Socialist Alternative Issue 83 – May 2022

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INSIDE HOW TO STOP THE RIGHT WAR IN UKRAINE STRIKES AT STARBUCKS

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WHAT WE STAND FOR Fight Gender Oppression and Attacks on Bodily Autonomy!

Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement!

• As the Supreme Court nears a decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which would overturn Roe v. Wade, we need a new mass women’s movement on the scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. This includes marches, protests, occupations, and direct action to win full reproductive rights. No trust in the courts!

• Fight for free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a broad program for women’s reproductive health.

• We need a robust fightback against the brutal anti-trans legislation and all rightwing attacks on LGBTQ people, including organized noncompliance among workers imposed with enforcing these bigoted laws.

• Stop the attacks on queer youth! We need a robust fightback against the brutal antitrans legislation and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people.

• The women’s and LGBTQ movements need to unite on the basis of a broad struggle against gender oppression in all its forms.

• Fighting gender oppression means fighting for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproductive justice including universal childcare and climate action to ensure a healthy planet for the next generation, high-quality public housing, fully-funded public education safe from discrimination, and and Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.

• Building off the historic union victory at Amazon in New York and the ongoing Starbucks organizing drive, we need mass campaigns to unionize the millions of non-union workers in the U.S. • We need to build and rebuild radical fighting unions that are fully democratic and driven by the active participation of rank and file workers.

• Especially as prices for energy, food, housing and other necessities are skyrocketing, we need a united struggle across industries for wage increases that are above the rate of inflation.

• We need accountable leadership in the labor movement. As is modeled in the Amazon Labor Union constitution, union leaders across all unions should accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should answer first and foremost to their membership and the broader working class. This means being willing to use every tool at our disposal, including militant strikes, to win our demands.

• As thousands of workers are winning union recognition for the first time, it is critical that unions fight to win strong contracts.

This means using our power outside the bargaining room with walkouts, pickets, rallies, and strike action; and campaigning around clear demands that raise living standards and working conditions on the shop floor and inspire workers elsewhere to join the fight.

• Unions should take up the broader issues facing the working class and mount a struggle against evictions, poverty, racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.

No to Imperialist Wars!

• Socialist Alternative sends our full solidarity to the working people of Ukraine who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, and growing poverty conditions, and now face the horror of war and bloodshed.

• No to war in Ukraine! Ukrainians should have the right to decide their own future, including the right of national self-determination and self-determination for minority groups.

• Workers in the U.S. can have no confidence in warmonger Biden who cares nothing for the Ukrainian people but whose democratic rhetoric is a cover for corporate interests.

• De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from Eastern Europe.

• Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders!

• Only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win lasting peace and stability for the working masses around the world.

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Expand the Social Safety Net! • With inflation eating away at our paychecks, we need a movement from below to push back against the corporate interests that dominate establishment politics.

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

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

Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free. Enact a federal minimum wage of at least $15 which would result in improved pay for all workers.

• We need an immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains and Big Pharma 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 hundreds of thousands of new educators and support staff to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

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

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Andrew Lin, Columbus I became politically active during the Occupy movement in 2011, feeling a desire to fight back against the vast inequality that exists between the wealthiest 1% and the vast majority of ordinary, working class people. The Occupy movement taught me the importance of mass demonstrations as a means of creating political change, but its lack of organization and effective strategy ultimately meant that the movement was reduced to trying to keep tent cities populated with activists. I watched as a movement I spent a lot of time and energy supporting just petered out over time, unable to secure real change. I knew engaging in movements could challenge the system more effectively than voting for corporate politicians, but I wasn’t sure what was missing.

In 2017, I attended a mass demonstration against Trump’s Muslim ban that Socialist Alternative had organized, and decided to join shortly after. As someone who has experienced racism, I felt I had to join an organization that would consistently fight back against Trump’s xenophobic, racist rhetoric. I discovered that Socialist

Alternative had what I was looking for since 2011– a fighting strategy for defeating the billionaire class and systemic oppression.

Since joining, I have realized the importance of having truly democratic structures that allow us to make decisions effectively and move into action together, and an effective strategy for putting real pressure on the ruling class and fighting for change.

This includes building mass movements that use the power of ordinary workers, like teachers, nurses, flight attendants, and warehouse workers, to fight for an alternative to our broken, profit-driven system.

End the COVID Chaos

For a Socialist Green New Deal

• As new variants continue to emerge across the globe, it’s abundantly clear that capitalist world leaders have failed to contain this crisis. We need a People’s Plan to end the COVID chaos!

• Lift patent protections on all COVID vaccines. This would remove a key obstacle to poor countries manufacturing them at home. It would also make publicly available the science and technology behind these life-saving vaccines.

• We need to take Big Pharma profiteers into public ownership and turn existing vaccines into the People’s Vaccines!

• We need an ongoing infrastructure to cope with COVID in instances where it flares up.

This includes free, easily accessible tests available in every community across the country.

• We need a genuine Green New Deal jobs program that provides well-paid union jobs for millions of workers expanding green infrastructure.

• We need to build an international environmental struggle led by the global working class and youth fighting for an immediate end to the use of fossil fuels and a 100% transition to green energy.

• This can only be accomplished by taking the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership. We need a democratically planned economy here and around the world to carry out the transformation necessary to avoid climate disaster.

A New Political Party for Working People

• Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks.

• 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.

• The complete failure of the Biden administration to make good on campaign promises to expand the social safety net and begin to address climate change is opening the door again to the right and the far right, and exposes the dire need for a new working class political party not beholden to big business interests.

• 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 lead the fight against the right and 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.

A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in)Justice

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.

S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

HOW TO STOP THE RIGHT Grace Fors, Dallas

In the run-up to the midterms, Democrats are facing the music as the country prepares for a Republican sweep, putting the final nail in the coffin of a short-lived blue trifecta.

In some ways, it’s as if it already happened. Biden’s first year in office was a historic year of attacks from the right. Families of trans children in Texas are under state investigation for charges of “child abuse,” and a woman accused of self-induced abortion was jailed for second-degree murder.

Months before the Supreme Court hears the Dobbs case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision was already effectively null for one in ten U.S. women of reproductive age. In Florida, it’s legal to run a car into a crowd of protesters but illegal to discuss gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. The reliability of the courts to block these cruel measures has only declined, and the Democrats have done virtually nothing.

Now would be the time for the Democrats to meet the right-wing threat head-on and put up a real fight. Instead, they’re sulking and waiting to wash their hands of the stressful burden of governing.

How GOP Takeovers Happen Obama ran on an empty promise of “hope and change” only to re-enter wars he pledged to end, start new ones, and bail out Wall Street while ordinary Americans barely recovered from the 2008 recession. This produced an earlier iteration of Trumpism in the form of the Tea Party. Then, resulting frustration, anger, and disillusionment delivered Trump on the back of anti-establishment sentiment and anger at the status quo.

Millions of working people who opposed Trump’s brutality were drawn toward Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign for president. The dynamic around his candidacy was electric, with over a million people signing up to volunteer. After the Democrats came together to crush Bernie’s momentum, his supporters were told by both the establishment and Bernie himself that their only option to defeat Trump was to line up behind Joe Biden.

Biden started his presidency with a honeymoon, spurred by mass vaccinations and wins like the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure bill. With all the crises that have hit in the meantime from COVID variants to APRIL 2022

record inflation, the honeymoon feels like a lifetime ago, and it’s not hard to see where things go from here.

Republican captures start with the Democrats’ failures, who in turn gain some ground back on backlash to Republicans. We rarely manage to make any real steps forward to benefit ordinary people – and so goes the strange loop of “lesser-evilism.”

We predicted that Trumpism could persist and even grow under a Biden presidency that failed to address the crises facing U.S. capitalism. Now the extent of this growth and the danger it continues to pose is being revealed.

Trump himself is intervening aggressively in the midterm elections and has endorsed nearly 130 candidates for 2022. While Trump’s initial victory was not itself a direct indication of Americans moving to the right, his movement has attracted and energized a base of Christian nationalists, anti-vaxxers, Qanon believers, and “stop the steal” crusaders who are ready to go to war for their agenda.

New far-right darlings like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz have taken the reins as Republicans’ biggest influencers and fundraisers. The Anti-Defamation League categorized over 100 candidates running for office this year as far-right extremists, with more candidates than ever having open associations to the organized far-right via the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

The likes of Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney enjoy new status as personas non grata in this new landscape. Republicans who condemned the January 6 coup attempt have been all but shunned from the public eye, with 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment now retiring. They’ve read the writing on the wall: cocktail party country-club Republicanism is out; noisy, supercharged, and outraged Republican “activism” is in.

These are the forces poised to gain major ground across the country come November.

Big business will throw money at whoever they think will win and return the favor – and sure enough, a year after January 6 scared many corporations into backing off PAC donations to the biggest liabilities to their public image, corporate cash is making its way back into “Stop the Steal” Republicans’ pockets. It’s always been a one-party system for corporate America.

EDITORIAL

What Will the Democrats Campaign On? Well, they definitely can’t use “Build Back Better” anymore since the spending package jam-packed with enormously popular relief measures went belly-up thanks to their own party infighting. Sensing this, the establishment may test their luck with straight-up gaslighting.

In a White House meeting of the party leadership to hammer out a midterm strategy, Nancy Pelosi threw up the slogan “Democrats Deliver.” They insist the economy is great because employment is up, while people are bleeding out cash to pay for food and gas. The New York Times claims Biden’s track record is full of victories that are simply too “modest,” “technocratically elegant,” and “submerged” for ordinary people to understand.

For working people, the choice is between Republicans versus their primary enablers. What does the Democratic Party even stand for? They’re the party of “We want good things, if only it weren’t for that darn [Manchin/Sinema/filibuster/Senate parliamentarian/Putin]!”

Democratic leaders’ own rhetoric has shifted to the right, focusing on defense spending, “law and order” policing, and deficit reduction. The Utah Democratic Party voted to endorse an anti-abortion, anti-gay, former CIA and GOP staffer and independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin to go up against Trump Republican Mike Lee, rather than put forward their own nominee.

Democrats’ tried-and-true strategy is to make concessions to their right rather than risk empowering their left.

And what about their left? Progressives in the House had real opportunities throughout 2021 to push for gains for the working class in the immediate aftermath of the devastating impact of 2020. But their short-lived stand to force Build Back Better ended in surrender to the party establishment. The Squad and Bernie Sanders’ increasingly pliable approach in the halls of Congress has allowed the left flank to be dragged along the Democrats’ rightward march. The Democratic consultant class has already come out swinging against progressive demands, the familiar tune that “radical” slogans like student debt cancellation and ending racist policing are totally unwinnable. The left will once again have to tire itself out insisting progressive demands win elections – but these efforts will once again have no substantial impact on the party’s strategy.

midterms to mobilize right-wing vigilantism to the polls in key states.

The Democrats seem to be fine with things the way they are. But as we can see from the upsurge in labor struggle, walkouts for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, and the BLM uprising which became the largest protest movement in U.S. history not two years ago, millions of us are not. We can’t resign ourselves to going down with the Democrats’ sinking ship. The right-wing gains from Biden’s presidency should tell us more than anything that change is not decided by who’s in office, but who is organized and willing to fight for their demands.

The right-wing growth that poses a real danger to our lives could be stopped in its tracks with the right strategy: provide a left alternative to address concerns of working people who would otherwise be captured by the right, restore confidence of the left and young people, and activate the millions of working people who see no ally in either corporate party.

The situation is ripe for renewed efforts to establish an independent party for the left and working people. Continuing to place our faith in the Democratic Party of political cowards and right-wing enablers to point the way out is nothing but a trap set by those who’d rather see things continue along this path than risk a threat to the status quo. They will not build a grassroots reproductive rights movement in this country to demand free abortion on demand. They fear that using their positions to empower a working class movement for trans rights might do more than just beat back the bigoted attacks, but fight for quality trans healthcare through Medicare for All. Mobilizing young people would require engaging their most urgent demands, but this could in turn put student debt cancellation and serious climate action on the agenda even more sharply which is a risk the establishment is not willing to take.

These movements, which are being held back by the Democratic Party’s opposition, can form the basis for independent politics.

Neither party promises anything but despair for working people. The crisis of disillusionment is a crisis of capitalism. Missed opportunities from the left to build a movement against capitalism create openings for the right, and working people, whose problems will ultimately not be solved by rightwing leadership, pay the price. Workers getting organized at Starbucks and Amazon are showing there has never been a better time for working people to take control of our future. J

How the Right Can Be Beat Here’s why the right is winning battles: they fight like hell. They’ve been packing school boards and statehouses.

Their representatives stage walkouts and noisily dissent from their party leadership to force concessions.

Trump vowed to call for “the biggest protests we have ever had” in cities across the country if January 6 conspirators were prosecuted.

The Trump-allied Conservative Partnership Institute is holding “election integrity” summits across the country in the run-up to the

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FIGHTING FOR A UNION

UNIONIZE AMAZON For two weeks as Amazon workers at Staten Island sorting center LDJ5 geared up to vote on whether to unionize with Amazon Labor Union, Socialist Alternative was a constant presence at the facility’s entrance.

Our members in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) went out to Staten Island at 5:00am almost every day before school to talk to workers about the benefits of being in a union.

Our members who work at Starbucks visited LDJ5 to send solidarity from their own struggle for a union.

Our socialist city councilmember from Seattle, Kshama Sawant, visited Staten Island to speak to LDJ5 workers the day before voting began. As a representative of working

people, Kshama only takes home $40,000 out of her six figure salary and donates the rest to labor and social movement struggles.

In her speech to Amazon workers, she announced that out of this money she would donate $20,000 to the ALU. Socialist Alternative sees the struggle to unionize Amazon as one of the most important things happening in the country right now and we will do everything we can do support workers across the country taking on this mega corporation.

You can read the letter (right) that Socialist Alternative members passed out to Amazon workers at the April 24 rally. In it, we draw out key lessons we think need to be learned from the historic victory at JFK8. J

THE BATTLE FOR LDJ5: A Letter from Kshama Sawant to Amazon Workers Brothers, sisters, siblings,

fight: to tax Amazon to fund perma- wareh ouses across the country and nently affordable housing. We have the world will mean holding true to twice beat Amazon in Seattle: when these three key methods. The battle they attempted to buy the elections to union ize Amazon, the second largin 2019, spending unprecedented est privat e employer in the country, As you PAC money, and again in winning the can’t be won witho ut a transformation near your Amaz on Tax. of the existing labor movement. election at Our victories and your victory here The working class deserves leadLDJ5, I show that this behe moth of a corpora- ership prepared to seize am send- tion can this moment. be beat: if we organize work- Unions that are truly democratic and ing soli- ing peop le to fight. organized on the principle of class darity from Amazon has now lost to work- struggle.

Amazon’s backyard in Seattle. The Where our leaders come moment you succeeded in unionizing ing people in both Seattle and right from the ranks of the workers and the country’s first Amazon facility, it here on Staten Island. This is not a are held accountable to those ranks. sent a shockwave around the world. It coincidence. In both places, Amazon The labor movement we need has to is no doubt true that this struck fear found itself up against an opponent be prepared to confront the bosses – into the minds of every single Amazon that had clear demands, that relent- especially bosses like Jeff Bezos. We executive, from Jeff Bezos on down. lessly organized working class people, cannot be afraid of bold demands or But far more importantly, it has lit a and an opponent who knew that there strikes. fire underneath every Amazon worker can be no true “partnership” between We need a labor movement prewho has worked too many hours for a mega billionaire like Jeff Bezos and pared to cut all ties with the Demotoo little pay. Every worker who has the workers he exploits. cratic Party establishment, which has The ALU campaign at JFK8 bore back stepp been denied a full-time position, ed from all their promises who’s been stripped of their “hero no resemblance to the conventional to working people when they took pay,” who’s been ruthlessly surveilled unionization campaigns or contract office. They promised to fight for and monitored by managers. The 1.1 battles we’ve seen over the past PRO Act, to cancel student debt, to million Amazon workers across this several decades under the existing build new infrastructure with union country who made Jeff Bezos his leadership of the unions. Campaigns jobs and a nationwide $15/hr miniwhere the union timidly seeks peace mum billions. wage. with the boss.

While we made history by winning We need leaders committed to As we get ready for the most cru- building the first battle at JFK8, the war is just a new political party for beginning. Those of you who were cial days in the battle at LDJ5 this working people in this country. One victorious at JFK8, and those gearing week, and the many more battles to that does not collude with union up for the battle at LDJ5, have seen come at Amazon facilities across the busting firms, that is free of corpofirst hand the lengths this megacor- country, we need to be crystal clear rate cash, that fights unapologetically poration will go to defeat you. There on exactly why we won. with working class people on the shop Amazon’s brutal working condi- floor and is no attack too low for them. in the streets.

It is certain that among this crowd tions made it ripe for a union strugAs the Teamsters gear up for their are some of the hundreds of union gle. But there are three key things the own campaign to unionize Amazon, busting agents Amazon has flown in ALU did that brought this union drive they will need to replicate the stratto crush the ALU. The floor at LDJ5 to victory, and every union across the egy that won at JFK8. They, and has been crawling with union busters country and the world should take every other major union, will need to in disguise as your coworkers. People note. throw their enormous weight, includThe campaign was organized ing financial paid thousands of dollars a day to reserves, behind the around a set of clear, con- campaign to convince you that this company will unionize Amazon. crete, material demands. $30/ protect you. Do you feel protected?

This is a new day for the working hour starti ng pay for workers, real class. The millio Can you survive on $18.25? Do you ns of Americans that feel you deserve to work for years paid time off, longer breaks, an end were called “heroes” in 2020 are to broad mandatory overtime. These now without a raise or promotion? being crushed by skyrocketing dema nds were not picked out of thin gas prices As an independent, socialist city and historically low wages. council member in Amazon’s home- air. They were born out of conversa- Rather than laying down and accepttown of Seattle I found myself, and tions between coworkers in the break ing that this is what we deserve, my organization Socialist Alternative, rooms and on the bus. workers are fighting back.

The campaign involved meticuat the top of Amazon’s “most wanted” We are fighting for a union, and lous and relentless shop-floor we are takin list. The second we took office in g this fight directly to organizing. The strategy and the bosses that 2014 we launched a battle for the oversee a completely country’s first $15/hr. minimum wage tactics of the campaign were deter- brutal system. A system based on in a major city. Six months later, we mined by the people most famil- exploitation, a system based on won – and we did it by systematic, all- iar with the needs of the workers at racism and sexism and division. The JFK8: the workers themselves. out class struggle. fight for a union has to be part of a ALU made clear from day one fight against Many of my colleagues on the City the whole rotten capitalthat the fight for a union would ist system.

Council hoped that at some point put them in direct conflict with we’d do what they did: call a truce with big business and tell the work- Amazon. There would be no peaceful Solidarity! ing class people in my district to pack partnership between the workers and it in and go home. Well, rather than the billionaire executives whose needs that, we moved right on to the next are at complete odds.

Exporting the victory at JFK8 to

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S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

HOW TO UNIONIZE AMAZON: LESSONS FROM NEW YORK AND ALABAMA James Graham, Pittsburgh Amazon workers in Staten Island have delivered a stunning blow against the megacorporation with the victory of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a historic breakthrough for the U.S. working class that could well open the door to a new era of widespread unionization and workplace action. They’ve proven that Amazon can be beaten, something that many began to cynically conclude was impossible after the defeat of the first major Amazon unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama one year ago.

Amazon won by an overwhelming 1000 votes in that election, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered a re-do of it given the public pressure and outcry over Amazon’s many legal violations. While the final result of the second election is not yet clear because of a large number of challenged ballots, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) is down by 118 votes this time around – a much better result, but a likely loss.

Meanwhile, ALU in New York City won decisively by over 500 votes at the JFK8 facility of roughly the same size. What’s behind the different results? The answer lies in the two fundamentally different organizing approaches taken by the two unions. RWDSU ran a fairly conventional staffer-driven campaign similar to ones we’ve commonly seen in recent years. Meanwhile, ALU ran a workerled campaign centered on clear demands and militant shop floor organizing, breaking with the approach used by most unions today.

By engaging in brutal and illegal unionbusting tactics, Amazon behaves like all corporations do but backed by nearly limitless wealth and resources. This is ultimately the reason why Amazon won in Alabama, but it’s vital that the labor movement draw the right lessons of why ALU succeeded in building a campaign that could withstand Amazon’s assault when so many others have failed.

RWDSU in Alabama: A Conventional Campaign With Little Worker Involvement The first union drive in Alabama began in 2020 when a group of workers heroically began organizing against the Goliath APRIL 2022

of Amazon at the Bessemer warehouse and approached RWDSU. To their credit, RWDSU took it on when many other unions would have decided that it was impossible or too much work, and began organizing the “BAmazon” campaign.

They were outside the gates of the facility around the clock with a mix of union staffers, RWDSU members from neighboring poultry plants, and Amazon workers. Through this they were able to collect union cards from the 30% of the workforce which is the legal minimum for being able to file for a union election, but they never moved much beyond the gates for the remainder of the campaign.

The drive became increasingly driven by the RWDSU’s professional staffers, dozens of whom were eventually on the ground doing shifts at the gates and making tens of thousands of phone calls to workers. The RWDSU staff and leadership were the ones responsible for all major decision-making during the drive.

Having union staff is not at all a universally bad thing. In fact, in the case of Amazon it will likely be necessary in order to spread the union victories beyond Staten Island. What is crucial though is that union staff does not become a substitute for the workers themselves. They should ideally come from the ranks of the workers and should be democratically accountable to the structures of the union.

RWDSU came to rely heavily on national media attention, celebrity endorsements, and statements from politicians. This sort of media campaign is positive and helps build the wider support in society which is important for winning a union. Unfortunately though, they neglected to build the kind of organizing committee of workers which was necessary for taking the fight directly into the warehouse on each shift to democratically discuss and decide on tactics and strategy. Workers in the facility were not encouraged to build out a wider workers’ committee reflecting a flawed conception of “worker leadership” which is prevalent among labor leaderships far beyond the RWDSU. All of this spelled disaster when faced with Amazon’s sophisticated union-busting tactics.

The RWDSU campaign also lacked strong and clear demands, relying instead on platitudes like “respect at work” and a “voice on the job.” Union-busting consultants seize on

FIGHTING FOR A UNION this kind of vague messaging to claim the union has no clear goals beyond collecting dues, while pointing to meaningless HR initiatives as alternatives to the union. Unfortunately, many conservative labor leaders also avoid making clear demands in hopes of winning an easy contract without much of a fight. In Alabama, some RWDSU organizers openly talked about avoiding making “promises the union can’t keep,” something commonly heard in other union

drives as well.

Fundamentally, this indicates a lack of confidence in workers to actually fight for and win bold demands like specific higher wages, more paid time off, and more. By not speaking directly to workers’ material interests, the union left the door wide open for Amazon to make an economic case. The company constantly emphasized how their starting wage of $15 was higher than any other comparable job in the area while whipping up fear and uncertainty that workers might lose what they already had in an eventual contract.

RWDSU ultimately lost to Amazon by an overwhelming 1798-738, but closed the

gap significantly during the second election where they are currently down 993-875, pending resolution of several hundred challenged ballots.

RWDSU did make some significant changes to their organizing approach the second time around. They put far less emphasis on celebrity and politician endorsements and more on those from workers, as can be seen on their Instagram page. They did house visits, which they rejected last time but are an important tool for talking to workers who are hard to reach through other means, although these were done with an army of dozens of staffers from multiple different unions and not primarily by workers themselves. What was still missing this time around were the most important things: a strong worker-led organizing committee and a campaign centered on clear demands.

ALU in New York City: WorkerLed With Clear Demands The ALU was born just weeks after the first defeat in Alabama. Recognizing the weaknesses of the RWDSU campaign and the approach of most major unions that it was representative of, the ALU consciously established itself as a new union that would be led by workers themselves. Starting off with a small group of workers including

continued on p.15 Gerald, founding member of ALU, speaks at rally after JFK8 victory in April.

RWDSU organizers outside the gates at BHM1 last year.

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ECONOMY

RISING PRICES HIT YOUNG WORKERS HARDEST Rob Rooke, Bay Area

WAR, INFLATION, AND THE WORLD WE REALLY NEED

Millions of retirees on fixed incomes are panicking. Young people stuck in low-paid jobs are stressed, and working-class families are anxious. And the gas pump prices keep ticking up and up.

“Everything is suddenly super expensive,” says Hannah, a young restaurant server in Oakland, California. “Filling up my car is almost twice as expensive. I avoid going anywhere but work, because I can’t afford it.”

Turning on her radio, she’ll hear NPR echoing the establishment’s idea that price hikes are simply supply and demand, that no one is price gouging. To her and many others, it doesn’t feel that way.

While the pandemic supply chain crisis and the lockdown in China are contributing to inflation, primarily, it’s the war in Ukraine that’s on everyone’s minds. Russia is a major oil and natural gas producer, and any product that needs to be transported is affected by skyrocketing fuel prices.

Rising prices to one person are an extra dollar to another. The U.S.-backed Saudi dictatorship is sitting tight, enjoying the moment of record high oil prices. Villainous executives at Chevron and Exxon Mobil are emboldened, giving the Green movement their middle finger and counting their billions in increased revenue.

Gas pump prices are up 48% in one year and 70% since Biden took office. Like all corporate politicians, Biden is more concerned with a midterm massacre of Democrat incumbents than with the enormous humanitarian crisis created by rising gas and food prices, although they are related.

Instead of taking resolute action against Big Oil, such as temporary public control over them or even nationalization, Biden is begging

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them to frack, frack, and frack more to increase supply.

For decades, both capitalist parties have refused to take the kind of massive green infrastructure program that could have helped save us from this moment. President Biden has instead waived the ban on smogproducing ethanol content in gasoline – a move that Trump tried, but failed.

The bosses’ MO is that war is a crisis that has to be paid for by the working class: either in body bags or out of our pockets.

greatest debts.

Prices are already out of control in countries like Ethiopia (33%), Argentina (52%), and Turkey (61%). The U.S. as the dominant world banker has been safe so far. As home to the world’s dominant currency, its Federal Reserve can print cash to pump into its stock markets: the S&P 500 rose 27% in the last year. The party of profitinflation continues.

Workers in the U.S. who were barely getting by on their low pay won’t be getting by for much longer. The money leftover from rents and student debts are now being spent at the gas station or the grocery store. The long pandemic lines at food banks may well be returning. Some 43% of Americans have already experienced significant hardship as a result of increased prices, according to an Emerson College Poll cited in The Hill.

Hannah, in the richest country in the history of the world, says talk among her coworkers touches on the question of food.

“As ridiculous as it sounds, strawberries and avocados are luxuries beyond people’s reach,” she said. “Highly processed foods last longer and are more filling, but those prices are going up too. It’s an income problem, more than a price problem: people just don’t get enough income.” This will have been the thinking of Amazon workers and Starbucks workers as they move towards unions, to give themselves a collective defense against the boss and rising prices.

As Biden does every acrobatic trick he can to a t te m p t

to placate voters while keeping Big Oil happy, his approval ratings continue to decline. As the Ukraine war goes on and workers suffer more, contracts for arms manufacturers and Big Oil are going through the roof. One industry kills us at gunpoint and the other through climate change. This is the real problem: an economic system owned by the rich that serves the rich, where resources chase profits and the needs of workers always come last.

“As ridiculous as it sounds, strawberries and avocados are luxuries beyond people’s reach.”

The supply of bullshit to justify capitalism is endless; and the demand for change is huge. The US had price controls during its last two major wars. We need unions to help us fight at the workplace and a Party for Working People to fight for the legislation we need. We need to turn this situation around and to turn the world over, so that no one dies of starvation because they can’t afford the food that’s right there in front of them. J

Global Food Crisis Hits Home Globally, the war is creating an acute shortage of grains. This adds to the rising cost of food from oil price hikes through increased cost of transportation and fertilizer. The rise in world food prices in April are expected to top the March figure of a 34% jump, making it the fourth month of record global food hikes.

As ever, when capitalist crises hit, the poorer you are the worse you will be hit.

Poorer nations’ trade is overseen by the International Monetary Fund, the global loan shark. Through imposing indebtedness to rich countries, the IMF enforces its agricultural policies worldwide. Poorer nations are encouraged away from their traditional diverse farm crops towards concentrating on narrow cash crops for the world market to facilitate loan repayments. This makes them highly vulnerable to shocks in the global food market. Many Middle Eastern and African countries are expected to run out of affordable grain in the coming weeks. And if their main cash crop is coffee, palm oil, or cotton, they cannot just eat that.

Inflation is rushing around the world, exploding in the poorest countries with the

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ECONOMY between the U.S. and China were $30 billion per year five years ago. Now they are down to $5 billion. The U.S. banned Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from government contracts and then pushed hard for its “allies” to keep Huawei out of the construction of 5G networks.

The new Cold War and deglobalization have certainly been accelerated by the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine. The pandemic dramatically showed the vulnerabilities of vast global supply chains. Both the Chinese and U.S. governments are seeking to “reshore” strategic sectors of production like semiconductors. The decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies is clearly underway.

There is a massive military buildup underway in the Western Pacific pointing towards conflict over Taiwan.

The world economy is dividing increasingly into two blocs centered on the U.S. and China. The European Union and Japan are increasingly pulled behind the U.S. while Russia and China have formed a very close alliance.

HOW DEGLOBALIZATION IS RESHAPING THE WORLD ECONOMY

cheap imports. While many poor countries experienced partial industrialization to service the global market, rich countries like the U.S. experienced a partial de-industrialization. The corporate elite made incredible profits and inequality increased to levels not seen in a century.

Tom Crean, NYC

Article after article in the mainstream corporate media in recent weeks has stated that the war in Ukraine has accelerated a radical realignment in the world economy that is termed “deglobalization.”

Martin Wolf, the chief economics editor of the Financial Times stated recently that “... the emergence of two blocs with deep splits between them is likely, as is an accelerating reversal of globalization and sacrifice of business interests to geopolitics.”

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest “asset manager,” was even more blunt: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the past three decades.”

The war in Ukraine is indeed having massive impacts on the world economy with major implications for the future. But to understand deglobalization we have to go further back.

Globalization and Capitalism Capitalism since its birth as a social system has shown a tendency to bring all parts of the world into a global market with a developed division of labor. This tendency, which Karl Marx described in the 19th century, can be broadly termed “globalization.”

However, capitalism’s drive to create a world market and a world economy run up against the limits of the nation state. It is the APRIL 2022

political form that the capitalist class cannot escape as it is the means through which they dominate society ideologically and, if necessary, with force. Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels identified the nation state as the key obstacle to capitalism’s ability to further develop human society’s productive forces in a harmonious way.

In the late 19th century, there was a period marked by a high degree of globalization including lower tariffs on trade, ease of travel, etc. This was also a period of steady economic growth. But this was not sustainable and by the beginning of the 20th century it was replaced by increasing competition between the key imperialist countries which culminated in World War I. After WWI, and especially in the 1930s, there was intense deglobalization as inter-imperialist conflict continued marked by a very high degree of protectionism (high tariffs). This did not begin to change until the long period of growth after World War II. The neoliberal era that began in the early 1980s and that we are now exiting was also characterized, like the late 19th century, by an exceptional level of globalization. Barriers to trade and the movement of capital were systematically reduced through extensive trade deals like NAFTA. Supply chains became longer, more complex, and more integrated as corporations sought to reduce the costs of production to a minimum. It was an era of low inflation, low interest rates, and

The Crisis of Neoliberalism

The current retreat from globalization is rooted in the crisis of capitalism at the end of the neoliberal era. This was first expressed in the deep global recession in 2007-8. Despite amassing huge wealth, the capitalists were increasingly unable to make profit from investing in expanding production. Capital was instead invested in the global casino of the financial markets leading to a series of speculative bubbles that burst dramatically and brought the real economy down with it.

As always it was working people who were made to pay with mass unemployment, millions of foreclosures, and endless cuts to social spending. The result was that neoliberalism became associated with savage austerity and was increasingly opposed by ordinary people around the world.

During the following decade the steam went out of globalization. Between 2008 and 2019, world trade relative to global GDP fell by about five percentage points according to the Economist.

It was also during this decade that the conflicting interests of U.S. imperialism and rising Chinese imperialism began to point towards a new Cold War. Donald Trump levied extensive tariffs against Chinese goods but tariffs and protectionism were also rising globally. The U.S. and China went from being drivers of globalization to drivers of deglobalization. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows

War as Accelerant The war in Ukraine brought everything to a head. We stand with the people of Ukraine and demand that Russia withdraw all its forces but we also oppose the interests of all imperialist powers and the slide towards an even more dangerous global conflict. We oppose the Western sanctions that are hitting working people in Russia hardest and that are themselves an act of war.

The radical move to push Russia out of the world financial system is effectively a fast paced decoupling of the world’s 11th biggest economy from the U.S./EU/Japan economic sphere. It points towards Russia and China creating their own arrangements outside the “global institutions” like the World Trade Organization, World Bank, etc. All nations are increasingly being asked to “take a side” in a conflict which is described as being between “democracy and autocracy” but is really a clash between imperialist interests like the clash between Britain and Germany before World War I. This is truly the end of globalization as we have known it for the past 30 years. Of course, it doesn’t mean the end of trade or an international division of labor, but it points to a serious reorganization where the national economy plays a far bigger role than before.

The Future Some may welcome the decline of globalization which certainly was linked to a ruthless corporate agenda that rode roughshod over the rights of workers, indigenous people, and contributed massively to climate change, all in the name of creating an ever more “free” market. However what will replace it will be even worse as long as capitalism exists. We now see the reassertion of reactionary nationalism, military buildup, and growing inflation.

As a result of the war in Ukraine and climate disasters, the world now faces the biggest food crisis since World War II. Instead of “deglobalization” or a return to neoliberal globalization, we need an international working class alternative that points to achieving the promise of a world economy based on a rational democratic plan. J

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Matt Smith, Seattle The first half of 2022 has seen dramatic advances for the labor movement in the United States. Workers at more than 200 Starbucks stores in over 30 states have filed for union elections in a rapidly-growing movement that began in December of last year.

Workers at 31 stores have already voted to unionize, many of them unanimously.

An even more stunning victory for labor came last month when 8,000 Amazon workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York voted to form the first-ever union at an Amazon warehouse in the U.S. This represents a numerical equivalent to 200 Starbucks stores unionizing all at once.

Amazon workers are putting forward bold demands, like a $30 per hour minimum wage, longer breaks, and an end to Amazon’s authoritarian worker tracking system. That these demands were central to an unprecedented breakthrough at Amazon shows the hunger for real change among workers today that goes far beyond what the political establishment and traditional union leaderships are prepared to meet.

Workers at multiple Starbucks stores have already gone on strike against union-busting tactics and poor store conditions. The Amazon Labor Union, the union behind the victory at JFK8, is pledging to organize Amazon warehouses everywhere. These explosive events are evidence of a historic opportunity to rebuild a fighting labor movement, raise bold demands, and win improvements to the living conditions of all workers.

The recent wave of union organizing poses important questions: how do we go from winning victories at a minority of stores to building powerful unions that represent all workers at Amazon and Starbucks? How do we build the kind of union that can win the bold demands that workers are fighting for, like a $30/hour starting wage or free healthcare for all employees? And how do we begin to organize the millions of workers at other exploitative non-union companies like FedEx, McDonalds, and Walmart?

To answer these questions, workers need to look at the conditions that have built this year’s labor wave, and further back to the principles and tactics that built America’s labor movement in the first place.

A Social Powder Keg While the stunning victories at Starbucks and Amazon may seem like they came out of nowhere, this fightback by workers has been a long time coming. The deepening crisis of capitalism over the last 15 years since the 2008 financial crisis has forced workers into a corner. Rents have skyrocketed and inflation has made everything more expensive, but workers’ wages have not kept up.

Meanwhile, a few billionaires at the top have gotten ridiculously wealthy. During the pandemic, the world’s billionaires increased their wealth by over $5 trillion. Now the imperialist war playing out in Ukraine is accelerating this process, causing food and gas prices to spike while a few people get rich from wartime profiteering.

Workers are looking for a way out, but Democrats like Joe Biden have failed to provide one, going back on even the most basic of campaign promises. The Democratic Party has refused to act on basic demands like a $15/hour minimum wage or student debt relief, despite having a majority in Congress.

Figures like AOC, who built their platforms on the promise of disrupting business-as-usual in Congress and winning real working-class demands, have largely fallen in line behind the Democratic Party establishment.

Even most union leaders have not provided a fighting lead. For decades, many of them have tied themselves to the Democratic Party, hoping to win gains for workers by negotiating behind closed doors with corporate politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck S c h u m e r.

During “Striketober” last year, workers repeatedly

CLASS STRUGG UNIONIS

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had to argue against their own union leadership to reject weak contracts and go on strike, including workers at John Deere and the carpenters in western Washington.

We need a transformation of the labor movement on the basis of real class struggle methods, which can demonstrate to workers everywhere: when we fight, we can win – even against behemoths of American capitalism like Starbucks and Amazon!

A History of Organizing the Unorganized There are more than 9,000 Starbucks stores in the United States. There are at least 110 Amazon fulfillment centers, not to mention the vast network of smaller sortation, distribution, and delivery centers. To win wallto-wall unions at these companies would be an achievement for working people unmatched since the organizing drives of the 1930s.

The history of the labor movement, particularly of struggles to organize those workers not already unionized, gives us blueprints for how to win these struggles today. From the first May Day in 1886, to the organizing drives and massive strikes of the 1930s, to the public-sector unionization struggles of the 1970s, history has shown that it takes bold action, fighting leadership, and strong demands for workers to win big gains.

How Strikes Built the Labor Movement The labor movement did not grow gradually over the course of decades.

It was built out of sudden, great leaps

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forward, driven by militant action from rankand-file workers who had no choice but to fight.

Strikes have already been an important catalyst for building the union movement at Starbucks and Amazon.

The Starbucks union effort got a shot in the arm in January when workers in Buffalo went on a five-day strike that forced the company to concede on a major demand: COVID exposure pay for all Starbucks workers nationwide. Just weeks ago in Marysville, WA, Starbucks workers went on a three-day strike to protest terrible working conditions at their store. When they started the strike, these workers had not even begun signing union cards. Armed with clear demands and an energetic, fighting approach, they successfully shut down their store. By the third day of the strike, over 70% of workers had signed up for the union.

The Amazon Labor Union also has its roots in a strike, when workers at the now unionized JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island walked out to protest unsafe working conditions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

History shows us that strikes have always been at the heart of a successful strategy to organize unorganized workers on a mass scale.

The 1930s: From Depression to Strike Wave The start of the 1930s was a low point for the union movement. In 1933, only three million American workers were members of a union. This was equivalent to about 10% of the population, strikingly similar to today’s union density.

But within five years, union membership had nearly tripled to almost nine million, and workers had won major gains, including big wage increases, guaranteed overtime pay, and wall-to-wall unions at massive companies like General Motors.

Unemployment in the early 1930s was skyrocketing, and with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, workers were afraid for their jobs. The conservative leadership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the main organization of unions, had effectively S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

WINNING LESSONS FOR WORKERS AT STARBUCKS, AMAZON, AND BEYOND

GLE SM

abandoned the strike weapon, relying instead on political alliances with the Democratic Party and backroom negotiations with the bosses. The AFL leaders accepted no-strike pacts in entire industries in exchange for empty promises from bosses and politicians.

Furthermore, the AFL was only interested in organizing skilled “craft” workers, ignoring the millions of workers employed in new industries like car and steel production who were facing rock-bottom wages and brutal working conditions, similar to workers at Walmart or Amazon today.

All this changed in 1934 when massive strikes erupted around the country. In particular, three strikes in 1934 pointed the way forward: the Teamsters truck drivers’ strike in Minneapolis, the longshore workers strike in San Francisco, and the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, OH. All three strikes involved sizable sections of the labor movement in those cities, who came to the aid of striking workers. All three strikes used mass rank-and-file action to shut down the profits of the bosses to win union recognition and contracts. And not coincidentally, all three strikes were led by socialists or Marxists.

These three strikes were a signal to workers around the country who were facing similar conditions: get organized and fight!

The number of American workers on strike exploded, going from 180,000 in 1930 to 1.4 million in 1934. In 1937, that number was nearly two million. These strikes happened despite the conservative AFL leadership, despite the no-strike pacts, and despite the uncertainty of the Depression. It took strong, outspoken rank-and-file leadership to overcome these obstacles. These leaders convinced workers to take a fighting approach, despite opposition from top labor leaders, who often tried to water down demands, prevent workers from going on strike, and direct energy into “safe” channels like the National Labor Board (the precursor to today’s NLRB) and the Democratic Party.

Striking workers did not make a distinction between fighting for a union and fighting for a union contract. Workers in the massive sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan,

APRIL 2022

who successfully unionized General Motors with the newly-created United Auto Workers (UAW), put forward bold demands from the start, like a 30-hour work week, seniority rights, and an end to “speed-up” production in the factory. At the heart of their demands was immediate recognition of their union and an end to non-union labor. After a powerful five-week strike, workers in Flint won their core demands and forced General Motors to stop union busting. Through strike action, workers won recognition and a first contract at the same time.

With the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935, workers broke out of the conservative mold of the AFL, building new, more democratic, and more militant unions. Importantly, they organized industrial unions, meaning that all workers in a factory or workplace were in one union, irrespective of a worker’s job title or trade. Often new, independent unions like the UAW were necessary to create a breakthrough. Socialists and Communists played key roles in this organizing, especially insisting on fighting any division based on race or gender.

Crucially, workers in this period fought not just for workplace demands, but for their unions to be democratic and rank-and-file led. Workers fought to limit the salaries of union officials to the average wage of union members. They fought for the right to directly elect their own leaders. And they fought to revive the strike as a key weapon of the union movement.

The 1970s: Organizing The Public Sector In the 1970s, workers and the labor movement were facing yet another crisis. Like today, inflation was rampant, in some years rising as high as 14%. So even when workers received wage increases, they were in reality taking a pay cut.

Workers fought back, especially in the public sector, where most workers never had a union or legal bargaining rights. In 1970, there were nearly 6,000 strikes involving 3 million workers. This included the Great Postal Strike of 1970, in which 200,000 postal workers went on an illegal eight-day strike. Time Magazine called it “the strike that stunned the country.” After just eight days, postal workers won a 14% wage increase and, for the first time, the right to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and working conditions.

The postal workers’ strike was part of a wave of strikes waged by public sector workers, including teachers and nurses, along with major walkouts in the trucking industry and parts of the private sector. These strikes had their roots in rising inflation, but also in the social movements of the previous decade, like the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. The well-known strike by Black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, which became the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., represents an important bridge between the social movements of the 1960s and the public sector strike wave of

the 1970s.

This strike wave led to a huge spike in public sector unionization, at a time when private sector unionization was entering sharp decline. Public sector union density went from less than 27% in 1969 to more than 40% in 1976.

However, despite important victories, the labor movements of the 30s and 70s missed a crucial opportunity: labor leaders failed to transform the strike wave into a political struggle against the parties of big business.

In both cases, the Democratic Party, while giving lip service to workers, did everything it could to slow down the union movement.

Amid massive social upheaval, workers could have broken decisively from the Democratic Party and formed a new political party of our own.

“All Workers to the Unions - All Unions to the Struggle!”

It is imperative that union members and all working people understand the significance of the unionization efforts at Starbucks and Amazon. Like in the 1930s and the 1970s, we have a historic opportunity to rebuild a fighting labor movement and show workers a real way forward, in contrast to Joe Biden and the corporate Democrats.

The unionization campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon are displaying many of the same features that marked previous strike waves and ushered in explosions in union membership. The Amazon Labor Union won by applying important lessons from previous struggles, like organizing around clear, bold demands.

ALU’s constitution even includes a provision requiring that union leaders make no more than the average wage of a union member.

Starbucks workers in Buffalo, NY; Ithaca, NY; Phoenix, AZ; Denver, CO; Olympia, WA; Marysville, WA; and Seattle, WA have gone on strike, although so far these strikes have mostly been isolated from each other and uncoordinated.

Some unions have taken action to support

Amazon worker “Uncle Pat” speaks to a crowd of supporters at a rally in April, talking about the struggle to unionize workers at sorting center LDJ5 on Staten Island.

these struggles. The new reform leadership of the Teamsters led by Sean O’Brien met with lead ALU organizers about organizing Amazon warehouses around the country, though it remains to be seen exactly what the collaboration between these two forces looks like.

Unfortunately, most unions have not acted with the urgency and scale that the Starbucks and Amazon struggles demand. Unions and socialist organizations must make organizing at Starbucks and Amazon a key priority.

There are concrete things that unionized workers can do to immediately support these efforts. If you are a union member, put forward a resolution in your union to donate generously to organizing funds, support rallies called by Starbucks and Amazon workers, and mobilize the full weight of union membership to support picket lines whenever these workers go on strike.

Unions and working people must be prepared to support strikes by Starbucks and Amazon workers in every way. For example, food distribution truck drivers organized with the Teamsters could refuse to deliver to striking Starbucks stores. If there were a strike at Amazon, unionized UPS and USPS workers could “refuse to cross the picket lines” by refusing to deliver the 33% of Amazon packages that are routed through them. Grocery workers organized with UFCW could refuse to stock shelves with Starbucks products. Amazon’s entire operation often travels over a few lanes of entrance roads. These roads could be picketed by well-coordinated protests, organized by the labor movement in solidarity with striking workers.

It will take united, militant action to win. It will take strikes, bold demands, and a democratically accountable union leadership that will lead the fight. At key points, rank-and-file leadership will have to argue firmly against the conservatism of the union bureaucracy and the existing union leadership.

As the fighting Teamsters said in 1934: “All workers to the unions – all unions to the struggle!”J

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WORKING CL A SS HISTORY

HOW WORKERS’ REVOLT ENDED WORLD WAR ONE Tony Wilsdon, Seattle

As the fighting intensifies in Ukraine, millions around the world are searching for ways to help end the suffering and bloodshed.

Socialists are absolutely against Putin’s brutal invasion and occupation. At the same time, we see wars as an outgrowth of the predatory nature of capitalism. The fight against war is also a fight against the system that creates them: capitalism.

Unfortunately, the world has been through similar scenes of slaughter in the past.

Despite the U.S. and NATO claiming that delivering more weapons to Ukraine will be the solution, history tells us this will not benefit the working people of Ukraine or Russia.

The imperial interests of NATO and Russia in the region of Eastern Europe are what is driving this war.

War does not fall from the sky, but is a tool in the arsenal of ruling classes. Under capitalism, where the drive to open up new markets in competition to your rivals dominates, war is the ultimate foreign policy weapon.

An often-unspoken companion of war is revolution. Revulsion by the working class at slaughter inflicted on them by the ruling classes has often been the decisive factor ending wars. For example, anger at Nixon, the revolt of the U.S. army in Vietnam, and radicalization at home was necessary to force the U.S. to retreat from the Vietnam War with its tail between its legs.

War forces millions to confront the crucial issue of class. Who is dying and paying for the war, and who is profiting? Ultimately, in whose interest is the war being fought?

The First World War It was in World War I that these issues were posed most sharply. Two imperialist alliances had been established to fight for markets and territorial control. This was the first real imperialist war, where developed capitalist nations fought for control over markets on a global level. The older colonial nations of Britain France and Russia had the most control of colonies and smaller nations. The rising power of Germany sought to break into these markets.

Unlike today, the working class had built powerful workers’ parties. These parties had previously set out a policy of international working-class solidarity, including calling a general strike if their ruling class declared war on another nation. However, under the pressure of war, the leadership of these parties had become conservative and bent to nationalist pressures. When war actually began, they capitulated to war propaganda and voted for arms spending.

The ruling classes in each nation whipped up a festival of national unity against the enemy aggressor. The working class of the nations were sent to the frontlines as fodder

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in what became a bloody period of seemingly unending trench warfare.

As 1914 turned into 1915, 1916 and 1917 and soldiers on leave told of the reality of trench warfare and loved ones returned in a coffin or mutilated, the mood changed at home. The promises of glorious victory propagated by the ruling classes were upturned. A strong mood of anger and rebellion emerged against the ruling classes that had sent so many young men to die in a bloody pointless war. Class divisions were exposed and erupted.

The Russian Revolution

masse. General strikes spread in all major cities and peasants began a mass rebellion against the aristocracy. The working class increasingly looked to the Bolshevik party to provide leadership, and joined the party in growing numbers.

By October 1917, with a new socialist majority elected to the leadership of the worker, soldier, and peasant soviets, the Bolsheviks organized the working class to take power in a bloodless revolution.

Effects of October

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, immediThe situation broke first in Russia in 1917. ately began implementing their program of Massive casualties had exposed Russia’s anti- dismantling the aristocracy and capitalism, quated army. Russia’s aristocracy was exposed ending the war, implementing workers conas living in luxury, and their only solution to the trol of the workplace and providing the right war failure was to send more Russian youth to self-determination for all nations. to die on the frontlines.

A federated repubRebellions began to break lic, the Union of Soviet out among soldiers. In Socialist Republics War forces millions to February 1917, women (USSR), which included confront the crucial issue textile workers went the right to self-determiof class. Who is dying on strike in St. Petersnation including secesburg. They lit the fuse of sion, was established. and paying for the war, revolution.

The leaders of this new and who is profiting?

The five following workers state then called days saw Russian troops on all workers in Europe deployed by the monarto follow their example of chy to kill protesting workers, then the top- overthrowing their ruling classes, ending the pling of the Czar, and the throwing up of a war and establishing a new socialist world. provisional government. Workers committees This sent shockwaves around the world, of struggle, called “soviets,” were created by rousing workers to follow their example. The the working class in the cities and the army - effects were almost immediate. Workers they held the real power in the streets. across Europe began to demand an end to The new provisional government made up the slaughter and the removal of the ruling of liberal politicians, ignored the demands of classes who had waged such a war. workers and soldiers for an end to the slaughter. Instead, they followed the interests of the German Revolution Ends the War Russian ruling class, and sent more troops to At the start of 1918, anti-war demonstralaunch a failed offensive.

This sparked a second Russian revolu- tions and strikes began in Germany, and escation. New rebellions erupted in the army with lated as the war continued to drag on. Finally, whole battalions deserting the frontlines en on November 3, 1918, German sailors in Kiel

mutinied, refusing to take their battle ships out to sea against the superior British navy.

After clashes with pro-government forces, the sailors linked up with local workers to form a workers and soldiers council to take over running the city.

This sparked the German revolution.

Workers councils were formed across the country, as local governments were overthrown. Five days later, on November 9 the German imperial government collapsed, and a Republic was declared. Two days later, on November 11, the ruling class in Europe rushed to cobble up a deal to end the four years of bloody war.

French leader Clemenceau voiced the concerns of ruling classes across Europe when he said he was “afraid that Germany may collapse and Bolshevism may gain control.”

It was the threat of revolution that forced the ruling classes of Europe to abandon their predatory aims. It is an important lesson, that has been deliberately omitted from official history books.

In the following months the ruling classes attempted to redirect the radicalized and exhausted troops to crush the Bolshevik revolution in the USSR. Despite 21 imperialist armies invading, the refusal of workers to wage that war was decisive in its failure to crush the revolution in the USSR. The following years saw a sweep of revolutionary outbreaks across Europe, including the general strike in Seattle in 1919. Unfortunately, in no country outside the USSR were workers able to take power to join the Bolsheviks. Isolated in a poverty-ravaged country, the revolution degenerated in the Soviet Union.

This process of workers rebellion was repeated at the end of World War II on a different scale. Paris was liberated by the French resistance from Nazi control, dictator Mussolini was overthrown by Italian workers and the British government was forced to parachute in troops to keep control of the city from worker militias.

Each war has its own unique factors and timetable. Socialists need to take this history to heart as the U.S. ruling class, Biden, and NATO proclaim democratic principles while they continue to throw ever more destructive weapons into Ukraine. It is necessary to build an anti-war movement and working-class resistance to this war. In particular, socialists need to support Russian workers as they start to revolt against Putin’s brutal invasion. J German soldiers demonstrating in the Kiel mutiny of 1918.

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WA R & I M P E R I A L I S M

War in Ukraine: The New Era and the Crisis of Capitalism The following is an abridged version of a statement on the war in Ukraine and its implications for the manifold crises of capitalism. Read the full article at socialistalternative.org.

International Socialist Alternative

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The war in Ukraine conclusively demonstrates that we have entered a new era in world relations, a shift developing since 2007–09 and further deepened by the COVID pandemic. What are the characteristics of this post-neoliberal era? A key feature is clearly rising imperialist militarism, accompanied by the whipping up of nationalism and a rapid break-up of the world into two imperialist-led camps in a new, not-so-Cold War. This is an era of profound capitalist decline. The war and the possibility that it could escalate into a more full-scale conflict is in itself an admission of irresolvable contradictions. Imperialist countries from China to Germany to the U.S. are ramping up the production of their arsenals of death while humanity faces an existential climate crisis that grows worse by the day.

This war also comes during a devastating pandemic that has killed well over 20 million people worldwide and is still raging. China’s “COVID Zero” policy is breaking down in the face of the Omicron variant. In the West, the ruling class has basically given up after completely failing to contain the epidemic or develop a serious strategy for global vaccination.

On top of this, the underlying crisis of the capitalist economy is set to enter a new phase triggered by an energy shock and rapidly rising inflation. Besides the collapse of the Russian economy triggered by vicious Western sanctions, the war could tip Europe and the U.S. into recession. But the impact on the neocolonial world will be far more devastating as food prices rise and the debt crisis worsens. Overall, the past two years of pandemic and economic crisis have massively increased inequality on a global scale as well as the level of absolute poverty.

Marxists and Imperialism Marxists today start from opposition to all imperialism, as did Lenin, Trotsky, and other internationalists over a century ago. They explained how the emergence of imperialism and the dominance of finance capital is a phase of capitalist development, pointing to how the forces of production have developed beyond the capitalist mode of production. Today it could not be clearer that the capitalist nation-state is an absolute barrier to the further development of human economy.

We completely oppose Russian imperialism’s invasion of Ukraine, which was preceded by Putin’s speech where he blamed the Bolsheviks for Ukraine’s existence and essentially denied the historic reality of the Ukrainian nation. Putin’s utterly reactionary invasion has already created a humanitarian catastrophe, with over three million refugees fleeing the country and over six million internally displaced.

We also oppose the agenda of U.S. and Western imperialism which through NATO has moved to encircle Russia and helped create the conditions for this war.

Now they are pouring war material into the country and imposing unprecedented sanctions against Russia, which are a form of collective punishment on the Russian people and an act of war, as well as a

warning to China.

We point to working-class solidarity as the only force that can prevent the slide towards a far wider conflict that threatens human civilization. While war propaganda has had a significant effect in the West and within Russia itself this will ebb. The mass of the working class is not yet ready to challenge the war, but the youth will begin to fight back as the “democratic” pretensions of the West begin to be really exposed and especially as the dire economic consequences of the war begin to be revealed. In Russia we already see glimpses of heroic resistance. Capitalism breeds war, but war historically is also the midwife of revolution.

The War’s Global Impact It is clear that Putin and his generals drastically miscalculated in their invasion plans, and have met ferocious resistance.

The possibility of war between NATO and Russia is now greater than at any point in the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. There is already a partial state of war between NATO and Russia as a staggering amount of armaments pours in from NATO countries.

A broader war between the U.S./NATO and Russia could remain “conventional” but the danger of a nuclear exchange would grow significantly, although remaining still unlikely given the potentially devastating consequences for all sides.

During the existence of the Soviet Union there were very dangerous moments like the Cuban missile crisis but one enormous limiting factor was that, despite its horrible Stalinist regime, the Soviet Union was not an imperialist country. Its leadership prioritized their own power and feared revolutions and therefore sought accommodation and “peaceful coexistence” with Western imperialism. In reality the situation we have now entered is already more dangerous than any during the first Cold War. To have huge nuclear arsenals in the hands of rapacious reactionary regimes like those of Putin and Xi Jinping as well as senile U.S. imperialism is a concentrated expression of the threat of capitalism to our existence.

The war has entered a far more brutal stage, following Russia’s playbook in Syria and Chechnya of modern siege warfare.

But even if the Russian military succeeds in seizing key cities after reducing them to rubble, they then face the challenge of occupying the country. Based on what has happened so far, a Ukrainian insurgency could inflict very significant ongoing casualties and ultimately lead the Russian military to be broken as a military force even if the Ukrainians couldn’t outright defeat it, as happened to the U.S. in Vietnam.

This combined with economic collapse could provoke mass upheaval in Russia.

This “Vietnam scenario” comes with the key difference that the reactionary Ukrainian regime is a proxy of Western imperialism whereas the FNL/NLF in Vietnam rested on a social revolution.

However, the impact of sanctions – including cutting Russia off from the Western financial system, removing

trading privileges, and Western corporations pulling out of the country – can be contradictory. They show signs of affecting the consciousness of a section of the urban middle class who are linked to the world economy and are more pro-Western, but the devaluation of the currency, inflation, and the threat of mass unemployment will mainly affect the broad working class. However, in the short term the sanctions can also strengthen support for the regime in some sections of the population as it feeds into the narrative that the West is out to destroy Russia.

The International Anti-War Movement We Need The outbreak of this war, and the new era it heralds for global capitalism, cannot fail to produce profound and dramatic shifts in the consciousness of workingclass and young people the world over.

Every strata of society, including the bourgeois itself, is currently in the process of attempting to understand the significance of what has taken place and to reconfigure perspectives for the future.

Increasingly expressed, especially by youth, is a growing understanding that under capitalism we face a future in which the world will be more dangerous, in which the majority of people will be more impoverished, and in which the very survival of much of the earth’s population will be put increasingly in jeopardy. This understanding is partly tied to economic reality: it reflects a profound lack of confidence in the system’s ability to provide even people in the most advanced capitalist countries with stable jobs and homes, much less a rise in living standards. Now added to this, as well as to the threat of climate collapse, is the danger of an increasingly widespread and potentially even nuclear global military conflict. This fear will form an important part of workers’ collective psyche from now on. Such a consciousness is not automatically revolutionary, but it does point to the deep undermining of the capitalist system in the eyes of working-class people.

This could be the basis of an international, anti-war movement, based on a clear opposition to imperialist warmongering on all sides. Socialists’ role is to fight for such a movement and for its workingclass character. That means pointing to the potential role of the trade union movement in mobilizing on the streets, as well as in directly undermining the “war effort.” A glimpse of this potential has already been seen in Britain, Netherlands and Sweden – with workers refusing to unload Russian oil at the docks – and in Italy in the form of strike action in protest against the Russian regime’s invasion.

Ultimately, the reality is that only through workers seizing power internationally that a future of war, conflict and environmental destruction can be averted.

This is why we point to the urgent necessity of forging a truly international party of revolution – one capable of leading the struggle to change the world. J

11

FIGHTING UNION BUSTING

STARBUCKS WORKERS RALLY IN SEATTLE AGAINST UNION- BUSTING Socialist Alternative Seattle

Starbucks workers from around the country rallied alongside socialists, union members, and hundreds of supporters in Seattle on April 23, demanding reinstatement for all workers who have been fired by the company in retaliation for organizing a union. The “Fight Starbucks’ Union Busting” rally and march was called by Seattle Starbucks Workers United, Socialist Alternative, and Councilmember Kshama Sawant.

Among the speakers at the rally was Laila Dalton, a Starbucks worker fired earlier this month in Phoenix for organizing a union at her store. After going public with the union effort, Dalton was harassed for months by management. She was fired after she recorded management’s abusive conduct and released it to the media, exposing Starbucks’ illegal union-busting tactics.

Starbucks turned its sights on Alyssa Sanchez, another union supporter at the same unionizing Phoenix store. When management found out that Sanchez was a union supporter, they began scheduling her to work on days when they knew she was not available.

Then Starbucks fired her for being unavail-

able to work on those days. It was a trans-

parent set-up.

“We sell our lives, we sell our bodies, we sell our time to this company. So why not earn a living wage for the life that we give into the company?” Sanchez said at the rally.

“There are millions of other people going through the same thing in other industries.

This [movement] is the start of a new era.”

Dalton and Sanchez spoke alongside Beto Sanchez and LaKota McGlawn, members of the “Memphis 7,” a group of workers who faced retaliatory firings from Starbucks this February in Memphis, TN. Also speaking

12

at the rally were Starbucks workers from Kansas, Michigan, New York, and Washington. Starbucks workers, Socialist Alternative members, and union activists built for the rally through phone banking, putting up posters around the city, and setting up tables on the street to talk with other working people.

The Starbucks unionization movement has spread to more than 200 Starbucks stores in more than 30 states. On April 21, a majority of workers at the Seattle Reserve Roastery, one of only three Reserve Roasteries in the United States, voted to unionize. 33 stores around the country have now voted to join Starbucks Workers United.

Seattle workers are demanding free and improved healthcare for all employees nationally, full staffing, the ability to receive tips from debit and credit card transactions, and an immediate end to Starbucks’ union busting. Some workers like Dalton have called for a starting wage of $25 per hour, which would mirror the Amazon Labor Union, whose demand for a $30 starting wage galvanized workers to join the strug-

gle and vote “yes” on the union at JFK8 in Staten Island.

Starbucks nearly quadrupled its profits to more than $4 billion last year, and its CEO got an almost 40% raise. Most workers, in contrast, saw a pay cut relative to inflation.

Major unions endorsed Saturday’s rally, including the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, a labor federation that represents more than 150 unions in Seattle. In many cases, rank-and-file union members won their union’s endorsement by organizing with co-workers and passing resolutions at union meetings.

Large contingents came to the rally from IBEW Local 46 (the electricians’ union), the Seattle Education Association, UAW Local

4121 (a union of academic workers at the University of Washington), PROTEC 17 (city employees), the Alphabet Workers Union, Socialist Alternative, and the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

Strike Action & Demonstrations

by Starbucks Workers Force Reinstatement of Fired Workers The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took action on Friday, on the eve of the Seattle rally, to expedite the reinstatement of the workers Starbucks has retaliated against.

In past cases, the NLRB has taken 10 months or more to reinstate fired workers.

Despite appearing as a neutral body between labor and capital, it has consistently failed workers and served the bosses by either denying justice for workers entirely or

delaying it to the point that bosses have learned that they can get away with union busting for months or years without facing consequences.

But under the pressure of strikes, demonstrations, and mass unionization campaigns at both Starbucks and Amazon, the board has been forced to take action more quickly, as it attempts to calm the class struggle breaking out around the country.

Workers in multiple cities have gone on strike and shut down profits at their stores to fight back against the company’s union busting. Workers have gone on strike in Buffalo and Ithaca, NY; Phoenix, AZ; Overland Park, KS; Denver, CO; Olympia and Marysville, WA; and at three stores in Seattle. So far, these strikes have been limited to one or two stores at a time, but some workers have begun to call for more coordinated strike action on a regional or national level.

“We have to stand in solidarity, not only as Starbucks workers, but as a united working class to show that we are willing to fight for what we deserve,” said Katie McCoy, a Starbucks worker and strike leader from Marysville. “We need to escalate this fight to win what we deserve. We need coordinated nationwide walkouts to demand Starbucks stop union busting, to demand the reinstatement of the Memphis 7, Laila Dalton, and any other wrongfully terminated for organizing.”

It is no coincidence that the NLRB decision comes amid a wave of demonstrations and strike action by Starbucks workers, with many of those actions happening in and around Seattle. Seattle is home to both Starbucks headquarters and its billionaire CEO Schultz. Schultz lives in the district of Council-

m e m b e r Kshama Sawant, whose office played a leading role in organizing the rally.

Sawant, who has won four elections in Seattle as an independent socialist and member of Socialist Alternative, has been clear that she represents Starbucks workers, not executives like Schultz. Sawant takes only the average wage of a worker, taking home $40,000 of her $147,000 city council salary and donating the rest to a Solidarity Fund, which goes towards funding strike funds and other worker struggles. Sawant has donated $26,000 from this Solidarity Fund to organizing funds launched by Starbucks Workers United and the Amazon Labor Union.

“If we are to build on what we know is dramatic and historic potential in the proud American working class, then we are going to need a clean break with the failed ideas of business unionism,” Sawant said. “What we need instead is a class struggle approach, the kind of militant, fighting ideas that our American labor movement was built on.” J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

L ABOR

MARYSVILLE STARBUCKS WORKERS SHUT DOWN STORE IN THREE-DAY STRIKE Bia Lacombe, Community Organizer in the Office of Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant

In April, unionizing workers at a Starbucks store in Marysville, WA went on strike for three consecutive days, forcing management to shut down the store!

The baristas had just started signing union cards when they began their strike on April 8, and by the end of the strike on April 10, they announced that 70% of the 22 workers at their store had signed. Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her office, along with Socialist Alternative and Democratic Socialists of America members, joined in solidarity.

One of the workers, who had continued working despite the strike in the first days, was convinced to put down their apron by the third day, and helped make possible a complete shutdown of the store. In just three days, the workers alerted thousands of people to the terrible working conditions at their store, and built strong support among customers and co-workers.

By organizing an energetic and successful strike, with chants, picketing, and concrete demands, they demonstrated that it is workers, not management, who produce the billions of dollars in profits for companies like Starbucks, and that workers have the power to bring those profits to a grinding halt.

Preparing to Strike Workers at the Lakewood Crossing Starbucks store have endured severe and chronic understaffing. They are forced to work at times more than 10 hours without legally-mandated breaks, yet are expected to maintain performance standards that under such circumstances become physically APRIL 2022

impossible. They are working through their second rat infestation in less than a year, because understaffing means that workers, despite working overtime, are still unable to complete crucial cleaning tasks.

Starbucks executives and management have started using the same union-busting attacks here that have been reported across the country, including hours cuts, threats, and intimidation. The average wage at this Starbucks store is $15/hour, which puts many of these workers solidly below the poverty line – one of the workers at this store has experienced homelessness while being employed by Starbucks.

The day before the strike, after a shift where two baristas were forced to run the entire store on their own for over six hours – one of them nine months pregnant and the other on a 10.5-hour shift with no breaks – the workers said enough was enough.

“It came together pretty much overnight,” said Katelyn McCoy, one of the lead strike organizers and a barista at the store. “We closed the store, made it look nice and pretty, and walked out.”

For the first time in their lives – and likely not the last – they walked off the job to fight for a union and for better lives for themselves and their coworkers. Their demands included a living wage tied to inflation, consistent scheduling, full staffing, seniority pay, 12-weeks paid maternity leave, credit/debit card tipping, revisions to barista training, and for Starbucks to follow all labor laws.

How Workers Escalated and Shut Down Their Store Because the action came together so quickly, few people outside of the workers at the store knew about the strike on the first

day. So it was crucial that they reached out to unionizing Starbucks workers in nearby Seattle, who in turn connected them with Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s office. Councilmember Sawant and her office, and Socialist Alternative, have publicly stood in solidarity with unionizing Starbucks and Amazon workers. Alongside workers, we brought forward a resolution in January demanding Starbucks bosses end their union busting, and forced the Seattle City Council Democrats to unanimously vote in favor of it. In March, Councilmember Sawant and our office joined Starbucks workers at Cooper Point in Olympia, at their successful one-day strike.

Four Socialist Alternative members, including Councilmember Sawant, immediately drove up to Marysville to support the strike on Day 1. The energy was high as we marched all together around the store, waving picket signs and chanting through a megaphone: “Starbucks, get off it, put workers over profit!”

In one of the most exciting developments to take place during the strike, two Starbucks workers from a unionizing Starbucks store in Everett came to the strike to lend support and solidarity, and to thank the Marysville workers for their inspiring actions. The Everett workers expressed that people at their store had become demoralized, because after more than 30 days since filing for a union election, they were still waiting for their election date from the National Labor Relations Board.

But the strike in Marysville had boosted their morale and inspired them to keep fighting.

On Day 3 of the strike, workers from the Lakewood Crossing store left the picket line and drove 20 minutes to the Everett store, to meet the other workers and discuss the lessons of their strike.

On the first two days of the strike, management attempted to defeat the workers by keeping the drive-thru open, although they were forced to close the lobby. To push back against this, striking workers and members of Socialist Alternative positioned themselves at the entrance and exit of the drive-thru to wave down approaching cars, explaining why they were on strike and appealing to customers not to cross their picket line.

To keep the store running during the strike, Starbucks executives sent in regional Starbucks managers who were forced to run the store on their own. The managers used deliberate tactics in an attempt to divide the striking workers from the workers who supported the strike but so desperately needed the income that they felt they had no choice but to keep working.

In response, the striking workers spent time on and off the picket line talking to their co-workers, listening to their concerns and explaining that the strike was not solely for the workers on strike, but for all of the workers at their store who were being forced to endure miserable, exploitative conditions.

They were fighting for everyone.

Each day, the number of baristas on strike grew. By the third day they had won over many of their coworkers, and management had no one left to run the store. Two days of energetic picketing and the workers’ success in convincing customers to turn away was not something management was willing to risk for

continued on p.15

VIRAL WALKOUT AT UNIONIZED COFFEE CHAIN WINS IMMEDIATE CONCESSIONS Boston Socialist Alternative On Tuesday, March 29, on cue from a carefully-timed text from their coworkers in the bargaining room, unionized coffee shop workers across all four locations of Darwin’s Ltd. in Cambridge, MA announced to customers that they were taking a synchronized seven-minute break and walking out.

Their brief but meticulously coordinated work stoppage won swift concessions and sent ripples across the coffee shop union movement, going viral on TikTok with over a million views in just a few short days.

As a result of just seven minutes’ disruption on the shop floors, Darwin’s United won four more bargaining sessions scheduled within the next six weeks, after having had just one session in the previous six weeks. The union also won a new disciplinary agreement with due process and a series of warnings, a huge step forward for job security; management had been playing hardball trying to defend its ability to fire workers for virtually any offense.

Darwin’s, a coffee and sandwich chain in the Boston area, was among the first wave of independent coffee shops to win voluntary union recognition last September. Winning a union, however, is only the first step of workplace organizing: now workers in Darwin’s United are fighting for their first contract.

Darwin’s management had proven eager to drag bargaining out as long as possible, leaving as long as six weeks between bargaining sessions and refusing to engage with workers’ proposals and demands. All the while, the pressures of overwork and understaffing threatened to drive out key workers. Workers began to recognize the union-busting threat and the need to turn up the heat on management.

Power Comes from Rank-andFile Engagement This walkout followed an all-member meeting of Darwin’s United held on March 10th. This meeting was a crucial step in laying the basis for active, discussionoriented union membership and members debated and voted to arrive at concrete demands to unite the membership behind clear goals in bargaining.

Tactics like the Darwin’s walkout, and the active democratic engagement that made it possible to pull off so successfully, should be replicated at other stores engaged in similar fights, at Starbucks and elsewhere. Having taken the first major steps to hold (and win) union votes in historically unorganized workplaces, building up our capacity for militant tactics can point the way forward to major victories, further organizing of the industry, and a wholesale revitalizing of the labor movement in the 21st century. J

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

French Presidential Election: Macron Defeats Le Pen ISA Reporter

SHANGHAI COVID-19 LOCKDOWN REACHING CRISIS POINT Erin Brightwell, Oakland

After two years in which the Chinese “COVID Zero” policy was held up by Xi Jinping’s dictatorship as successful in keeping the COVID-19 virus out of China, the hardship and suffering of extended lockdowns has reached new levels in 2022, with more than 80 cities and around 400 million people in some form of lockdown. Unlike the lockdowns imposed by U.S. governors in early 2020, the Shanghai lockdown and similar lockdowns in Jilin, Shenzhen, with Beijing possibly next in line, are enforced with extreme brutality.

Millions have spent weeks confined to their apartment complexes with little or no food, lacking medicine and other necessities. Many students have spent the month of April locked in their school dormitories, with no menstrual supplies for female students. Residents are banned from going out to buy food, relying on government distribution which often involves rotten or expired food, and never enough.

Even worse, if someone tests positive in a building, all residents can be sent to the quarantine centers,which are as bad as prisons but with less food – exemplified by the fact that are now threatening those who protest with being sent to a quarantine center, because that’s more of a deterrent than prison.

The government food delivery infrastructure has collapsed in many areas of Shanghai. Videos have circulated on the internet of Shanghai residents gathering outside their buildings to protest the food shortages. Residents have come together to organize their own relief measures independently from CCPcontrolled area committees which have lost control of the situation.

The government has instituted a brutal but also hugely wasteful and inefficient system to try and quash the spread of the virus. Babies and very young children were separated from their parents and taken to quarantine centers if they tested positive, a policy that caused widespread outrage. Healthcare workers are facing extreme exhaustion, often working

14

36-48 hour shifts. Ten people share one COVID-testing tube, so if one tube tests positive, all ten can be sent to quarantine.

Given the transmissibility of the Omicron variant, even with the extreme lockdown measures, the authorities have not been able to stop the spread, with outbreaks in many cities seeded by the Shanghai outbreak.

This is developing into a crisis for Chinese president Xi Jinping, who boasts about the regime’s performance in controlling the virus, counterposing this to the catastrophic policies in most Western countries. There is no backing down from the COVID Zero policy for Xi, especially as he seeks to extend his rule for a third term later this year. The low vaccination rate among especially older people in China, with 100 million people over 60 not fully vaccinated, coupled with the less effective Chinese vaccines and refusal to import Western-made vaccines, means that an uncontrolled outbreak would likely have a massive death toll. This scenario is already playing out in Hong Kong, which at one point had one of the worst death rates recorded in the pandemic so far, despite following Xi Jinping’s zero Covid playbook.

The costs of hard lockdowns and COVID Zero are mounting. Shanghai is a major economic engine that has been essentially reduced to a wartime economy, a situation that is worsened by deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China as the war in Ukraine rages. 2,000 troops were brought into Shanghai, effectively placing the city under martial law, to deal with unrest but also to warn the city’s CCP leaders that Xi Jinping’s word must be obeyed. China’s bureaucratic, authoritarian capitalist regime no more than ‘democratic’ capitalism in the West can fight the pandemic successfully or humanely. A democratic, grassroots approach, informed by the best science and utilizing the world’s most powerful vaccines and medicines, freed from the profit motive, are the elements of a rational and effective COVID policy. J

The second round of the French presidential election faced off Emmanuel Macron, the representative of the ruling class against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. It seems to be a simple repeat of the 2017 elections but only on the surface. Macron was then a novelty and represented an alternative to both the traditional left and right.

On April 24, the results were 58.5% for Macron and 41.5% for Le Pen. Three-out-often voters abstained, that is 2.8 more points than in 2017. For the first time in thirty years a president is elected for a second term. But is it a true victory for Macron or is it more ordinary people blocking off the far-right?

The collapse of the Socialist Party and the Republicans who dominated French politics only a few years ago is very significant.

Together with Macron’s party, La France En Marche, and the Green party, the “traditional” parties of the ruling class scored under 50%.

Is France Moving To The Right?

Over the last decade, Marine Le Pen has re-invented her image, firstly by changing her party name from the National Front to the National Rally (Rassemblement National).

Alongside toning down some of the more blatant far-right elements of her image, she has been forced to address issues such as the cost of living and the rising fuel prices in her program. This has wooed some sections of workers, including in the health sector, who have lost their job because they refused to get vaccinated. Nevertheless, her program maintained racist policies such as banning women from wearing the hijab in the streets.

People largely voted for Macron to stop Le Pen’s racist, right-wing ideas, not because they support Macron. He is at the heart of the problem and is not part of the solution, not even a little bit. It is precisely the logic of the ‘’lesser evil’’ that has brought us to this situation.

The defeat of Le Pen will come as a relief to millions of working-class people, especially people of color, immigrants, and others targeted by her reactionary campaign. But Macron is not the solution to the growth of

the far-right. Over the last 5 years, he has consistently transferred wealth from the working class to the ultra rich accompanied by increased police terror against a whole number of social movements. It has been his anti-worker policies and failure to deal with the crisis facing ordinary people that has allowed the far right to grow.

The first round of the elections saw the greatest vote share for parties to the left of the Socialist Party since 1969, with Jean Luc Melenchon of La France Insoumise only 400,000 votes behind Marine Le Pen. As International Socialist Alternative have explained, were it not for the sectarianism of the smaller far left parties, such as the Communist Party (PCF) and Lutte Ouvrière (LO), who refused to get behind Mélenchon, the second round would have likely been between him and Macron, rather than Le Pen. Melenchon would have had a real chance of defeating Macron, the widely hated tool of the rich.

Where Next?

While many people voted for Macron or abstained for understandable reasons, the principal task now is to prepare for the battles to come beyond the elections. The background of war, poverty, low pay, and job insecurity has to be urgently addressed through coordinated working-class struggle.

Macron’s government will be extremely unstable, in the context of a deep political and economic crisis, and the collapse of the establishment parties that has taken place in France and internationally. In this context, a mass movement of workers and young people with a bold program of demands is immediately required to block the threat of the far right, who will themselves be looking to build in this context of crisis. Melenchon and France Insoumise can play a critical role in this process.

Now more than ever, the struggle on the streets and in the workplaces will be the most important factor in winning real gains for our class. History has shown that this is where all significant advances for the working class have come from. We will not wait on the ruling class to hand over their crumbs, but we will fight and demand what is rightfully ours. J

S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

Us

UNIONIZING AMAZON: ALU VS. RWDSU Continued from p.5

interim-President Chris Smalls, who was fired in March 2020 for organizing a walkout for better COVID safety protocols at JFK8, the ALU eventually grew to an organizing committee that made all the decisions of the campaign.

This consisted of at least 20 core workers and several dozen more who were actively involved.

ALU gained the trust of workers because its activists spoke to the exact hardships they faced.

What’s more, they demonstrated that fighting for the union was worth the ultimate sacrifice of their time and energy, as union organizers spent their days off in the breakroom, at bus-stops, and making phone calls to co-workers.

They also paid special attention to organizing among immigrant workers who make up a huge part of the JFK8 workforce.

In stark contrast to RWDSU, ALU had strong demands that made crystal clear what they were fighting for: a $30/hr starting wage, two weeks paid time off, two half-hour breaks with an hour for lunch, and an end to “time off task”. These demands were featured prominently in campaign material in the final weeks of the campaign.

Crucial to ALU’s material was that they consistently spoke in the language of class struggle, naming the enemy clearly and unapologetically. They highlighted the direct link between the immense wealth of Jeff Bezos and the conditions of the workers, and how anything workers win comes at the expense of Amazon and vice versa.

This understanding of the relationship between bosses and workers is essential for developing the right tactics and strategy to win, but too often unions will rely on naively appealing to the morality of executives. This is most notably present today in the

messaging of the national Starbucks Workers United campaign, which alongside ALU is setting the stage for a new wave of unionization across the working class.

Unionize Amazon Everywhere

versus

Them

Billionaire Buys Social Media Platform from Other Billionaires.

Something Good is Probably Going to Come From This.

everything about this, is ridiculous.

Meaghan Murray, ALU’s victory conWith Amazon’s work chat app Minneapolis clusively shows that the auto-banning words like “union,” reason large-scale union victories like the one on Elon Musk, inspiration to heirs of “ethics,” “restroom,” Facebook misStaten Island are so rare emerald mine owners everywhere, managing user data on a scale Zuckthese days is not simply just bought Twitter for $44 billion. erberg can’t even control, and Twitter now being under the rule of an even because corporations are Please clap. too powerful, or that unions He hopes to make Twitter better richer oligarch than its founder, Jack are just too hard to form, or by taking it private, offering a sub- Dorsey, or CEO, Parag Agrawal – it that workers “aren’t ready scription-based version of the app, appears e-commerce and tech giants yet” and don’t understand removing bots (except the ones he owning the means of communication the need for them. Rather, uses to attack Tesla critics), easing in the digital age… is not good. It it’s because the majority of up on content moderation (on a site won’t ever be good. Elon says this is today’s labor leaders engiwhere women were already being about democracy. What’s democratic neer union campaigns that harassed literally every 30 seconds) about any of this?

His plans for Twitter give off don’t take a class struggle and all in the name of “free speech Regina George’s mom vibes: “There approach and don’t give absolutism.” Go off, king! workers a reason to believe But what does “free speech” look are no rules in this house. I’m not or participate in them. like on a platform that was owned like a regular billionaire, I’m a cool Socialists and activists in by super rich tech execs before billionaire.”

One that pledges to make Twitter the labor movement should this, and is now owned by the one not give such leaders a free person richer than Jeff “Don’t Tax the digital town square we deserve.

One that pledged to give away the pass and must point to Me” Bezos? Even when this deal what’s needed. made Tesla shareholders nervous, majority of his wealth in 2012 and ALU’s independence resulting in a loss of $30 billion in has since donated 0.05% of it. You from the existing unions his net worth, Elon’s still worth nearly know, a cool billionaire. J was without question a two Jeffs. All of these numbers, key reason behind why it took such a strong orgachallenges to today’s union and unorganized workers. nizing approach, and its victory leadership.

As ALU gears up to vote at a will increase the attractiveness of The key takeaway from ALU’s second Amazon facility, neighborforming a new union for the many success in NYC and RWDSU’s ing LDJ5, Socialist Alternative has workers looking to get organized. second defeat in Alabama is that been proud to be out and lend That will make sense in many defeating a massive corporation our support every day on Staten workplaces, but ultimately the like Amazon is not simply a ques- Island. We send our uncondiexact form of organization is less tion of resources, staff or political tional solidarity to all Amazon important than its content, and connections. It will be crucial that workers gearing up to take on the today’s unions can and must be the successful methods of the mega-corporation nationwide and transformed as part of rebuilding Amazon workers on Staten Island around the world and are coma fighting labor movement. The are enthusiastically replicated by mitted to doing all we can to help example of ALU can inspire work- those unions in order to unionize unionize Amazon everywhere. J ers to do just that, building on Amazon, and rebuild a fighting recent examples of rank-and-file labor movement for both organized

MARYSVILLE STARBUCKS STRIKE store entirely on Day 3. By the end of Day 3, the organizing committee at the store had signed up over 70% of their coworkers on union cards and filed for a union election. They walked back into work on Monday with a union, albeit one not yet recognized by the company.

Escalate The Fight!

This courageous strike by Starbucks workers in Marysville echoes the Olympia strike last month and the successful strike earlier this year by workers in Buffalo, NY, who won paid COVID leave for workers company-wide.

It’s no coincidence that, as Starbucks workers on opposite sides of the country were going on APRIL 2022

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

strike for the first time, Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island won the first-ever Amazon union in the United States. Workers across every industry are increasingly ready to fight, and Starbucks workers are on the forefront of an all-out battle against the billionaires and the wealthiest corporations on the planet.

Starbucks executives’ union-busting onslaught will only intensify – indicated most recently by their increasingly blatant anti-union firings and billionaire CEO Howard Schultz’s statement that the company is being “assaulted” by threats of unionization.

Workers across the United States are beginning to conclude that the only way to truly fight back against massive corporations owned by

Continued from p. 13 billionaires and millionaires is by escalating, organizing strikes and walkouts, and mobilizing as many working people and community members as possible around concrete workplace demands. Facing vicious union busting from the company, workers at Lakewood Crossing and beyond are looking for ways to escalate the fight.

“I definitely think that a national day of strike [is needed], where [we] show Howard Schultz… hey, we’re serious… We want a livable wage and we want to be treated fairly,” said McCoy. Her fellow strike organizer and barista at the Lakewood Crossing store, Lincoln Wheeler, agreed: “There should be a national walkout day, where no Starbucks is open.” J

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

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

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SOCIALIST ISSUE #83 l MAY 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

Carey Howard, Boston On April 7, 26 year-old Lizelle Herrera in Texas was arrested and jailed on a murder charge following a stillbirth delivery. Though not all of the details are clear, it appears that the hospital she attended reported her to the authorities for “knowingly self-inducing her abortion.” She was apprehended at the hospital by a sheriff, and charged with seconddegree murder.

After reproductive rights activists organized a protest at the Starr County Jail where Herrera was being held and calls flooded in from across the country, the district attorney was forced to drop the charges. Despite the backtrack, what happened to Herrera is chilling – especially when considering what might have happened if mass struggle had not

ALTERNATIVE

Andrewr w Ldi,rwienCe lloeuud n

intervened.

State legislatures this year have introduced and enacted a flurry of reactionary laws, both restricting abortion access and restricting the rights of trans youth. As Herrerra was sitting in jail for her stillbirth in Texas, families of transgender youth in the same state were being investigated by the Department of Family and Protective Services for supporting their adolescents’ transitions thanks to a new order from right-wing Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

But the phenomenon goes far beyond Texas, with over 230 abortion restrictions introduced in state legislatures so far this year, and over 240 anti-trans bills introduced in the same time span.

These reactionary laws will have a devastating impact on women and queer people, especially if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade when it rules on Dobbs v. Jackson later this year. But ultimately these laws do not benefit the working-class base of the Republican Party either – instead, this culture war serves as the cheap substitute for the economic relief that working people need but the big-business GOP will never provide.

Instead of offering an alternative, the Democratic Party’s response to these attacks has been totally inadequate. The “fight back” from the ostensibly more progressive party has been largely limited to mealy-mouthed tweets that call to “stop hate”, instead of mounting a genuine struggle to codify access to abortion and gender-affirming care.

But the right-wing attacks this year have ramped up quickly, and working-class women and queer people need a way out.

Instead of allowing women’s struggle and queer struggle to play out in parallel, we need one unified mass movement against gender oppression.

Women and LGBTQ People Linked Under Common Struggle It is clear that the working class is broadly under siege. These events are part of a much

broader right-wing offensive across the country attacking reproductive rights, enacting racist voting restrictions, banning trans children from gender-affirming care and school sports, criminalizing protests and increasing police funding in backlash to BLM, and a return of “law and order” governing in Democrat-controlled cities to criminalize homelessness and the poor.

The right wing is actively pitting the rights of women and queer people against each other, such as in the case of trans childrens’ participation in sports. The right wing falsely argues that the existence of trans women in “women’s spaces” is threatening to the safety and success of cisgender women. This is a prime example of a divide-and-rule strategy aimed at preventing cis women and trans and nonbinary people from fighting on a unified basis for bodily autonomy.

Women and queer people suffer many of the same oppressions under capitalism. Many queer and trans women are under attack as a result of these anti-LGBTQ bills, and trans men and nonbinary people will struggle to access abortions and reproductive care under new restrictions.

The struggles of trans and cis women are especially linked. Transgender women are at high risk of experiencing both transphobic and misogynistic violence. Arguments against the participation of trans women in women’s sports actually lean on incorrect, sexist ideas that all people assigned male at birth will be automatically more athletic than anyone assigned female at birth, ideas that harm cisgender women too. Both workingclass women and trans people of all genders are at heightened risk of workplace discrimination, domestic abuse, and struggle for basic healthcare needs that are restricted or unaffordable.

Building a united struggle against gender oppression will not be automatic, and a huge part of that fight will be overcoming the rightwing propaganda meant to divide us. But it was not the establishment and the courts who handed down victories like the right to abortion in the first place – it was us. It was mass

movements from below led by working people that forced the hand of the courts to follow suit and cement these victories into law.

As we’re seeing now, even these massive gains are always at risk of being revoked under capitalism. NGO-driven court battles are insufficient to actually stop abortion bans and gender-affirming care bans from coming into effect and threatening our safety. Politicians of the two corporate parties cannot be relied on to provide leadership for a movement against these bills. Actually defeating these attacks, and building a sustained challenge to the right, will take a united struggle of ordinary people.

Building a United Fightback Students in many states have led walkouts in response to the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and other anti-trans legislation. Additionally, on college and even high school campuses, young people are turning out in the hundreds to lead protests against sexual assault, and racism. These youth led direct actions point toward the type of bold strategy that is needed to protect the rights of women and LGBTQ people.

Women and LGBTQ people have everything to gain by fighting collectively for bodily autonomy. We need Medicare for All that provides free, easily accessible abortions and contraception as well as fully covered gender affirming care. We need an end to the endless street harassment and sexual assault faced by women and queer people. We need trans inclusive, consent based sex education in schools. The demands of the women’s and queer movements are intimately tied up with one another and winning them will require a common struggle based on mass direct action.

There is a massive hunger for social change especially among young people – the establishment and politics-as-usual is standing in the way. We need to build a sustained fighting movement against the right and ultimately against capitalism to achieve a world without misogyny and transphobia. J