and brown students populations for closures, effectively balancing the budget on the backs of our most marginalized students,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, an Oakland teacher and OEA vice-president. “It has caused generations of harm.” The vote by the previous school board further eroded trust in a board seen as dominated by charter-school interests, setting the stage for the replacement of several board members in the 2022 elections.

This month’s vote reversing the closure plan saves five elementary schools that were slated to close this year: Brookfield, Carl B. Munck, Grass Valley, Horace Mann, and Korematsu Discovery Academy. In addition, the middle school grades at Hillcrest K8 will be preserved. The vote does not undo last year’s closure of Parker and Community Day elementary, and La Escuelita’s middle school. 

Manufactured Crises Pave the Way for Charters

Despite California’s chronic underfunding of public education, the debt piled onto OUSD when the state put it in receivership in 2003, and chronic deficits since then, the closure of public schools is not the only solution to fiscal woes. The crux of the problem is that the district is spending the money it does have on the wrong things: too many administrators and consultants who are not supporting teachers and students. As Majority observed in 2019, “OUSD spends $30 million more on its central office than other comparable school districts in California. In the 2014-15 school year, if OUSD had reduced its central office spending to the comparison group average, it could have freed up $14 million.”

In fact, closing schools is a false solution. Districts receive per-pupil state funding for the number of students attending, so the more students that the district cedes to private and charter schools, the less money it receives for public schools. By closing public schools, the district only encourages parents to seek alternatives since their child’s own school could be next on the chopping block. Oakland has become a “charter boomtown” according to one KQED report, and in the decade after 2000 the number of charters “more than tripled”. But charters have the option of picking children that do better in school and have less need for support. This leaves public schools in a self-perpetuating cycle, with more high-needs students and fewer resources to support them. Schools then have to cut back on materials and extracurricular activities, which further incentivizes families to leave.

OEA Fights Back

The Oakland Education Association, the union representing Oakland’s public school teachers, made its opposition to school closures a centerpiece of its seven-day strike in 2019. “For decades a grassroots movement in Oakland has fought against the forces of privatization for equity, local control, and well resourced neighborhood public schools,” said OEA president Keith Brown. “The power of this collective effort grew when community and labor joined OEA in our 2019 strike.” 

Brown noted that the strike “brought many improvements for students and re-energized our fight for education justice in Oakland.”  Among those improvements was a brief moratorium on school closures and charter school expansion, and a contract provision that required the district to give OEA and the community a year’s advance notice of its plans to shutter more schools to allow for full community engagement before a decision is made.

Last February, when the district violated that provision, the struggle continued to grow. Teachers and the community organized a week of action against school closures in February, including a mass rally and march, as two teachers at Westlake middle school held a hunger strike. 

These actions culminated in a one-day unfair labor practice strike on April 29 by OEA teachers protesting the district’s breach of the notice provision in their contract. 

Then, as Election Day approached, the California Department of Justice opened up a probe into Oakland’s school closures for potential violation of student’s civil rights, driven in part by a complaint filed by OEA. 

Winning Change at the Ballot Box and in the Bargaining Campaign

But the union’s efforts to protect Oakland’s public schools didn’t stop there. After a disappointing meeting in June in which the school board failed to reverse its decision, organizing efforts shifted to the school board election in November. 

OEA endorsed three candidates, Jennifer Brouhard, Valarie Bachelor, and Pecolia Manigo, who ran on a platform that included reversing the closures. Brouhard and Bachelor won their elections, shifting the balance of power on the board and culminating in this month’s 4-3 vote to reverse the closures. At the emergency board meeting, Bachelor called on “every single board member sitting here today to approve this resolution to make sure that we stop the harm that we’ve already caused our families and make sure that we support these school sites moving forward.” She noted that, “as a Parker Elementary School community member, I saw the devastating impact of the school closures on our community and I don’t want that to happen across the city, especially in East Oakland.”

OEA president Brown credits the reversal of the school-closure decision to “the people power of Oakland,” and he sees the fight of students, families, workers and community for “for equity, local control, and increased resources prioritizing students and families” continuing to grow. “The fight continues this spring as Oakland educators organize to win a contract that addresses the crisis in educator salaries and supports schools that are safe, stable, and racially just.”

As it begins bargaining over a new contract, OEA has put forward a “Common Good” proposal to diversify the curriculum, address racial disparities, and protect our public schools from closure. This plan calls for reinvestment in the Community School model, which has been shown to be a successful alternative to school closures, and received over $4 billion in new state funding over the past two years. The OEA bargaining proposal also outlines a set of guidelines to reallocate resources, consult with the community, and do a thorough analysis before any school closure takes place. Charter schools that do not meet AB1505 regulations would also be returned to OUSD. 

“This victory has been a long journey!,” reflected OEA second vice president Taiz-Rancifer. “Today we need to remember there is not one sole hero in this story. We need to acknowledge all the work done by so many advocates, organizers, parents, educators, and students who have put their hearts on the line and helped us get to this point. Today, we must remember harm caused to many families, school staff, and educators that have been affected by closures. Now and in the future we must stay vigilant because this is a victory in a larger fight against privatization in Oakland.”

Michael Sebastian is a member of the steering committee of East Bay DSA.

Member Bruce Nissen details his thoughts on what hurdles must be overcome to build broad support for socialism.

Polls show that socialism has a more positive image in the U.S. today than it did in the second half of the 20th Century. Nevertheless, support is still at only thirty six percent (36%) and sixty percent (60%) view socialism negatively according to a 2022 Pew Research Poll. Capitalism is much more popular, with fifty seven percent (57%) favorable and thirty nine percent (39%) unfavorable.

There are major differences among distinctive groups within these overall figures. Democrats and Independents are more likely to be favorable toward socialism while Republicans are extremely unlikely to have this view. Even more extreme differences are evident by age: young people under 30 are much more likely to be favorable to socialism than are those older than 30.

Considering that socialism has always been either somewhat marginal or extremely marginal in American life throughout history, these figures are fairly encouraging. Nevertheless, if we are to make socialism a major force in American politics and ultimately a governing power, we have a long way to go in convincing people that our favored economic and political system will improve their lives overall.

The DSA needs to increase in size tenfold and the larger socialist current in the country also needs to expand greatly. What are the roadblocks to this happening? There are many, and I cannot hope to address them all here. But I do want to look at one that has led me to conclude that we should always (1) describe ourselves as “democratic socialists,” not merely socsialists; (2) clearly distinguish a socialist economy from a completely centrally planned “command” economy; and (3) avoid public displays of Soviet-era symbols and language from the so-called “Communist” countries such as the Soviet Union and China. I arrived at these conclusions due to a couple of recent conversations.

I was discussing with an acquaintance the sorry state of housing in St. Petersburg. We were commenting on how unbelievable it was that people were being forced to live in their cars in the richest country in the world. I made the comment, “That’s capitalism.” He immediately came back with, “No, it’s greed.” I said, “Same thing. Capitalism is a system built around greed.” Then he said that the people leading socialist governments seemed just as greedy as those leading capitalist ones. It became apparent that his picture of socialism meant a country led by an authoritarian leader or party that hoarded all the power and much of the wealth in that country through their control of the government. While he was not wedded to capitalism and saw it as flawed, he viewed the historical alternative as no better and probably less free.

A second instance: I was talking with a man who was helping me install a new ceiling in the back room of my house. He was originally from Cuba; his father was Russian and his mother was Cuban. He was married to a woman from Colombia. I was asking him about Cuba and Colombia, two countries he had lived in before coming to the U.S. It quickly became apparent that his political attitudes were anti-leftist; he weas lamenting that a leftist candidate had just won the election for president of Colombia.

He noted that this candidate had previously been the leader of a guerilla war against a previous Colombian government and stated that every time guerillas took power in a country the government became authoritarian, you were no longer allowed access to a free press, viewpoints opposing government policy were repressed, etc. He pointed to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as examples. We had a longer conversation, but I was completely unable to dislodge the connection that he made between “socialist” and “authoritarian and unfree.”

In some ways, this pairing is understandable for the older generation because the primary experiences they have had with self-described socialist societies were with the Communist countries (Soviet Union, Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc.) I think it is difficult to underestimate the damage that was done to the cause of socialism by the failed one-party authoritarian experiments that were known as the Communist world. (Of course, there are some positive features of these countries such as universal literacy and education and usually widely available healthcare, but they are universally unfree societies that lose disproportionate percentages of their population if emigration is allowed — frequently it is not.)

Most modern societies have a mix of socialist and capitalist features although the capitalist ones tend to be more fundamental and prominent. It helps to think of countries as more socialistic or more capitalistic since pure forms of either socialism or capitalism are basically non-existent (although some of the most unequal societies with minimal social welfare features come perilously close to pure capitalism). If we look at the spectrum from most socialistic to most capitalistic, which countries in the world are closest to straight out socialism?

If we’re talking about democratic socialism, the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland) come closest. They combine a large social welfare sector with a strong safety net, relatively low levels of inequality, a massive union movement incorporating a strong majority of the workforce, strongly democratic governments, and a fluctuating but comparatively large public sector. (Wikipedia states that approximately 30% of the workforce in Nordic countries work in the public sector.) In the recent past these countries have generally retrogressed toward capitalism (Norway is an exception: its public sector wealth exceeds the private sector), but the difference from more capitalistic societies is still stark. These countries are not fully socialist, of course. But they are the most socialistic in the world. The consequences are stark: they consistently rank among the happiest countries in the world on the happiness index and they are among the healthiest and most equal in the world.

All of this may be so commonly understood that it hardly needs to be said. Yet, I think there are a couple of lessons for us in DSA from the account given above. First, we would be wise to always describe ourselves as democratic socialists. The simple word “socialist” has been sullied to such a degree that the modifier is necessary if we are to be clear about our politics.

Second, members of the DSA would be wise to separate the notions of socialism from a completely centrally planned “command” economy. Attempts at such an economy have universally been authoritarian failures and we need to be exploring other ways to gain democratic control over the economy and to combat vast inequalities of wealth. I think some version of market socialism where the workers own and control the means of production but utilize market mechanisms to coordinate the economy and respond to consumer demand is the best approach, but that is the subject for another essay.

Third, we should always be vigilantly paying attention to our public image. That doesn’t mean we hide any of our substantive political positions, but it does mean avoiding public displays of Soviet-era symbols of so-called “Communist” countries and/or statements of approval for these governments or their leaders. (I understand that some DSA members may adore these leaders or governments, but they are a distinct minority and do not in any way represent the general consensus of the organization.)

Some years ago, I remember participating in a Tampa Bay DSA chapter march for May Day where some of the marchers held hammer and sickle signs. The march stopped at one point and an American flag was burned. I thought that was counterproductive and contrary to the general thrust of DSA politics at the time, and I still do. The DSA is not an authoritarian communist organization, and it makes no sense to try to coopt Communist symbols or methodologies for an organization attempting to build a democratic socialist society. Why adopt the symbols of such a failed and unpopular movement when we have our own much more popular vision to put out to the public?

Since this entire article has been directed against the hard left-authoritarian fringe of our socialist movement, I should make it clear that I equally oppose attempts on the other side of our movement to dissolve DSA’s distinctive politics into a mushy liberalism indistinguishable from the predominant thinking of the Democratic Party. Unlike liberals, democratic socialists see the structural causes of inequality, racism, sexism, homo- and trans-phobia, etc. baked into a capitalist economy. Divisions within the ranks of working people are critical to the survival of capitalism. But that too is the subject of another piece. The main point here is this: let’s avoid alienating the bulk of the American people by displaying false images of ourselves as upholders of undemocratic ideas and regimes.