Socialist Alternative 73 - May 2021

ALTERNATIVE

SOCIALIST

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INSIDE p.3 100 DAYS OF BIDEN p.4 UNION DRIVE AT AMAZON A YEAR SINCE GEORGE FLOYD p.6

WHAT WE STAND FOR A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in)Justice Millions celebrated as George Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin was convicted. This victory was won by the movement, but the backdrop for Chauvin’s trial was the police murders of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant, and Andrew Brown. This shows how much remains to be won.

• Arrest and convict killer cops! We need an independent, community-led investigation into the murders of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant, and Andrew Brown.

• Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks.

• Cities should cut police budgets by at least 50%, and reinvest those funds in needed public services.

• End the militarization of police. Ban police use of “crowd control” weapons.

Disarm police on patrol.

• Put policing under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.

• End minimum mandatory sentencing, immediately release any prisoner charged with non-violent crimes of poverty and expunge their record, no more cash bail, close all private prisons!

Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement

For a Socialist Green New Deal Biden’s new infrastructure plan falls dramatically short of the immediate and drastic action needed to rein in the climate crisis.

• Take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership.

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No Return to Normal Biden’s stimulus measures will go some way in alleviating working people’s immediate pain, but one-off stimulus checks and temporary relief aren’t enough.

• Make the child tax credit permanent and fully fund high-quality, universal childcare.

• Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high-quality public housing. Raise the corporate tax rate to at least 35%!

• We need an immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains into public ownership and retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art healthcare to every American.

• Fully fund public education! End school privatization. We need a national hiring program to bring on board tens of thousands of new educators to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

• Cancel all student debt!

End the COVID Chaos

The defeat of the union drive at Amazon in Bessemer is a real blow and brings to the fore the question of how to rebuild a fighting labor movement. The next major battle for labor will center around the PRO Act. • Major unions, socialist organizations, and community groups should call PRO Act rallies in every major city and prepare to occupy the offices of any senator that stands in the way of its passage.

• We immediately need a $15 minimum wage and to get rid of the separate, tipped minimum wage.

• Progressive union leaders need to break from the Democratic Party. Unions have a decisive role to play in the fight for a new party!

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• Tax the billionaires and big business to fund extreme weather services including fully funded firefighting and forest management, and weatherizing homes.

• For a GND jobs program to tackle climate change and provide well-paid union jobs for millions of workers.

• Progressives in Congress should fight for a much bolder infrastructure plan based around a Green New Deal jobs program.

They will need to organize a mass movement of youth climate strikers and the labor movement to demand its passage!

Despite widespread availability of vaccines in the U.S. and other advanced capitalist countries, the global COVID situation is a disaster.

• Biden should immediately call for the World Health Organization to suspend intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines and make them free and accessible around the world!

• Take big pharma profiteers into public ownership and turn existing vaccines into The People’s Vaccines! This would go a long way in overcoming vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. given people’s widespread skepticism of big pharma.

• In the U.S., we need Medicare for All including a robust investment in and coverage for mental health services.

• Cancel all rent, rental debt, and medical debt accrued during the pandemic.

Fight Racist, Far-Right Violence Over the past year we’ve seen a devastating uptick in violent hate crimes against Asian Americans. Trump’s racism opened

info@SocialistAlternative.org @Socialist Alternative @SocialistAlt /SocialistAlternative.USA /c/SocialistAlternative @socialistus

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Tamar Wilson, Philadelphia In February 2020 I was riding a political high: Bernie Sanders was winning primary contests and it seemed like the political revolution was more than possible — it seemed inevitable. I, like many others who participated in the movement, was naive to the Democratic establishment’s impending sabotage on Super Tuesday that doomed his campaign. By April 2020 I watched with dread as the bottom fell out from Bernie’s campaign, the pandemic intensified, and it looked like the movement for the political revolution we sorely needed was at its end.

Feeling restless and anxious as things worsened, I reached out to other Bernie volunteers to find an organization that espoused the rhetoric and purpose of Bernie’s campaigns. That is how I found Socialist Alternative.

As a freshman in college in 2006 I marched on the UN with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to protest George W. Bush and the Iraq War. America’s bipartisan imperialism used nationalism to justify its looting of the Middle East and murder of an estimated one million Iraqi people, at a cost of more than $2 trillion. Following that, I watched the historic election of America’s first Black president, and then Obama’s subsequent abandoning of the working class, which hyper-accelerated the wealth gap between the ruling and working classes. Since then the crises of capitalism the door for these attacks and while Biden is not using the same language, his escalated nationalism contributes to creating a climate where attacks like this can occur. Even with Trump out of office, the threat of the far right will continue to grow. The key to pushing back the far right is a determined response from the labor movement and all whose interests it threatens.

• Organize against vigilante terror! We need multi-racial solidarity of the entire working class against racist violence.

Where our movements face attacks from the far right, we need grassroots self defense.

• We need a struggle against right-wing anti-protest bills being introduced in states across the country.

End Sexism, Homophobia, and Transphobia Attacks are coming down from state legislatures on trans rights and women’s rights.

• Across the country we need to urgently organize to repeal laws that ban trans women from playing sports and young people from accessing life-saving, gender-affirming healthcare.

• Fight all attacks on reproductive rights!

• Domestic violence and sexual assault, already rampant, have skyrocketed under COVID. We need to fight gender-based violence, victim blaming, and sexism in all its forms.

For a New Political Party for Working People

have continued to mount and social movements subsumed into the Democratic Party have ended in failure.

I joined Socialist Alternative because it’s clear our capitalist system is beyond simple reform. I’m not content to spend my life marching and protesting only to be forced into voting for Democrats who continue the same policies of misery and exploitation.

We need a new party for the working class and Socialist Alternative is working hard to make that happen!

I joined Socialist Alternative because I demand revolution in my lifetime! I demand accountability from imperialists and war profiteers. I demand a reckoning where the people destroying the planet, overseeing police violence, and exploiting billions are made to answer for their actions. I want a true multiracial socialist revolution! J

the “center.” We need a new working class political party not beholden to big business interests.

• While the Democratic establishment is being forced to “spend money” to address the immediate crisis, they are diametrically opposed to progressive policies that would bring real, lasting change. This was on display when they quickly abandoned the demand for a $15 minimum wage during stimulus negotiations.

• Democrats and Republicans alike are unwilling to make any structural changes that threaten the dominance of big business. We need a new, multiracial left party that organizes and fights for workers’ interests and is committed to socialist policies to point a way out of the horrors of capitalism.

• No attacks on democratic rights! We need to fight against all attempts at racist voter suppression being driven through by Republicans.

The Whole System is Guilty Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.

• Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership.

• We need a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet. J

Fighting the right means abandoning S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

POLITICS

100 DAYS OF BIDEN Keely Mullen, New York City We are 100 days into Biden’s presidency and his approval rating sits at 54%. His major legislative victory, the March stimulus bill, had over 60% approval among ordinary people, including widespread support among Republican voters. Suffice it to say Biden has created a nice honeymoon for himself and has won the favor of millions of working-class people who finally see the government “working.”

Is this the same Biden who, on the campaign trail, soothed big business concerns by saying “nothing would fundamentally change”? The same Biden who was the architect of the racist system of mass incarceration in the nineties? Who fought to slash social security in the eighties? Yes, it is most certainly the same Biden. What has changed is the scale of the crisis facing his system.

Everything that has been achieved in the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency needs to be viewed through a very specific lens: What is the ruling class willing to do to defend against total economic collapse?

Biden’s early achievements — the dramatic acceleration of vaccinations, the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, the introduction of the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan — broadly represent the American ruling class throwing out the neoliberal playbook which they have relied on for forty years.

The pivot in approach currently being carried out by Western capitalist powers is an attempt to undo the pitfalls of the 2008 strategy of bailing out big banks in the context of an even deeper crisis.

If the same treatment were followed this time, we would right now be facing Great Depression like conditions of mass destitution. This time, the ruling class had no choice but to bail out working people, not just banks and corporations.

Over the past several decades, and especially since the Great Recession, the gulf between the super rich and the working class has tremendously widened.

Between 1980 and 2017 the earnings of the top 0.1% grew fifteen times faster than that of the bottom 90%. Threequarters of jobs created since 2008 have been low-wage jobs, many of which have been lost this past year amid the ongoing COVID pandemic. Seventy-eight percent of American workers were already living paycheck to paycheck — and then the pandemic hit.

Over 20 million jobs were lost. Fortysix million Americans wiped out their emergency savings. Rental debt accumulated and alongside it, civil unrest.

The dramatic Justice for George Floyd

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rebellion last summer was correctly seen by the ruling class as a revolt against a system that had failed us. This, alongside international upheaval in places like Belarus, Myanmar, and Lebanon, signaled the danger that widespread revolt may be on the horizon if the situation was not contained.

This is the context for Biden’s first 100 days in office.

First Order of Business: Contain COVID Getting the pandemic under control was the primary task assigned to Biden when he took office, and a narrow look at the pace of vaccinations would signal that he’s succeeded in this. His administration managed at one stage to ramp up vaccinations to a pace of more than three million shots per day. This is no doubt an astonishing escalation; however, the pace of vaccinations has now slowed as health officials are finding it harder to administer shots to the hesitant. All of this in addition to the spread of dangerous variants shows that COVID is not in the rearview mirror even if the overall situation in the U.S. is improving.

The infection rate is again falling, but very slowly. The Biden administration’s view of vaccines as a silver bullet and the total de-emphasis on lockdowns or social-distancing measures has meant tens of thousands more needless deaths.

Additionally, Biden’s administration seems to be ignoring the inherent danger of an “America First’’ approach to containing the virus. Biden has continued the Trump policy of vaccine hoarding and has done nothing to ensure equitable access to the vaccine globally. This is setting the world up for a nightmare scenario wherein new variants — some that will likely illude vaccines — are able to spread (see page 10).

Big Spending Brings Temporary Rebound But No Long-Term Gains The biggest accomplishment of Biden’s administration thus far is the passage of his $1.9 trillion stimulus package. The package, which had widespread bipartisan support among ordinary people, gave millions of Americans a needed shot in the arm. Alongside extending the moratorium on evictions and student debt collection, it sent thousands of dollars to working people in the form of stimulus checks, unemployment top ups, and child tax credits. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),

this stimulus spending alone will boost world GDP by 1.1%. This is the starkest evidence to date that the ruling class has abandoned a strict neoliberal approach.

The stimulus bill, alongside pent-up demand from months of limited spending — particularly by that section of the population which kept its jobs and worked from home — will no doubt usher in a temporary economic rebound in the U.S. However, beyond an immediate cash bump, the final stimulus package contained no lasting gains for working people, contributing to the fragility of any economic rebound. The only component of the bill that would’ve had long-term consequences was the $15 minimum wage, which was willfully dropped by the establishment and not fought for by establishment progressives.

Biden has refused to take up popular demands like student-debt cancellation or Medicare for All (or even lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60, which he promised during the campaign). All of these demands would provide real, longlasting benefits to working people. Rather than abolishing the archaic filibuster in order to pass a flurry of pro-worker legislation like the PRO Act, a $15 minimum wage, and Medicare for All, Biden has hidden behind calls for bipartisanship.

While the Biden administration seeks to extend some components of the stimulus package like the popular child tax credit, it appears the extent of his ambition is to extend it only for a few years.

Similarly, despite platitudes that $15 minimum wage is not off the table, we’ve yet to see it reintroduced beyond just for federal contractors.

The Next Big Moves The Biden administration is preparing to make the climate a certain focus over the next several months as his new infrastructure bill goes to Congress (see page 9). To kick off this effort, Biden convened a global climate summit in late April, along with forty other world leaders. Diplomatic as it may have seemed, the climate summit was somewhat of a trojan horse through which Biden could reassert the authority of American capitalism on a global scale.

A main feature of the summit was the Biden administration’s assertion that domestic climate legislation would be aimed at strengthening American competitiveness. In this vein, Biden plans to continue Trump-era policies aimed at weakening the Chinese economy and incentivizing corporations to move

continued on p. 11

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FIGHTING AMA ZON

LESSONS FROM AMAZON UNION DRIVE Socialist Alternative watched closely as the union drive at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama unfolded over the past months. We sent full-time organizers and mobilized members from across the South to Bessemer to help build community and labor support for the union drive. We established relationships with leading RWDSU organizers, Amazon workers, and leaders of BLM and community groups to discuss strategy, offer proposals, and put in work to help the drive win. The below article is based on our observations and ongoing work in Alabama.

Rebecca Green, New York City Amazon’s unimaginable wealth and power, which has exploded during the pandemic, was unleashed in Bessemer to crush the effort to form the first union at Amazon in the U.S. With 1,798 “no” votes, 738 for the union, and 505 ballots challenged by Amazon that were not counted (which were most likely “yes” votes), the union drive ended in a devastating defeat.

The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has appealed to the National Labor Relations Board on the basis that Amazon broke no less than 23 election laws. The NLRB is expected to rule and could order a new election in the next month or two. Both Amazon and the union have the chance to present evidence and appeal, and while the courts could clear the path for a new election, it could take months if not years to get a final ruling.

A new election, if granted, will be an uphill battle because of fast turnover at the warehouse and Ama-

zon’s well-paid lawyers that will fight tooth and nail to delay and muddy the process. We cannot allow this battle to get funneled solely into a backroom conflict between lawyers.

This will open the space for Amazon to further inoculate all their new hires against the idea of a union and retaliate against worker activists. The union urgently needs to deepen organizing on the shop floor to counteract this.

A union victory in Bessemer would likely have triggered a tidal wave of organizing efforts at Amazon facilities across the country. That’s why Amazon pulled no punches in stopping the union drive. But this defeat is certainly not the end of the battle in Bessemer, or the end of the battle between working people and Amazon everywhere.

Amazon Stole This Election The main cause of this defeat was Amazon’s brutal union busting tactics which, when all is said and done, will have cost them millions in consulting fees. They organized an ongoing barrage of captive-audience meetings to inoculate workers against the union.

They told workers that voting for the union could lead to a loss of benefits and potentially a cut in pay. They followed up with multiple messages threatening widespread layoffs and closure of the facility if workers voted yes.

Amazon unremittingly pressured USPS

to install an illegal mailbox at the warehouse, and then lied to workers about the deadline to vote so they would cast ballots early – before union organizers could reach them.

Every crooked maneuver by Amazon came from their need to protect at all costs their ability to make enormous profits off the backs of their workers. Workers who, while Jeff Bezos made $90 billion during the pandemic, were dying from contracting COVID19 on the job, collapsing from inhumane productivity requirements, and peeing in bottles to avoid being punished or fired by the company’s barbaric “Time Off Task” (T.O.T.) tracking system.

Lessons for the Labor Movement It’s to the RWDSU’s credit that they boldly took the initiative where others didn’t, and attempted to win the first union at Amazon in the country.

There is a lot the union did right. They made clear the links between the class struggle and Black Lives Matter movement, as the majority Black workforce demanded that Black Lives Matter at work too. They made sure the world was watching and developed an impressive media strategy that led to tens of thousands of articles on the union drive on every continent.

While Amazon’s vicious union-busting is the primary reason for this loss, it is also important to discuss the mistakes RWDSU made. The most crucial of these mistakes was the general lack of active involvement of Amazon workers in developing the union’s strategy. There was no organizing committee on the shop floor and a lack of home visits to Amazon workers, which led to an overreliance on a media strategy as a means to reach workers. Another mistake was the union’s under-prioritization of developing a clear set of economic demands, such as a $20 starting wage, longer breaks, overtime pay for shifts over eight hours, and an end to T.O.T., around which the union would fight for if it won the recognition vote. Lastly, there was generally an over optimism from the union leadership about the likelihood of victory, which gave the impression that meetings of workers to discuss strategy and the way forward were unnecessary.

Amazon Can Be Beat Taking lessons from Bessemer, where organizing drives at Amazon kick off, organizing committees should be rapidly established. These should be driven by workers from every department and shift, regularly discussing a strategy to win union recognition. The strength of

continued on p. 11

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TAX AMAZON COMES TO BURBANK David Rhoades, Los Angeles Burbank, California, a small city of 100,000 nestled near the mountains northwest of Los Angeles, is home to some of the world’s largest corporations: Disney, Warner Brothers, ABC, NBC, Netflix, Ikea, and later this year, Amazon.

A new business complex adjacent to the Burbank Airport will soon house a 700,000-square-foot Amazon delivery station.

However, the jobs created by the new station won’t pay enough for workers to afford Burbank’s incredibly high cost of living. In response, activists, workers, and young people in Burbank have initiated a campaign to tax Amazon to fund schools, affordable housing built with union labor, and other starved social services.

Inspired by Seattle In July 2020, with skyrocketing inequality exacerbated by the pandemic and increasing calls to tax the rich, workers in Seattle won a tax on Amazon and big business to fund affordable housing and green new deal programs. The Tax Amazon campaign in Seattle, driven by Socialist Alternative and our city councilmember Kshama Sawant, is a landmark victory against Jeff Bezos, and shows how a mass campaign can win against one of the wealthiest and most well-resourced companies in the world.

Movement Comes to Burbank With a lower minimum wage than neighboring Los Angeles, Burbank’s “discounted” labor costs make it an attractive haven for large companies. Many workers are imported from the greater Los Angeles area to work in Burbank. The majority of these workers can’t afford to live in Burbank due to a small pool of housing units, which landlords and developers capitalize on to drive up prices.

In the 2020 elections, residents elected an open democratic socialist and DSA candidate, Konstantine Anthony, to City Council. He campaigned on a commitment to tax Amazon and big business to fund schools and housing. Four months later, Socialist Alternative Los Angeles helped organize the first Tax Amazon Burbank Action Conference, which was attended by Burbank union organizers, activists, educators, and residents.

All major decisions of the campaign will be made through open, democratic Action Conferences, including the election of leadership who will be accountable to the Action Conference. The campaign is committed to taking on Amazon and big business head-on, without shying away from calling them what they are: unscrupulous, greedy billionaires. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

S E AT T L E legal system. George Floyd’s murderer Derek Chauvin was just found guilty on all charges brought against him because of the biggest protest movement in U.S. history. Without mass pressure, the political establishment likely would have acquitted Chauvin. Instead they were forced to surrender him to maintain their narrative that he’s just one “bad apple” rather than a symptom of a deeply racist system. The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the recall campaign sets a dangerous precedent because it is an attack on the vital right to protest. If this recall is successful, it will open the floodgates for increased repression of our movements.

Brewing Era of Revolt

STAND WITH KSHAMA SAWANT

DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST! Hannah Swoboda, Seattle

On April 1, in a major development in the recall effort against Seattle City Councilmember and Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant, the Washington Supreme Court sided with the right-wing recall campaign. The court’s decision to uphold the recall charges functions as the final stamp of approval for the recall campaign to move forward with its signature collection to get a recall vote on an upcoming ballot.

Recall Attempts to Criminalize Protest Big business and the right wing are attempting to remove Kshama for her role in successfully leading movements to win historic victories for working people and marginalized communities. Kshama spearheaded the successful fights to make Seattle the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage, the first-in-nation ban on teargas and other “crowd control weapons,” landmark renters’ rights laws like tenant right to counsel, and the Amazon Tax to fund affordable housing and Green New Deal programs. It’s precisely because Councilmember Sawant has fought consistently and unambiguously for working and oppressed people throughout her seven years in office that the billionaires, the right wing, and the political establishment want to remove her by any means necessary. All three of the charges upheld by the Supreme Court attack Kshama for supporting protest movements, which is exactly what Seattle voters elected her to do.

The first recall charge attacks Kshama for attending a protest in the neighborhood where Mayor Jenny Durkan lives, at the invitation of families of the victims of police violence. The march was organized in response to the brutal crackdown against protesters M AY 2 0 2 1

during the BLM movement overseen by Durkan, and lack of justice for the 28 people killed by Seattle police since 2011. Kshama did not “lead” the protest, as is dishonestly claimed, but spoke there in solidarity.

The second charge falsely claims that Kshama broke the law when she helped to organize a masked, hour-long Black Lives Matter rally at Seattle City Hall during last summer’s historic movement. This rally set the stage for passing the first-in-the-nation ban on tear gas and other “crowd-control weapons” the following week. Stunningly, the court ruled on the basis that this anti-racist rally was “not city business.”

Finally, the third recall charge relates to Kshama’s leadership in building the fight for the historic Amazon Tax. The recall campaign alleges that Kshama improperly used city resources by co-hosting a mass democratic Tax Amazon meeting in January which discussed, among other things, launching a ballot initiative to tax big business. Tax Amazon didn’t file the initiative until two months later and ultimately the question never even went to the ballot because the movement created enough pressure to force the city council to pass legislation in July 2020. This ruling sets an extremely dangerous precedent and effectively criminalizes the act of elected representatives helping to build movements.

Supreme Court’s Decision is Unjust but Unsurprising The recall campaign, in putting forward these charges, falsely claims that all of these actions that Kshama took to help build the Black Lives Matter and Tax Amazon movements were illegal. In an overtly racist attack on the movement, the recall has also claimed that Kshama’s support for BLM “promoted lawlessness.” Kshama has not broken any

laws, but Washington state’s recall law does not require that the charges even be proven true!

Building movements and speaking at protests aren’t crimes, but the powers that be want to change that, including by attempting to drive the most progressive elected official in the country out of office. At the same time, 81 bills have been introduced across the country attempting to criminalize protest.

While the court’s decision is totally unjust, it should come as no surprise. As with the police, the legal system under capitalism has always been used by the capitalist class to retain their power. Laws under capitalism are written by and for the wealthy, and politically enforced on their behalf. To the extent that the law ever favors the interests of working people, it is the result of organized struggle to better our conditions.

We see this reality on full display when looking at the way that, by and large, victims of police brutality never see justice under the

Get Involved: Donate Today!

As we saw in the fight to re-elect Kshama Sawant in 2019, the wealthy elite are again throwing in their immense financial support to unseat the socialist. Corporate donors broke local fundraising records in 2019 by flooding the Seattle elections with over $4 million in PAC money, with $1 million coming from Amazon alone in a single day. The recall campaign relies on steady support from ultra-rich donors, including from members of three of the five Washington State billionaire “dynasties” identified by Forbes magazine.

We’ll never out-spend the billionaires,

It’s no coincidence that this recall comes as a brewing era of revolt is beginning to emerge worldwide. In response to the deepening crisis of capitalism, working people are getting organized. Last year the world ignited in anger at the brutal murder of George Floyd and protesters across 60 countries on all seven continents took to the streets to demand an end to racist police brutality.

In recent years we’ve seen struggles against austerity, repression, gender violence, climate change, and much more explode across countries including Chile, India, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Ecuador, Russia and Myanmar, and countless other places. Workers here in the U.S. are beginning to rebuild a labor movement that was systematically dismantled decades ago. Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama just boldly attempted to unionize a warehouse owned by the richest man in the world (see page 4)! In this context, the billionaires and the right are desperate to squash any working-class fightback before it escalates, by recalling the nation’s only Marxist elected official and opening the door for increased repression of our movements.

It’s critical that working people, not just in Seattle but nationally, take a stand and join the movement to defend Kshama Sawant from this right-wing recall. As workers are seeking out solutions to the misery imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, the recession, climate change, and so many other problems that are created by capitalism, we cannot afford to lose one of the most effective fighters in the struggle for a better world. J

but we can defeat their attempts to remove Kshama by building a powerful grassroots campaign, just like we did when we reelected Kshama in 2019. Our movements can stand toe-to-toe with the billionaires and win because when working people get together, we outnumber the rich and the powerful. When we get organized, we can overcome the PAC money, the corporate media attacks, the paid canvassers, and the lies. One incredibly important way to build our movement is to donate to the Kshama Solidarity Campaign to help ensure that we reach voters across Kshama’s district.

Donate online today at www.kshamasolidarity.org/donate!

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ONE YEAR SINCE GEORGE FLOYD

WHAT NEXT FOR THE MOVEMENT AGAINST RACIAL OPPRESSION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT TERROR? Chris Gray and Eljeer Hawkins The conviction of former Minneapolis law enforcement officer Derek Chauvin was a direct result of the mass explosion by the working class, youth, and oppressed last summer. The #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd rebellion captured the imagination of the entire world last year and the potential of another similar explosion terrified the establishment. It was also the attempt of law enforcement, the capitalist system, and the Biden White House to regain confidence in the overall system by reigning in “rogue” law enforcement officers in Black and Brown working-class communities.

However, despite the victory of a conviction, there was disturbing evidence in the background signaling that the struggle against racial oppression has a long way to go. Amid the trial and announcement of the guilty verdict, the Biden White House decided to drop the campaign promise to establish a national commission on law enforcement violence. Alongside this we saw the high profile law enforcement killings of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, and Ma’Khia Bryant. These events cemented the cold reality of the role of law enforcement in the capitalist order and how disposable the lives of Black and Brown workers and youth are in the eyes of the system.

“Man Dies of Medical Incident After Police Interaction”

(Original Minneapolis Police Department Press Release on George Floyd’s Murder) Only seven cops have been convicted of murder since 2005.

The fact that Derek Chauvin is one of them is a testament to the power of the rebellion that rocked Minneapolis alongside the 26 million-strong protests that swept the country last year. The rebellion itself started with an act of civil disobedience: then-17-year-old Darnella Frazier refused to stop recording George Floyd’s murder, even as other Minneapolis Police Officers at the scene threatened and tried to intimidate her. Almost a year later at Floyd’s trial, Police Chief Arrodondo thanked her, though initially he worked with the Democratic Party establishment in Minneapolis to cover up Floyd’s murder.

In the initial days following George Floyd’s murder, the political establishment tried to argue that protesting was counterproductive to winning justice. Recognizing that people didn’t trust the MPD to investigate themselves, which is still standard protocol, Minneapolis Mayor Frey looked to the same state agency that failed to indict Philando Castille’s murderer in 2016. When people called this out, Frey appealed to Donald Trump’s FBI to intervene! In contrast, Socialist Alternative called for an “independent, elected, community-led investigation with full powers over the Minneapolis Police Department, including the power to subpoena, hire, fire, and review budget priorities.”

Minneapolis Democrats Repressed the #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd Movement Under the dishonest pretense of stopping white supremacist vigilantes, who were never caught, the National Guard in reality targeted journalists and terrorized working-class people who were trying to organize neighborhood watch programs to keep people

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safe. This sparked wider protests. Minnesota’s Governor described the largest, and widely condemned, peace-time military mobilization in the state’s history as “good and righteous.”

National polls showed a majority of Americans felt that burning down the Third Precinct police station where Derek Chauvin worked was justified. This precinct has been described as a “playground” for renegade cops and has been neglected by the Democratic Party establishment that runs Minneapolis for years. While the Minneapolis establishment parroted Trump’s talking points about “anarchy,” working-class committees organized to defend themselves nonviolently. In one example, the Somali community nonviolently de-escalated a situation with a hooded, masked white man while the police and National Guard ignored reports. Socialist Alternative called for the National Guard to leave, and be replaced with “community councils to discuss next steps, protect against the vigilante violence as well as the National Guard, and distribute aid and resources.”

Democrats Make Big Promises, Then Walk Them Back While Minneapolis City Council did not intervene to stop the National Guard, they seized the opportunity to jump in front of the movement to make their now historic “Powderhorn Promise” to “dismantle” the police. They gained national attention, and prominent NGOs prematurely claimed victory. Within hours, many council members were already walking it back and managing expectations. Ever since, Minneapolis City Council has retreated at every turn when faced with the opportunity to actually confront Mayor Frey or the police. They unanimously approved a police budget last fall that made a mere 6% cut, and then reversed that months later, unanimously approving a measure to hire more cops.

The politicians that run Minneapolis are cut from similar fabric as most Democratic Party politicians, who make big promises during election years and in times of social upheaval, only to betray or water down these promises once in power. They stand in stark contrast to independent socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant in Seattle, who successfully passed a ban on chemical weapons, took on the Seattle police union’s reactionary contract by being the only “no” vote, and put forward concrete legislation to reduce the police budget by half (read more about Kshama on page 5).

The Need for A Fighting Program Against Law Enforcement Terror The revolt of last summer demonstrated the raw potential that exists for an ongoing mass movement against racial oppression.

However, a year on and, despite verbal “concessions” from the establishment, very little has concretely been won. If we are going to win significant police reform in the U.S., let alone the more far reaching demands of the movement, we need to take a sober look at the state of our movement and what changes need to be made.

A deep and troubling crisis has emerged in Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM) under the leadership of original BLM cofounder Patrisse Cullors. Since the inception of the BLM banner, it has become a life-affirming cry against racial oppression and law enforcement terror under capitalism. Still, the limits of BLM’s S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

politics and narrow NGO/Democratic Party-focused approach are being increasingly exposed as completely insufficient to confront this moment of crisis.

Socialist Alternative members attended and participated in the Movement for Black Lives conference in Cleveland in 2015.

Early on we recognized the danger of co-optation from the Democratic Party and liberal philanthropic donors that has unfortunately become a significant feature.

The absence of sustainable democratic organizations, militant leadership, and a fighting, independent working-class approach rooted in our communities has allowed the political and economic establishment to co-opt a section of the movement. Big business donated two billion dollars to racial justice NGO organizations, and adopted a shallow but almost obsessive campaign of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” trainings which amount to little more than “Black faces in high places.”

The Black misleadership class played a dastardly role by directing the justified rage of millions into safe channels like advocating for Black capitalism and entrepreneurship. This effort was led by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, like Black South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, who outright attacked demands like defunding the police.

The Role of Unions in the Fight Against Racism Socialist Alternative members in key unions played an important role in bringing the labor movement into the fight for #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd. During the rebellion, Minneapolis bus drivers organized with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 refused to transport protestors to jail. USPS letter carriers organized a march from a burned out post office to shift attention away from right-wing fearmongering back to the tragedy of George Floyd’s murder. These actions from rank-and-file members put pressure on union leaderships at the state and national level to make statements in defense of the uprising, cutting across right-wing efforts to isolate what was happening.

Washington Square Park, 2020.

The Need for Clear Demands During the rebellion, Socialist Alternative raised several key programmatic demands like putting policing under the control of democratically elected civilian boards with full powers including hiring and firing, cutting police budgets by 50%, disarming cops on patrol, and purging police forces of any officer with a history of racist abuse.

In addition to fighting demands around policing, we called for demands that could fight racism in all aspects of society, including taxing corporations to fund jobs, education, healthcare, and housing. These demands would disproportionately benefit Black and brown workers while at the same time uplifting the working class as a whole.

To build the strongest possible movement, Socialist Alternative raised the need for the labor movement to stand against racism and support the protesters, and rejecting racist law enforcement policing and police unions in the labor movement.

All this while providing a socialist analysis of the role of the state and how to end racist law enforcement.

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE LAUNCHES BLACK CAUCUS

Derek Chauvin convicted in the murder of George Floyd.

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As the verdict was being announced in Derek Chauvin’s trial, 16 year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was killed by the police in Columbus. The same week, bodycam footage was released of Chicago police’s killing of 13 year-old Adam Toledo, and another Black man, Daunte Wright, lost his life to police terror just miles away from the courthouse where Chauvin was being tried. Despite the limited victory won by the movement in the form of Chauvin’s conviction on all charges, these ongoing killings have laid bare the horrors of American capitalism. Beyond rampant law enforcement violence and right-wing vigilantism, Black people in the U.S. are subject to crumbling social

Should Socialists Support The Demand to Abolish Police?

We support any concrete reforms that can be won by the working class through social struggle that limits the power of law enforcement and Wall Street’s agenda. In 2014-2015 during the first phase of BLM, several reforms were won in 24 states, like body cameras. However, the body-camera documented lynching of George Floyd threw those ineffective reforms in the wastebin of history. The demands of this wave of BLM were in many ways a real step forward. For example, the demand to abolish the police showed how much further consciousness had developed and this has represented, to some extent, a step forward.

It articulated the role of the police as the security guards of the capitalist class and its system of profit, power, and prestige. It acknowledged the police as an occupying force in communities of color.

However, Socialist Alternative has not adopted the approach taken by many on the left of adding immediate police abolition to our general political program. This is because, from the standpoint of Marxists, we want to draw the widest possible section of society into the struggle against racial oppression and capitalism, and that means crafting a political program that people are willing to fight for. Broadly speaking, the demand to abolish the police has very limited support, including among the Black working class. Even at the height of the rebellion last summer the demand for police abolition only had 15% support. While the demands for sweeping police reform have much broader support, abolition leaves many wondering who would provide “public safety” in the absence of any police force.

The question of abolishing the police cannot be posed in any real way before we end the rule of capital and lay the basis for a classless, socialist society. There is no abolishing the police on the basis of capitalism, the ruling class will not allow it.

It’s for this reason that Socialist Alternative has front loaded the demand for community control of the police. It points in the direction of the type of genuine worker and community self organization that would be needed to keep us safe. If policing were brought into real democratic community control, that would mean hiring, firing, budgetary priorities, and broad protocols would be determined by ordinary people ourselves.

We need serious discussions and debates in our movement about demands and program, and this needs to be connected to a concerted campaign to discuss these ideas with ordinary working people.

The Whole System is Guilty The mass rebellions that rocked the country have exposed how racism is deeply interwoven into the fabric of capitalism itself. While there have been some victories, we need to be sober that the ruling class is only willing to make concessions under pressure, including sacrificing “bad apples” like Derek Chauvin, if it allows them to prop up their rotten tree a little bit longer.

As Republicans and Democrats team up to terrorize, demonize, and mischaracterize the uprisings, it is essential that we discuss which demands and strategies are needed to build a genuinely multiracial working class movement to uproot all forms of racism, oppression and exploitation once and for all. J

services, a lack of decent health care and housing, and discrimination at every level of society. These horrific conditions laid the basis for the multi-racial Black Lives Matter rebellion last summer.

In the process of building an enduring struggle against racism, there will need to be dynamic debates and discussions.

We will have to confront a number of key questions: Who are our real enemies?

Can we trust virtue signalling from corporations? What is the role of the multiracial working class in our movement?

To most effectively participate in these debates and discussions, and to build the movement for Black liberation, Socialist Alternative is proud

to announce the creation of the Black Caucus of Socialist Alternative! The Black Caucus will strive to shed light on the history of the radical Black socialist tradition represented by Hubert Harrison, Claudia Jones, CLR James, Walter Rodney, and Fred Hampton.

We seek to draw out this history as a means to inform our struggle today. This caucus will be hosting both public discussions as well as internal educational events on a broad range of topics from how to build a movement to achieve justice for victims of racist police brutality, to why a Marxist approach is essential in building a multi-racial struggle against capitalism and racial oppression. J

7

D E B AT E S O N T H E L E F T

Us Them

versus

Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis

SQUAD REFUSES TO TAKE ON BIDEN Grace Fors, Dallas The crises of the past year have stressed the need for sweeping change including Medicare for All, debt cancellation, and a Green New Deal. The newly expanded Squad and progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey could help lead the struggle for lasting gains. But they have yet to take a real stand in Congress for far-reaching reforms.

The Democratic leadership is maneuvering to co-opt the Squad on the condition that they play nice and go along with the “bipartisan,” incremental, and wholly insufficient measures being pursued by the establishment. Between the opportunity to “Force the Vote” to bring forward Medicare for All legislation, and the exclusion of a federal $15/hr minimum wage increase from Biden’s stimulus package, progressives and the Squad have backed away from fights that were not only winnable, but had the power to mobilize a mass base.

Winning what we truly need will take serious determination and courage at all levels of society, from the streets, to our workplaces, and within the halls of power. Now is not the time to play nice.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em? Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns and progressive victories at the federal and local level, including AOC’s 2018 upset victory over incumbent Joe Crowley, are results of the growing mood to fight the political establishment. In the electoral realm, key issues that the Democratic establishment has historically opposed like a federal $15/ hr minimum wage, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, and student debt cancellation have proven power to fundraise, drive turnout, and win elections.

AOC has tirelessly raised these points with the establishment. They have summarily ignored her. However, her attempts to prove her loyalty to the party in exchange for getting a hearing have not stopped. As part of this effort, AOC sent campaign cash to a number of swing-district Democrats. Because she

8

does not pay dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm of Democratic Party House races, these contributions were made directly in her name. Showing just how hostile the “centrist” wing of the party is to progressive outsiders, several Democrats who received these contributions ran to the media to denounce the “unwelcome surprise.”

We have repeatedly warned that the full weight of the establishment bears down the moment a progressive candidate assumes their seat. As the most high profile among the young women of color who entered the House in 2019, AOC in particular immediately faced a war on multiple fronts. The far right waged war with nonstop vicious, racist, and misogynistic attacks.

But her own party was just as quick to marginalize her. Nancy Pelosi has not missed an opportunity to publicly vilify Squad members, presenting them as naive and ineffective. The party leadership also understands that getting progressives to play ball in exchange for toning down the vitriol would be a more desirable outcome.

We Still Need to Fight the Establishment The slim majorities in both chambers mean that a handful of progressive defectors could hold up establishment priorities.

Rather than use their power, the Squad is playing into the Democratic leadership’s carrot-and-stick tactics, dangling committee assignments and progressive legislation over their heads, only to snatch away key measures — particularly those that would benefit the working class.

The Squad sees winning over the corporate establishment as key to passing progressive legislation. Rep. Ilhan Omar spoke endearingly to the media of her “Auntie” Nancy Pelosi. In the primary, Bernie sung his “friend” Joe Biden’s praises, only for Biden to trash Bernie’s platform in his general election campaign and brag that he “beat the socialist.” Since Biden took office Bernie has all but dropped Medicare for All as an

Build Back Better by... Taxing Billionaires? Is This Real?

Everyone please clap: President Biden has started to acknowledge the possibility that taxing the rich and corporations can help pay for things the working class desperately needs. Great. Now, is he going to put that acknowledgement into action?

Hm. We’ll see. Biden’s proposed federal infrastructure plan would cost $2.3 trillion over ten years. That means around $223 billion per year, a tiny fraction of the $1.62 trillion that America’s billionaires amassed last year alone. This was the same year we saw unemployment reach Great Depression levels. The same year food scarcity, rent debt, and coronavirus wreaked havoc in working and poor communities. The year U.S. billionaires’ accumulated wealth rose to $4.56 trillion was the same year half a million people in the U.S. died from COVID-19. So it’s only fair that Biden taxes these brutal, barbaric billionaires, right? To the point of oblivion? Er, not exactly. He proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to… 28%. Corporations that

are making off like literal bandits would be taxed just a few percentage points higher than many working people paying taxes this May.

3 Hours Later...

We need to issue a correction: that 28% was Joe Biden’s visionboard goal.

He’s now come back saying he’ll “compromise” with something like a 25% tax rate.

For comparison: 28% was still lower than pre-Trump days. This is the classic negotiation tactic Democrats use with Republicans. “Let’s not even try to win anything substantial, let’s make Republicans happy — after all, we can always say our hands were tied.” In the “heyday” of American capitalism, the corporate tax rate reached as high as 52.8% (in 1968). Imagine what would be possible if corporations actually paid that much in taxes in 2021. It would mean more funding for infrastructure, but also for housing, jobs programs, social services, and education. With the amount of money American billionaires made last year, we could’ve paid off all student loan debt in the U.S. So does the president need a new nickname? Hey, Joe “Lowballing” Biden: Something just isn’t adding up. J

STAY UP TO DATE WITH SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE @Socialist Alternative

/SocialistAlternativeUSA @SocialistAlt @socialistus /c/SocialistAlternative immediate demand, instead championing “Medicare for More” and lowering the age of eligibility for the program.

Numerous times, AOC has come out swinging against the left on behalf of the establishment, from her staunch opposition to “Force the Vote,” her characterizations of Biden critics as “privileged” and “bad faith actors,” and her defense of Biden’s concentration camps.

Organize the Working Class, Not the Democrats The Sinemas and Manchins of the party aren’t going anywhere. Neither are fossil fuels, Big Pharma, Silicon Valley, and real estate. By carrying out the fight within the halls of power instead of involving their mass

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of supporters, the Squad is passing up their most important tool to win.

The Squad’s aim should not be to gain the favor of their “colleagues” in the Democratic leadership like Pelosi, but to expose their role as opponents of the working class. If AOC took this kind of stance, and organized the Squad to do the same, hundreds of thousands of people would back her up.

But the Squad’s role should serve as a warning for democratic socialist candidates across the country running as Democrats, including those running for city councils and state legislatures. Far from being a neutral ‘ballot line’, Democratic Party affiliation has real consequences. It’s not enough to refuse

continued on p. 11 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

C L I M AT E

BIDEN’S INFRASTRUCTURE PACKAGE:

AN HOUR LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT Logan Swan, Ironworkers Local 86 (personal capacity) Devastating hurricanes whip the Southeast, floods sweep through Texas and the Midwest, and the smoke from massive West Coast wildfires cloud skies across the country. Every scientific update predicts a bleaker future within a shorter time frame, further underscoring the dramatic change needed and the inability of the capitalist system to provide it.

This is the context for Biden’s “transformational” $2.25 trillion infrastructure package, which is billed as “once in a generation” climate legislation. The dollar amount is spread across ten years so amounts to $225 billion per year which totally insufficient.

In reality, despite the impressive dollar amount and lofty goals it includes, like cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, his package amounts to a doubling down on the failed strategy of incentivizing big business to make a green transition.

Handout to the Businesses that Created the Climate Crisis Humans existed on earth for hundreds of thousands of years with a relatively stable climate; it is only since the industrial revolution and rise of capitalism that the climate crisis has escalated. As one example, just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

A section of big business is already preparing to make a slow transition to renewable energy without Biden’s help. His “incentives” are not driving Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft’s recent pledge to cut emissions to zero by 2040. They are moving in this direction because ecological disaster leads to economic devastation and their profits are on the line. A recent UN report found that if any company had to pay the cost of their environmental damage, not one of them would be profitable.

The pace of change is too slow however, because transitioning to net-zero emissions is itself capital intensive. And while some billionaires are starting the process now, others

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will simply refuse until fossil fuel use, air and freight travel, and other highly polluting behaviors are themselves unprofitable, a point that is far too late and spells absolute climate catastrophe.

In this context, adopting a strategy directed at motivating big business, rather than radically shifting away from any for-profit model, is completely backwards. Biden’s “transformational” approach to the climate hinges on the continuation of a profit-driven system which is incapable of addressing the climate change it’s created.

Spending Falls Short Beyond the question of handouts to big business, another real problem with this package is just how insufficient much of the investment is. Over 230,000 bridges need repair and 80,000 have reached the end of the projected “lifespan” factored into their initial construction. Biden hails his infrastructure plan as a “once in a lifetime investment,” signaling it as a one-off measure, yet it will only repair a mere 10,000 of these bridges that millions of us use every day.

While he allocates $66 billion to go toward water systems over the next ten years, Bluefield Research estimates that $68 billion is needed every year. $50 billion is proposed to go toward protecting against damage wrought by wildfires, rising sea levels, and hurricanes.

But, the cost of building sea walls for storm surge protection alone could cost up to $400 billion.

Biden’s Infrastructure in a Global Context Biden’s infrastructure spending is intended to boost the flagging competitive edge and economic supremacy of the United States as it’s challenged by Chinese production and technology. The Biden administration has openly and proudly acknowledged this fact.

The competition with China is reflected in the hundreds of billions which is proposed to be be funnelled into manufacturing, industry, and research & development. China has spent the last several years investing in domestic

production of semiconductors in an effort to reach “technological independence.”

This nationalist and increasingly hostile competition points in the opposite direction of the international collaboration required to resolve the numerous crises facing working class communities globally. The consequences of American deindustrialization through shifting manufacturing to exploit labor in places like China were enjoyed by American capitalists when it meant higher profits and undermining working conditions for the rest of us. Now that the chickens have come home to roost and Chinese capital is a growing competitor, the U.S. ruling class is turning away from globalization and wrapping itself in patriotism.

Who Pays and Who Benefits?

Biden initially proposed lifting the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, which is still well below pre-Trump levels, to pay for the bill. For context, when Obama left office, the corporate tax rate was 35%. Functional king of the Democratic Party Joe Manchin has suggested that 28% is far too high, and Senate Democrats have already conceded to raising it to simply 25%. This raise in the tax rate is so non-consequential to big business that Amazon has come out in favor of it.

At best big business is being asked to “share the bill.” But we should be very clear that as in all previous crises, the brunt of paying for all the stimulus measures of 2020 and 2021 will be put on the backs of the working class in years to come.

We Shouldn’t Accept Climate Change as Inevitable In Texas, the infrastructure failure that killed at least 57 people who were left without power during a winter storm was due to the privatization of critical public resources.

Similarly, profit-driven utility giant PG&E has been directly responsible for multiple wildfires that have ripped through California, killing hundreds and destroying more than 27,000 homes. As far as the environmental impact of the transportation investments in Biden’s plan, there is a real imbalance. Biden’s plan

Hurricane Sandy wracked the Northeast in 2012. includes substantial incentives for electric vehicles that amount to twice the amount allocated for public transit. This resembles a “green” corporate handout to automakers to subsidize their expensive electric vehicles.

What We Need Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and left Democrats have pushed to include Green New Deal legislation in Biden’s infrastructure spending.

The majority of their criticism of the administration’s initial proposal was saying it was too small, it needed to be scaled up. The question now is: what are these progressives willing to do to force a more radical set of proposals onto the agenda?

AOC recently told a town hall that Biden had “exceeded expectations” and that he’s demonstrated a real willingness to work with progressives. This is just the most recent depressing example of her providing left cover for his administration while doing nothing to push him to go further (see pg. 8). There is an opportunity for AOC and other progressives to launch a huge campaign to incorporate far-reaching climate proposals into Biden’s overall infrastructure proposal. Whether or not they pick this fight remains to be seen, though the signs are pointing toward another major concession to the establishment.

Ultimately what is needed to begin to address the climate crisis is two-fold. We need a far-reaching political program that includes bringing polluting industries into public ownership, retraining and guaranteeing high-quality union jobs to workers in these industries, large scale reforestation programs, historic expansion of mass transit, and investment in publicly funded research and development into new sustainable technologies. And we also need a political strategy to fight for this program. This means the creation of mass, democratic organizations of the working class which are not tied to either major political party. It’s only through an independent struggle of the working class and youth that we can win the rapid, farreaching change we need to wind down the race toward climate catastrophe. J

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I N T E R N AT I O N A L

SOLIDARITY AGAINST REPRESSION IN HONG KONG AND CHINA George Martin Fell Brown, Madison Since the mass struggles in Hong Kong in 2019 the dictatorship of Xi Jinping has responded with unprecedented repression. This is aimed at destroying the movement and preventing future mass struggles in Hong Kong and China.

In light of these attacks, International Socialist Alternative (ISA) is launching the campaign “Solidarity Against Repression in China and Hong Kong.”

In June 2020 Xi Jinping imposed a national security law in Hong Kong with draconian penalties. Charges of “subversion” and “separatism” can be punished by life imprisonment or even extradition to the mainland where the death penalty still applies for such offenses. Xi’s regime is simultaneously presiding over the most severe crackdown in China since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

A crucial part of this solidarity work is to highlight the case of Hong Kong’s imprisoned former legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung. Along with forty other candidates for the city’s now disbanded Legislative Council (LegCo) he is being held in prison charged with subversion under the new national security law.

“Long Hair” is the only representative of the left among the prominent leaders of the democracy movement. He has supported workers’ causes in China, Hong Kong, and internationally. He has supported women’s, LGBTQ, and refugee rights, and opposed U.S. imperialism.

On the mainland, the campaign has taken up the cause of feminists, such as Xiao Meili and Zheng Churan, who have been hounded by pro-CCP internet trolls and had their Weibo (China’s equivalent of Twitter) accounts suspended. This case highlights both the growing radicalization in Chinese society and the Xi regime’s moves to widen its crackdown on all potential opposition.

In the coming months Solidarity Against Repression in China and Hong Kong plans to coordinate a series of online meetings around the world. They’re in the process of producing a pack with leaflets, model trade union resolutions, and other campaign tools to build for solidarity actions.

The campaign seeks to build awareness of what’s really happening in Hong Kong. This is based on our interaction with workers, young socialists, and activists in China and Hong Kong. The campaign will fight for freedom for all political prisoners, but will draw attention to those who fight for workers’ rights and link the democratic struggle to a fight against capitalism and imperialism. J

10

COVID DISASTER WRACKS INDIA

Relatives grieve the loss of a loved one during a cremation in Jammu, India, April 25

MODI REGIME TO BLAME Rob Darakjian, Los Angeles India has become a gruesome epicenter of the global pandemic, surpassing the grim milestones of cases and deaths per day set by the U.S. Up until late March, India was regularly reporting 10,000 new cases a day, but at the beginning of April numbers started to skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands.

On April 27th, the health ministry announced 350,000 new cases for the previous day, marking the ninth day in a row of 250,000 or more new cases of coronavirus. Even these shocking numbers are a drastic underestimation. Journalists are reporting that numbers are being underreported under pressure from the reactionary BJP regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with crematorium workers being instructed to list the cause of death as “sickness” rather than “COVID.” In a recent New York Times article, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan estimated that the true death count may be two to five times higher than the 201,000 officially reported.

Healthcare System on the Verge of Collapse The Indian healthcare system, already ranked by the World Health Organization as one of the worst, is approaching complete collapse. It is now almost impossible to find a hospital bed. Oxygen supplies are at or near zero. Thousands of people are forced into a desperate struggle to find oxygen and hospital beds on the private market and even in underground “black markets,” and thousands more suffocate as they wait in line for treatment. The government has reinstated lockdowns, but without the economic aid needed to help people survive in place. Thousands are forced to migrate back to the rural parts of the country, potentially bringing the virus with them.

At crematoriums across the country, hundreds of bodies lay piled up, rotting, because they are unable to burn the bodies of the dead fast enough. In the capital, New Delhi, some have been running uninterrupted for so long that the iron grating has started to melt.

Without immediate action to respond to this rapid increase in infections, India could face potentially millions of deaths in the coming months.

Vaccine Nationalism and New Variants This continuing nightmare is partly a function of a new variant of the virus that has become the dominant strain in the country, accounting for 70% of new cases. It’s been dubbed “the double mutant” because it contains two genetic variations previously only found separately. One mutation allows the variant to bypass the body’s immune response more effectively, and the other makes it much more contagious.

However, the primary responsibility lies at the door of the Modi regime, with its reckless disregard for the threat to human life. With its close ties to billionaires and big business interests, the regime pulled back the restrictions that had been in place for the latter half of 2020. This was a stunning move, contrary to the recommendations from health experts globally. It is only explained by the fact that in nations with vast proportions of poverty-stricken informal-sector workers, the capitalist class and their political representatives were emboldened enough to prematurely open the economy to regenerate profits despite the grave public health risks that were posed.

Activists worldwide have been demanding for months that the World Trade Organization (WTO) immediately share the patents of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine patents, which appear to be more effective against new

#FreetheVaccine, #EndVaccineApartheid On April 26, Seattle City Council approved a resolution sponsored by Councilmember Kshama Sawant urging the Biden administration to support the waiver on Intellectual Property (IP) rights around COVID vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Currently, where and how many vaccines are produced is determined solely by the pharmaceutical firms. Unless Biden puts human lives above big pharma profits, millions around the world may not get vaccines until as late as 2024.

COVID outbreaks anywhere mean more infectious, deadly, and vaccine-resistant virus variants can develop. No one is safe until everyone is vaccinated. It took grassroots organizing pressure to pass the resolution in Seattle and it will take more actions of international solidarity to win global vaccine access. J variants, so that countries like India, Brazil, and South Africa can rapidly produce generic versions of the vaccine. Currently, billions in the global South do not have access to the vaccine, and public health experts say millions of lives could be lost without enabling generic vaccines. As a further indictment of capitalism, even this life-saving measure has been blocked by the U.S., the UK, and the EU who have veto power within the WTO. Democratic President Biden and others are protecting the profits of Moderna and Pfizer, over and against the lives of millions in India, and throughout the world. In addition to Big Pharma executives, bIllionaires like Bill Gates have vocally and fiercely opposed allowing generic vaccines. Activists fighting to end this vaccine apartheid have correctly called Gates out to be a “vaccine racketeer.”

What Must be Done Renewed lockdowns must be supplemented by economic relief to allow working people to stay at home. If these policies aren’t put in place, working people should move into action. In non-essential industries, workers should go on strike, if necessary, to ensure a sufficient lockdown, and demand regular payments to make it viable.

The Indian working class and poor must act to defeat the spread of the virus, and then get rid of one of its fundamental causes, the Modi regime itself! J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

C O N T I N U AT I O N S

100 DAYS OF BIDEN production back to the U.S. Additionally, one of Biden’s stated priorities over the coming months will be the “American Families Plan,” which is billed as an overall plan to revive the social safety net in the U.S. While details of the plan have yet to be released, it appears the focus will be on childcare and education. Troublingly, it will not include desperately needed healthcare reforms.

Notably, and further evidence that the ruling class is turning its back on neoliberalism, Biden proposes paying for these new plans with taxes on the rich and corporations.

Positive as it is that the rich are being asked to foot the bill, Biden’s loftiest suggestion is that the corporate tax rate be raised to 28%, which is still well below what the rate was when Trump took office. And before even reaching the steps of Congress, Biden and the rest of the establishment are already moving the goal post: they now say they’re willing to settle for just 25%.

A dramatic failure of the Biden administration in its early days has been their continuation of brutal conditions for immigrants and refugees at the southern border of the U.S. AOC has provided left cover for Biden by suggesting conditions at the border are better

continued from p.3 than they were under Trump. On a generous day this is barely true. Hundreds of minors remain crammed in cages, and more than 302,000 people have been deported just in Biden’s first 100 days. Biden has also proudly continued the Trump tradition of denying stimulus checks and COVID aid to the 10 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

We Need Long-Term Change The immense crisis facing American capitalism has forced Biden and the Democratic establishment to be much bolder in their promises to ordinary people. However, none of the Hail Marys they are currently throwing can solve the underlying rot in their system.

Short-term spending cannot resolve the mountains of personal debt people are on the hook for: as much as $70 billion in rental debt, over $80 billion in medical debt, and over $800 billion in credit card debt. It cannot resolve the tendency of capitalists to pour money into the out-of-control financial casino rather than productively invest, driving growth in low-wage, unproductive industries. It cannot resolve the mass closure of small businesses, which is accelerating even further the “Amazonization” of the economy. Nearly 100,000

UNION DRIVE AT AMAZON these structures can be mobilized to then win a first contract.

Amazon will ramp up retaliatory efforts in warehouses across the country in an attempt to prevent another Bessemer from happening. Given this, any organizing effort needs to be thoughtfully carried out. The priority for any campaign in its early stage should be to avoid tipping off management. This means not prematurely approaching the media and, crucially, not advertising the names of pro-union workers.

The logistics industry has grown immensely in recent decades. Under the pandemic, Amazon demand exploded as people were

THE SQUAD corporate cash and echo left-wing demands.

The main reason the most prominent figures on the left are now caught with their backs against the wall is the absence of a working class-centered political party. If progressive representatives and candidates, unions, and left organizations took steps to form an independent party, we would never have to deal with the DCCC again. Grassroots donations would belong to the movement, and which campaigns we support would be the product of democratic discussion. Most importantly, this would allow the left to break away from its abusive relationship with the Democrats and set our sights on our real goals.

The Coming Battles How far Biden will go in providing relief to working people has limits, and there is an M AY 2 0 2 1

businesses that closed down during the pandemic have now been shuttered entirely.

In an attempt to create some semblance of an economic rebound, the Biden administration has massively increased the federal debt in order to deliver cash infusions to ordinary people. However, with little prospect for an extended period of growth on the horizon, the bill for all this debt will inevitably be presented to working people at some point in the next period. If Biden were truly concerned with the needs of working people, he would spend his next 100 days fighting for Medicare for All, eliminating the filibuster to pass the PRO Act in full, increasing the corporate tax rate well above pre-Trump levels, eliminating student, rental, and medical debt for ordinary people, and introducing a genuine Green New Deal that includes taking polluting industries into public ownership.

But as a servant of capitalism above all else, Biden won’t do any of this. The diseased capitalist system will continue to be wracked by bigger and bigger crises, and socialists need to diligently prepare for the tremendous revolts against inequality, oppression, and climate catastrophe on the horizon. J

Bezos, This Is Just the Beginning Across the country, over a thousand Amazon workers have already reached out to unions about getting organized. The Teamsters say they have already talked to hundreds of workers in Amazon warehouses in Iowa about unionizing. Amazon may have cheated their way into defeating the union in Bessemer, but they can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

There is an urgent need for new layers of militant activists in existing unions and

unorganized workplaces to drive struggle from the shop floor and overcome decades of conservatism from labor leadership. It is the responsibility of labor leaders, union members, and socialists everywhere to educate and agitate not only against Amazon and the bosses’ lies, but for the type of workplace and world that is possible when we get organized and fight.

And not just at Amazon. Workers everywhere are suffering, and found hope in this inspiring union drive because they need a union too. While Amazon has the money, we have the people, and we’ll be stronger in the next round. Bezos, this is just the beginning. J

continued from p.8 inevitable reckoning coming which we need to prepare for now. If trillions can be spent on saving capitalism, why can’t trillions be spent on healthcare, housing, and debt cancellation?

There is a big opportunity to do this around the first of Biden’s infrastructure plans which is billed as “sweeping” climate legislation.

AOC, Bernie, and Ed Markey have reintroduced Green New Deal legislation in the form of two bills. It is extremely positive to see progressives putting this forward.

It will be crucial that they not only present these as stand-alone bills, which would doom them to sudden death-by-filibuster, but aggressively campaign to incorporate them into Biden’s infrastructure package. This will give them more leverage as they can threaten to hold up Biden’s priorities unless the

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

EDITOR: Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Rebecca Green, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon

Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

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IN YOUR AREA MID-ATLANTIC

continued from p.4

forced to rely more on their delivery services.

The ongoing effort to organize this industry will have historic consequences.

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE

establishment incorporates their demands. We must resume tactics like in 2018, when AOC occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office alongside the Sunrise Movement to demand the Green New Deal’s passage, along with climate strikes.

Winning substantive change will not only bring the left up against the Democrats and Republicans, but against capitalism. Progressive politics are a step in the right direction from decades of neoliberalism, but as long as the system survives, the billionaire class holds countless tools at their disposal to stamp out the working class’ ambitions. Only socialism presents an alternative to the corruption, crises, and rot at the heart of the system. We urgently need to build organization and leadership from the ground up not only to overpower the obstacles ahead, but to open the door to a better world. J

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11

SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

Rob Rooke, Oakland

everything, including the approach of the president and senators.

The growth of unions lead to major gains in the ‘30s and after the war but was followed by a long decline. A decisive turning point came in the ‘80s, especially with Reagan’s smashing of the air traffic controllers’ union (PATCO). At that time, the bosses waged a head-on war against unions — aided by Democrats and Republicans alike — using wage cuts and workplace lockouts. Union members fought this process through mass demonstrations and long, drawn-out strikes.

However, the union leaders failed to match this courage. They drew the wrong conclusions: accepting neoliberal arguments that there was no alternative to capitalism, cooperating with employers, and moving against the power of members by dismantling shopsteward infrastructures and limiting union democracy.

In the last 30 years, the percentage of workers in unions has halved and the wealth of the 1% has doubled. Escalating inequality has definitely raised support for unions, but the hurdle to joining one is not simply employer terror. The top-down methods adopted by union leaders are not an inspiring model for workers who want to shape their workplaces. Additionally, the wider effect of being unorganized for decades on worker consciousness will take time to overcome, but can change rapidly in the wake of a victory.

ISSUE #73 l MAY 2021

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Rob Rooke is a former Local 713 Recording Secretary and Northern California Regional Council Delegate of the Carpenter.

On May 1, millions of workers around the world will celebrate International Workers’ Day and the huge economic and social gains won by the labor movement. Today, dissatisfaction with the workplace is a key driver in 65% of Americans now supporting unions — the highest percentage of support in decades.

In this context, President Biden has encouraged the Senate to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The PRO Act — the most progressive union legislation in 75 years — passed in the House and now goes to the Senate. However, Chuck Schumer poured some cold water on this by telling the AFL-CIO that the PRO Act could go to a floor vote in the Senate, but only when 50 senators sign on as cosponsors.

Winning a Game Changer Richard Trumka, president of the AFLCIO union federation, calls the PRO Act a “game changer.” Solidarity strikes to support other workers would become legal. Employer coercion against workers organizing unions would be dramatically curbed. Workers covered by union contracts could no longer opt out of paying union dues. Gig workers could unionize.

Credit is due to the Democratic Socialists of America in particular for making the PRO

Act a priority and mobilizing an impressive phone-banking initiative. Now, 47 senators and the vice president have expressed support for the PRO Act. However, it remains almost guaranteed that, once on the Senate floor, the bill’s opponents will use the reactionary filibuster rule to force a two-thirds vote. On top of this, even some of the bill’s “cosponsors,” like Joe Manchin, cannot be trusted. He will, without question, act as a block on the PRO Act’s ultimate passage and we should give him absolutely no cover to claim he “supports’’ it.

The Democratic Party is a party of big business, funded by corporate interests that are diametrically opposed to strong unions. They have a long history of offering promises to labor but burying them when elected. Passing any significant, pro-working-class legislation through the Senate will require holding their feet to the fire.

Mass Movements and the 1930s In the 1930s, the Senate — even while dominated by right-wing, racist, Southern Democrats — passed federal laws for social security, unemployment benefits, workers’ compensation, and the National Labor Relations Act. At the start of the 1930s, the old union leaders had not put up a fight against wage cuts, opposed organizing unskilled workers, and did nothing to change rules that blocked Black workers from joining certain unions.

They opposed building a Labor Party, leading them into the mire of lobbying. But it was the huge labor uprising of 1934 that shifted

MOBILIZE: PASS THE PRO ACT

Building Unions for Our Time If passed, the PRO Act could be an incredible lever for union resurgence. Unions are

popular because they spell higher pay and more job security while weakening bosses’ power to discriminate and terrorize workers.

The passage of the PRO Act in full will only be possible through a massive mobilization of working people.

Unions represent 16 million workers in almost all industries. A campaign for these workers to reach out to the hundred million workers who still need a union to talk up both unionization and the PRO Act could pave the way for a surge in union drives. The Democratic establishment will hide behind procedural nonsense to justify inaction, and we need to be armed with a strategy that can overcome these obstacles.

The DSA has launched a phone-banking campaign where they are urging individuals to call their senators and demand they cosponsor the PRO Act. This is a limited strategy in that it does not guarantee that those senators will vote for the bill, nor does it demand support from enough senators to guarantee its passage. In addition to phone banking, we need a bold class-struggle strategy to win the PRO Act, including unions mobilizing their members into action to fill the streets, occupying legislators’ offices, and signing people up to join forces with the labor movement.

The teacher strikes and the key role in the pandemic of nurses and grocery workers are clear signs of the potential power we have as workers. A mass mobilization of the labor movement would align with the deep, growing anger at inequality and injustice in this country. J