Socialist Alternative #85 - July/August 2022

ALTERNATIVE

SOCIALIST

ISSUE #85 l JULY/AUGUST 2022

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INSIDE DEFEND ABORTION RIGHTS WHY WORK SUCKS UNIONIZE YOUR WORKPLACE

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WHAT WE STAND FOR Mobilize Against Attacks on Bodily Autonomy!

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• The overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court represents a historic defeat for the women’s movement. We cannot let these attacks on women and queer people’s bodily autonomy stand: we need a new mass women’s movement on the scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won.

• 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.

• Stop the attacks on queer youth! We need a robust fightback against the brutal antitrans legislation in many states and all rightwing attacks on LGBTQ people, including noncompliance organized by the labor movement among workers tasked with enforcing these bigoted laws.

• 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 Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.

A New Political Party for Working People

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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. 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.

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 whose “democratic” rhetoric is a cover for corporate interests.

• Immediate withdrawal 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.

• No more excuses! Biden and the Democrats are catastrophically failing to address the urgent crises facing working people or to oppose the vicious attacks on the marginalized from the right. We need to mount our own independent movement against Republican attacks and to force the Democrats to act while they are in power.

• The complete failure of the Biden administration to make good on popular campaign promises is opening the door again to the right and the far right.

• Democrats and Republicans alike are unwilling to make any structural changes that threaten the status quo. We need a new, working-class, multiracial left party that organizes and fights for workers’ interests and is Fight Rising Prices & Expand the committed to socialist policies to lead the Social Safety Net! fight against the right and point a way out of • With inflation eating away at our paychecks, the horrors of capitalism. we need a movement from below to push back against the corporate interests that Rebuild a Fighting Labor dominate establishment politics.

Movement!

• Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high-quality public • Building off the historic union victory at housing. Raise the corporate tax rate to Amazon in New York and the ongoing Starat least 35%! bucks organizing drive, we need mass cam• Make the child tax credit permanent and paigns to unionize the millions of non-union fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. workers in the U.S. Cancel all student debt and make public • We need to build and rebuild radical fightcollege tuition-free. Raise the federal ing unions that are fully democratic and

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WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Mia Altamuro, New Paltz I grew up in a predominantly Republican, working-class town. When I was little, my family suffered through job losses due to the 2008 recession, as well as impacts of the opioid epidemic and never-ending hospital bills.

When Trump was elected in 2016, many people in the mainstream media were surprised, but I wasn’t. I heard many of Trump’s ideas being espoused by people I grew up with before he even announced he was running, including the desire for a border wall.

The rise of QAnon and the far-right felt like a natural consequence flowing from emboldening those ideas. As much as I was distrustful of these ideas, I didn’t know how to fight them.

Our neighboring town, which we shared a middle school and high school with, was wealthier and more liberal. The students from there would discuss how backwards my own hometown was, to their all-white, all-upper middle class friend group. I was struck by how surface-level their politics seemed, and it didn’t provide a real answer to the right-wing ideas of the people who grew up where I did.

I was finally introduced to socialist ideas in college. They appealed to me because

it was the only political ideology I was exposed to that offered a concrete, historically-backed reason as to why oppression exists, as opposed to liberals who view it as just an inevitable flaw of humanity.

There is actual agency for the masses, aside from just voting for the heroes and then checking out of politics. The solutions are scientific, and based in real analysis, and address the root cause of the issues. After joining Socialist Alternative, I feel empowered to fight right-wing ideas through a working-class program.

I’m a member of Socialist Alternative because we offer a fighting way forward against oppression, and because I want to win a socialist world! J

minimum wage! use of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm • We need an immediate transition to Medipolice on patrol. care for All. Take for-profit hospital chains • Put policing under the control of democratiand Big Pharma into public ownership and cally-elected civilian boards with power over retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, healthcare to every American. and the power to subpoena.

• Fully fund public education! End school • The Democrats’ pivot to “law and order” privatization. We need a national hiring propolicing will only bear down on people of gram to bring in hundreds of thousands of color and the poor. new educators and support staff to accom- • We keep us safe: build a movement for modate a permanent reduction in class size. public safety based on the genuine needs of working people.

End the COVID Chaos

• As new variants continue to emerge across For a Socialist Green New Deal the globe, it’s abundantly clear that capital- • We need a Green New Deal jobs proist world leaders have failed to contain this gram that provides well-paid union jobs crisis. Advanced capitalist countries need to for millions of workers expanding green be pushed to urgently reallocate their surplus infrastructure. vaccines to poor countries and help establish • We need to build an international environthe infrastructure for universal vaccination mental struggle led by the global working worldwide. class and youth fighting for an immediate • Take Big Pharma profiteers into public ownend to the use of fossil fuels and a 100% ership and turn existing vaccines into the transition to green energy.

People’s Vaccines!

• This can only be accomplished by taking • We need an ongoing infrastructure to cope the top 100 polluting companies into with COVID in instances where it flares up. democratic public ownership. We need a This includes free, easily accessible tests democratically planned economy here and available in every community across the around the world to carry out the transforcountry. Workers exposed to COVID should mation necessary to avoid climate disaster. be given paid self-isolation days after exposure or after developing symptoms.

The Whole System is Guilty

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

• 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

• 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

EDITORIAL

GASLIT BY THE PARTY IN POWER Keely Mullen, New York City

The economy is thriving, COVID is entirely under control, and our basic rights are being safeguarded. This is reality according to the Democrats who have resorted to all-out gaslighting as their number one campaign strategy going into the midterms.

Working people are in a devastating situation right now with sky-high gas and food prices, skyrocketing rent, the never ending loop of COVID surges, and a right-wing assault on our bodily autonomy. The Democrats have done a grand total of nothing to alleviate this pain, and the consequences for this inaction will be historic losses in the midterms.

Democratic strategists are not naive, they know exactly what’s coming. The New York Times reported that a Democratic strategist recently opened a phone call with, “Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?”

But rather than fighting to win over voters by delivering on any number of broken campaign promises, the Democrats are resorting to psychological warfare. They’ve concluded that their hail mary for November is hypnosis: “your life is fine, we’ve done so much for you, you’re just too dumb to understand.”

Why Fight When You Can Gaslight?

According to Gallup’s latest data, only 18% of people approve of the job Congress is doing and 16% are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. Compare this to the 2018 midterms when, under Trump, satisfaction with the direction of the U.S. was more than double what it is today. In 2018 the Democrats took back the House with a lackluster but significant “blue wave.”

Each key metric for 2022 is at least 10 points lower than the historical average at the time of previous midterm elections. These rock bottom numbers didn’t materialize out of thin air, they’re a reaction to the very dangerous situation working people have found ourselves in, and the fact that the Democrats outright refuse to fight to make things better.

They failed to cancel any student debt, they failed to raise the minimum wage, they failed to pass any meaningful climate legislation, they failed to take action against racist police brutality, they failed to pass immigration reform. In fact, they failed to enact a J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2

though dramatically smaller in scale to BLM, represented an opposite threat of an emboldened right wing in the streets.

In the summer of 2021, Biden enjoyed several months of economic recovery and the temporary receding of the COVID chaos. In other words, the pressures that that forced him to make big promises let up. Without pressure in the form of a mass movement, or even a single demand from the left in Congress, Biden and the Democrats quickly fell to the pressure of the single meaningful piece of their entire ruling class to cut back on state spending and domestic agenda.

Rather than responding to the hundreds shelve “Build Back Better.”

Passing their domestic agenda at this of anti-LGBTQ bills up for debate across stage would require throwing out the rule the country by passing the Equality Act, the Democrats slapped us across the face with a book and taking aim at Manchin, Sinema, and the courts. It would require them being rainbow flag and hoped we wouldn’t notice.

In the White House statement to kick off willing to mobilize ordinary people into the Pride month, they wrote: “Since President streets, something which would surely send Biden took office, he has championed the them into anaphylactic shock. So, rather than rights of LGBTQI+ Americans and people risk it, they’re folding their hands.

The consequences of this approach for ordiaround the world, accelerating the march nary people will be dire. A Republican takeover towards full equality.”

Rather than fight to pass the PRO Act of Congress guarantees that, barring a mass which would have been one of the most movement, nothing progressive is won in D.C. significant pieces of pro-worker legislation for at least two years. Beyond the obvious impact this will have on people’s material exissince the 1930s, tence, it will undoubtthey dropped it and In a joke so dark you can edly also have an tweeted: “President barely see it, the Democrats effect on consciousBiden is the most ness. When faced were just forced to drop Nancy pro-union president in American history.” Pelosi’s proposed midterm slogan with an atrophied left, some ordinary people Rather than due to abysmal polling.

The may begin looking to responding to spiralthe right, or even the slogan?

“Democrats deliver.” ing inflation with an far right, for answers. immediate increase Others, however, will see the growing right wing in the federal minimum wage, Biden wrote threat as a call to action to build movements in in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “Since I took the streets and their workplaces that are not office, families have increased their savings and have less debt…The U.S. is in a better under Democrats’ control. economic position than almost any other country.”

In the first two and a half weeks of June, the DNC tweeted 25 times about how well the economy is doing.

In a joke so dark you can barely see it, the Democrats were just forced to drop Nancy Pelosi’s proposed midterm slogan due to abysmal polling. The slogan? “Democrats deliver.”

So why is it that, despite knowing the consequences, they’re not delivering? Fundamentally, it is because the Democratic Party is a party loyal to the maintenance of the capitalist system. All those big promises they made in 2020 were made under duress.

The system was in such a freefall that even Trump was forced to support mammoth social spending in order to stave off a spiraling economic crisis.

The establishment faced the threat of revolt coming from two directions. On one hand we had the Black Lives Matter rebellion, with millions angrily taking the streets for an end to racist police brutality. This was the biggest protest movement in U.S. history. On the other, we had the January 6 attempted coup which,

The Left In Congress Bernie Sanders’ recently wrote a forceful op-ed in The Guardian calling on the Democrats to change course. He wrote: “In an extremely difficult and unsettling time… the American people want their elected officials to stand up to powerful special interests and fight for them. Well. The Democrats control the White House, the Senate and the House – and yet that is not happening. They are being held accountable for their inaction, and they’re losing.”

He correctly pointed out the Biden administration’s fruitless strategy of polite negotiations with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and called on the party’s leadership to fight.

But Bernie again takes a left turn to nowhere by insisting that the Democratic leadership really wants to help working class Americans, it’s just the Republicans and Democratic defectors in the Senate who are holding things up. This is just a lighter shade of delusion.

For the cleanest illustration of just how

false Bernie’s assertion is, let us consider what Biden could do, right now, using executive action: • Biden could ban all oil drilling on public land. Instead he actually approved 34% more drilling permits in his first year than Trump!

• Biden could erase an unlimited amount of student debt, but has failed to cancel even the modest $10,000 per borrower he promised on the campaign trail.

• As Roe v. Wade has now been overturned, Biden could guarantee and even expand access to abortion pills across the country, and open abortion clinics in federal buildings in states across the country, but has been completely noncommittal.

In May (the same month it was announced that the Supreme Court intended to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the day before the Uvalde mass shooting) Nancy Pelosi was sending out hundreds of thousands of robo-calls encouraging Texans to vote for Henry Cuellar, the anti-choice, pro-NRA Democrat against a progressive challenger.

In Biden’s State of the Union in March, on the question of defunding the police, he shouted “We say fund them! Fund them!”

Rather than seeing this hostility for what it is and positioning themselves as antagonists of the establishment, Bernie and the Squad have done exactly what they accuse the party’s leadership of doing with the Republicans: dropping the fight.

No More Excuses Every young person that was strong-armed into voting for Biden against their better instincts is learning a devastating lesson right now. Despite all the hemming and hawing from the liberal media that voting for Democrats is all you can do to fight the right, the right is still winning. Despite their insistence that voting for the lesser of two evils was the only way to protect our rights, our rights are now under attack.

It would be easy for many young and working class people to simply close their eyes to politics. This is where the left has a dire and historic obligation to begin building a new, mass political home for all the young and working class people turning away from the Democrats. A huge space has opened up in U.S. society for this but it requires significant forces to step up to the challenge.

We need an independent political party that students see as a vehicle they can use to fight anti-LGBTQ attacks in their school districts. A party that workers can use to build militant political support for their strike, union vote, or contract negotiations. A party that is truly democratic, with a political program that is voted on and tactics that are coordinated.

Building this type of independent mass political organization – alongside the crucial ongoing project of rebuilding a fighting labor movement and vibrant social struggles – should be a priority for every single left-wing labor leader, every socialist in office, and every social movement.

It is only on the basis of an organized working class mass movement, and political independence from the rotten Democratic Party, that we can undercut the fear that nothing can change and, even more importantly, undercut the growth of the right. J

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MIDTERMS

TRUMP DOMINATED GOP SEIZES ON DEMOCRATIC INACTION R E P U BL I C A N P R I M A R I E S

Chris Gray, Minneapolis

The Democrats’ prospects this November are bleak. It’s all but certain that the Republicans will win back the house this November, and the only thing keeping them from winning the Senate too is Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who could take a seat currently held by the Republicans but is still off the campaign trail after a 9-day hospital stay following a stroke.

Even though they control all branches of government, the Democrats have nothing to run on.

They chose their corporate funders over popular policies like a $15/hr minimum wage, investing in jobs through Build Back Better, or supporting unions through the PRO Act. The Democratic Party’s last bets for the midterms are bad ones. They are hoping voters care more about January 6 than they do their watered down paychecks and shrinking savings accounts. Likewise NOW, NARAL and Planned Parenthood are betting $150 million that they will gain more electoral momentum this November out of a defeat for Roe v Wade, than the momentum gained by the GOP for delivering a historic victory to pro-lifers.

However, the Republicans’ temporary unity against Biden and temporary momentum from Biden’s failures have not reconciled the deep divisions within the party, which were on full display in this year’s primary elections.

Trump Still Controls the GOP The Republican Party moved sharply to the right under Trump’s presidency. It was to such an extent that the party ceased to function as a reliable tool of the U.S. ruling class the way it has for nearly all of American history.

The clearest illustration of this was the storming of the capitol on January 6 where all out war was declared within the party by the Trump wing. This is the context for the GOP primaries today, and the battle within the party for control. The traditional establishment finds itself in an extreme bind as they seek to rid the party of Trumpism – which poses a legitimate threat to bourgeois democracy as we know it – while also recognizing the popularity of Trump’s ideas among their voters.

Over 100 GOP primary winners openly cast doubt on the 2020 election results.

Trump won important senate primary victories in battleground states like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, JD Vance in Ohio, Herschel Walker in Georgia, and Ted Budd in North

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Carolina. Trump was more opportunistic in the Alabama Senate primary, where he switched his endorsement from Mo Brooks to Katie Britt after it was clear she would win.

Trump’s victories in individual primaries confirmed a shift that had already taken place in the GOP. Forty four percent of the sitting Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided have publicly cast doubt on the 2020 election results. Republicans have proposed at least 250 new laws in 43 states to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting.

However, this does not mean the GOP is fully united around Trump’s extreme “election theft” brand. While 24% of sitting Republican legislators supported an independent audit of the election results, which can be useful beyond Trump to create a pretext for voter suppression against working class people, only 7% supported the far more legally dubious theory of “decertification” of the 2020 election, a tactic currently unacceptable to the U.S. capitalist class.

There were limits to Trump’s ability to punish Republican incumbents who balked at his claims about the 2020 election. In South Carolina, a Trump-backed insurgent lost their senate primary. In Nebraska and Idaho, incumbent Governors defeated Trump-backed insurgents who criticized their certification of the 2020 election.

carefully cultivated by the promoted by rightwing commentators who have access to millions through mainstream mediaRepublican establishment to win votes. Republicans, both in politics and in the media, know that they have no real solution to the crises facing working class people, so they lean on “culture war” issues as meat to their base.

In many ways, Democratic Party mega donors are also responsible for the rise of farright, fringe ideas in one of the two parties of U.S. capitalism. Karl Rove is accusing Democratic party PACs of artificially elevating the profile of fringe, right-wing Republicans in order to create more favorable general elections. In Illinois, Democratic Governor JB Pritzker has spent $32 million attacking a previously unknown right-wing candidate in an effort to avoid running against Mayor Richard Irvin of Aurora, IL, a Black Republican who has a better chance of winning the state.

south Texas district in over a hundred years.

She is a 36 year old healthcare worker whose husband is an ICE agent. In her campaign she played up her working class background as a migrant who worked alongside her parents in cotton fields. The first sentence on her website read: “Voters in District 34 are realizing we no longer have to beg for scraps from Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats”. Her website does not mention Trump, anywhere.

Her victory mainly shows the dangers of relying on empty, “woke” slogans that don’t offer material benefits to working class people, as the Democrats have. Class politics, not “woke” sloganeering, is the way to split the base for these right wing candidates. Bernie’s class appeal did very well with Latino voters, even older voters, in states like Nevada. In fact, in a 2020 poll of “very important” issues in the 2020 election, Latinos were 10% more likely to list healthcare; 15% more likely to list racial and economic equality; and 20% more likely to list climate change than the whole electorate.

Even in Crisis, the GOP Can Win: A Working Class Alternative is Needed There are many fault lines that can undermine the GOP’s current coexistence between the old guard Republican establishment, Trump’s personal branch of opportunistic patronage, the far-right who are using the situation to advance their own ideas, and

The Far-Right Made Gains Inside the GOP This year, five members of the Proud Boys were elected onto the 135 member MiamiDade County Republican Executive Committee. When asked for comment, the Chairman of the Committee replied, “yes, we have different points of view in our party.”

In other cases, Republican candidates are openly pandering to paramilitary, far right ideas in an effort to win elections. For example, Eric Grietans, a Republican candidate for senate in Missouri, released a campaign ad featuring him brandishing a shotgun, flanked by soldiers in tactical gear outside of a home.

He kicks in the door hunting for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) who have surrendered to “Joe Biden and the radical left.”

This normalization of certain far-right ideas has taken on a life of its own, leading to an emboldening of far-right vigilantism. We saw this with the 31 self-identified “fascists” were arrested in a van preparing to attack PRIDE in Boise, Idaho.

While these attacks have almost no mass support, the ideas that underpin them are

Outrage at Dems Opens Space for GOP to Win Fresh Voters One of the most uncomfortable facts about the 2020 election for liberals was that Trump made significant gains among Latino and Black voters, especially older people. In 2020, Trump doubled his 2016 vote in Miami-Dade County. He won 30% of Puerto Ricans and 48% of non-Cuban Latinos in Florida. This pattern was not unique to Florida. In Zapata County, Texas, which is 93% Latino, Trump beat Biden by 6% - Hillary Clinton won the same county by 33% in 2016.

One particular candidate very clearly demonstrates the growing appeal of right-populist ideas to voters of color. Republican Mayra Flores became the first Republican to win her

fresh candidates of color who see a political moment in the general outrage at the Democratic Party.

However Republicans do not offer anything to working class people. Once in office, they defend billionaires and corporations, just like the Democrats do. The way to break with the cycle of bouncing from one corporatecontrolled party to another is to build an independent political party.

A political force that is rooted in strikes, social justice movements, and working class communities; democratically controlled by its members; free from corporate cash and that fights unapologetically for a working class program that offers real material benefits to working class people, not performative liberal soundbytes or divisive scapegoating culture wars. J

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

WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

ROE OVERTURNED

WE NEED ACTION NOW TO DEFEND ABORTION RIGHTS Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Councilmember

The day the Supreme Court announced their overturn of Roe v Wade, tens of thousands took to the streets across the country.

The shameful, right-wing ruling runs counter to the support for legal abortion by the majority of American working people. But the protests also made very clear that millions are enraged at the complete failure of the Democrats to fight back and at the idea that all we need to do now is vote blue in November.

In New York, over 20,000 people angrily marched through Manhattan, led by Socialist Alternative and other left groups and unions.

The energy at the demonstration was so ferocious that the march went on for four hours.

In Fayetteville, Arkansas hundreds protested in the town center demanding a socialist feminist alternative to bankrupt girlboss feminism.

In Houston, where Socialist Alternative put out a call for mass protests at the federal courthouse, five thousand people turned out.

In a now viral video from the protest, Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who showed up asking for a speaking slot, can be seen hanging his head in shame as the crowd around him chanted “Voting blue is not enough! Democrats we call your bluff!”

In every city where Socialist Alternative organized demonstrations, our members report that the crowds were full of young people furious at not just the obvious barbarism of the right, but also the inability and refusal of the Democrats to defend even basic rights.

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“Do Nothing Democrats”

It is not lost on people that immediately following the ruling, the party in power, rather than fighting to codify Roe or implement executive orders to protect abortion rights which the vast majority of society supports, instead put on a performance of God Bless America on the steps of the Supreme Court.

As comical as it sounds, this really happened.

Hours after the ruling, Democratic fundraising emails started coming in like an avalanche.

“Please, I’ve never needed your support more than today. Can you chip in $15 so we can WIN these midterms and finally codify reproductive rights into law?” Nancy Pelosi wrote. “Can you rush in a donation of any amount to stop the far-right and elect a proabortion rights Congress this year?” asked Rep. David Cicilline.

These insulting pleas by the Democrats for money and votes are facing widespread anger from young people. As one young woman said, “It’s like asking us to buy into a broken system yet again in the hopes it might fix itself; it won’t,”

We Need Action NOW The Democrats, with their control of the White House and majorities in Congress, have the ability to take meaningful steps - if they had the political will - to overcome this attack from the right.

This very second, Biden could: 1. Sign an executive order opening abortion clinics on federal land in the more than 20 states with trigger bans. Clinics

would then be free to operate out of federal office buildings or mobile clinics could be set up on any federal land.

2. Make abortion pills accessible across the country by using the F.D.A.’s guidance to preempt any state restrictions.

3. Expand access to telemedicine services for abortion and use the federal control of the mail system to guarantee shipments of abortion pills will not be restricted.

Beyond this, Biden and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate can fight tooth and nail to codify Roe. They can use every tactic at their disposal to force Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to get on board with abolishing the filibuster and passing the Women’s Health Protection Act. They can also urgently repeal the Hyde Amendment and tax the billionaires to massively expand funding for clinics now buckling under increased demand.

In addition to these steps that would make a dramatic difference in people’s ability to access abortions, we also need a host of social services to ensure people can afford to have children when they want them.

This means an immediate transition to Medicare for All on a federal level to make all reproductive and gender affirming care free.

It means bringing back the pandemic-era child tax credits, and fighting for universal childcare and fully funded public schools, all of this funded by taxing the wealthy.

No More Excuses AOC is right when she says: “The President & Dem leaders can no longer get away with familiar tactics of ‘committees’ and ‘studies’ to avoid tackling our crises head-on anymore.”

She has called on Biden to take immediate executive action to protect abortion access and I wholeheartedly agree. But as we’ve learned through the experience of AOC and the Squad, just asking corporate Democrats to act will never be enough. Socialist Alternative’s nearly nine years in office in Seattle have shown that we need to build a movement powerful enough to force Democratic politicians to take action, despite their opposition.

Like Cori Bush did with the eviction moratorium, AOC, Bernie, and other members of the Squad should call for an occupation outside the White House demanding Biden use executive action to open abortion clinics on federal land and expand access to

abortion pills. We can organize protests at federal buildings in cities across the country in support.

If the Democratic leadership still refuses to act, we will need to step up the pressure with protests and direct action at the offices of Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. After the leaked ruling in May, Socialist Alternative in New York and the Bay Area organized sit-ins at Pelosi and Schumer’s offices. Thousands of people tuned into the live streams, eagerly cheering them on. This is the type of action we will need to take if we’re serious about forcing the Democrats to act.

Fight For Sanctuary Cities While we ramp up our demands on the Democrats to take immediate action on the federal level, there are crucial fights we can wage at the state and local level to ensure abortion access for both residents and outof-state visitors.

In Seattle, my socialist City Council office is introducing legislation making Seattle a sanctuary city for anyone facing a legal penalty in their home state for seeking or providing an abortion. If passed, the legislation would prevent Seattle Police from arresting people, either patients or doctors and other care providers, for outstanding warrants related to anti-abortion laws in other states.

We will also be bringing People’s Budget legislation to make abortion free in Seattle for people traveling from states with anti-abortion laws as well a Seattle residents, funded by increasing the Amazon Tax we won in 2020.

DSA elected officials in other cities should bring forward and fight for similar legislation.

Our Council office is happy to be a resource in providing draft legislation and discussing the best strategies to build grassroots pressure to ensure its signed into law.

We Need An Independent Mass Movement In order to respond to the onslaught of vicious attacks from the right, we need an independent mass movement that can provide a homebase for young people and workers looking for a way to fight back.

As Socialist Alternative wrote the day of the Supreme Court ruling: “With a complete lack of leadership from the Democratic Party or liberal NGOs, stopping the right in their tracks will require a completely independent movement of young and working class people. This movement needs to have clearly defined political goals, democratic structures, and complete independence from the Democrats.”

We need to run independent socialist and working-class candidates as an immediate step toward building a new party for working people and youth that will unambiguously fight for our interests.

I call on every other elected socialist, every labor leader, and every social movement leader to join me in the call for a democratic mass movement, new mass organizations of struggle, and a once-and-for-all break from the rotten Democratic Party which has enabled the right-wing war on our bodily autonomy. J

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YOUTH & STUDENTS

HOW I’M SPENDING MY SUMMER BREAK

Elise Picard, Birmingham I am a 17 year old high school student building a branch of Socialist Alternative in Birmingham, Alabama.

My generation, Gen Z, has experienced some of the most radicalizing summers in U.S. history. Since COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement, “activism” has become a regular activity for an increasing number of teenagers. Social media has become a primary tool for young people to express their anger and effectively organize around it for change.

As I write this, the outrageous Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe has prompted thousands of graphics to be made and reposted, directing users to their local actions.

Since the events of 2020, we have faced mounting problems resulting from capitalism in crisis. This is amplified in my southern home state, Alabama, where attacks on queer youth and reproductive healthcare have multiplied as Republican politicians seek to bolster their campaigns approaching the midterms.

Laws criminalizing access to gender affirming healthcare and bathroom bills have passed following the wave that kicked off after Florida Governor Desantos’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which limits discussion of sexuality and gender in classrooms.

Climate related events have devastated towns in the south while monopolies like Alabama Power are gifted money by the state through a “solar power tax.”

Mass shootings and school shootings continue at a terrifying rate across the country, but especially in states that brag about their open carry policies.

In my community, youth-led organizations and spaces like Magic City Acceptance Center, March 4 Our Lives, and various environmental groups have materialized in response to these specific problems, demonstrating an undeniable hunger for a wider, more unified mass movement.

I’m Spending the Summer Building Socialist Alternative in Alabama The Alabama branch of Socialist Alternative, which had its one year anniversary in April, has been able to engage with many of these groups this summer. During May, we planned a rally around Governor Kay Ivey’s HB322 and SB184 in Birmingham.

HB322 mandates that K-12 students use the bathroom of their birth sex and bans discussion of gender identity and sexuality in K-5, while SB184 makes it a felony to provide gender affirming care to minors.

I was able to speak about and advertise our action with the help of a fellow studentorganizer who was another key speaker at the rally. I led chants and gave a speech demanding access to reproductive healthcare and an end to attacks on trans youth. The majority of people who came out were high school students from not only mine, but various high schools around the Birmingham area who heard about the rally on Instagram.

Our next major event of the summer was Pride. Birmingham’s pride celebrations have Socialist Alternative Alabama tables at Pride in Birmingham.

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slowly become more corporatized over time, reaching a peak this year.

Linn Park, a common spot for political activism in downtown, was fenced off for Pride Fest and hosted booths for companies like Cricket Wireless and Target. We sold out of all of our pamphlets criticizing this type of rainbow capitalism, and there was a feeling of exasperation from working class people who recalled the shameless cooptation of the BLM banner by companies like Nike during the height of that movement.

We ended up raising hundreds of dollars and got over 50 names on our “NO MORE EXCUSES: Democrats Codify Roe” petition, proving people’s vexxed consciousness around the current political climate and our slipping grip on reproductive rights.

Why I Joined Socialist Alternative Like many of my peers, I was drawn into the idea of activism to improve conditions for working people after the election of Trump and the protests of 2020.

I first encountered Socialist Alternative at an event in support of the Bessemer Amazon union drive. Members from all over the country had flown down to help with the campaign to unionize Amazon, which was being illegally disrupted by a corporate-led union busting campaign. While door knocking, these members happened to stop by my friend’s house. She asked me to go with her to an Amazon union rally that they had mentioned. At the rally, a member from New York handed us a flier for a public meeting at Railroad Park (which is now our go to summer tabling location).

I was so excited by the tenacity of the organizers that I met. The energy that I felt at that public meeting has carried through our approach to every strategy that we employ in Alabama.

We hold in-person and virtual public meetings because young people want to learn about a socialist feminist approach to securing reproductive rights. We table every other weekend because students are tired of living in fear of gun violence in their classrooms. We talk to folks at Pride because high schoolers are done with Democrats failing to do anything real to secure LGBTQ rights.

There are things about building SA in Alabama that are unique. In the South, it is easy to fall into the trap of Democratic Party promises because of the consistent political victory of Republicans. Many well-intentioned people believe that the only way left is through the Democratic Party, rather than through a new, working-class led party. But we still talk to these people about Democratic Party and why we believe it’s not an avenue through which liberation can be achieved. This has been made especially clear after the loss of Roe v. Wade.

There’s a stereotype of anti-unionism in the South, which cultivates complacent cynicism about the viability of building a socialist party here.

In reality, the history of working class movements in the South is rich, and people are ready to fight for better conditions. The fact that a thriving branch of SA in Alabama is possible is a testament to that. J

J O I N S O C I A L I S T A LT E R N AT I V E T O D AY S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

L ABOR Bryan Koulouris, St. Paul The pandemic has accelerated a deeplyrooted mental health crisis, particularly with young people. Social isolation from COVID is now heaped on top of intense anxieties about the future of life under capitalism. Mass shootings, war, environmental destruction, right-wing attacks on oppressed people, the opioid epidemic, and deep economic uncertainty all throw people into panic and despair.

There are thousands of scholarly articles with “band aid” proposals to deal with a festering open wound of drastically increased anxiety, depression, and trauma.

Activists often correctly focus on the need for more mental health services that have been depleted by decades of budget cuts from both Republicans and Democrats, but often their analysis and proposals often unfortunately stop there. The depth of the mental health crisis under capitalism goes far beyond the lack of adequate funding for counseling and other services.

Every day, while we struggle to pay rent or mortgages with often unfulfilling jobs, we have less time to spend with family, loved ones, and friends who are often navigating their own battles with poverty and addiction in an age of capitalist disorder.

Connected to all this, people left their jobs in record numbers during the “great resignation.” Thousands of others, frustrated with their jobs, have joined ballooning “anti-work” groups on the internet. On top of this, memes expressing anger and desperation about work have become commonplace, not just from anti-capitalist activists.

Most importantly for socialists, previously unorganized workers from Starbucks to Amazon and elsewhere have started forming unions to address low pay, bad working conditions, and other frustrations with workplaces that increasingly feel like dictatorships of the bosses.

What’s at the root of all these problems?

Nearly 180 years ago, Karl Marx wrote the “Estranged Labor” chapter of “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” which is intensely relevant today. Marx explained his theory of alienation which describes how capitalism makes us detached from our most important life activities, warps our relationships with other people, and cuts across our connection to nature.

is based on theft by the billionaires on a grand scale. Explaining how they do this and how it affects the economy is the subject of many other articles, but this exploitation is at the heart of capitalism and Marx’s theory of alienation.

A central idea of Marx’s theory is that working people don’t have full control over their lives while working. You might be able to decide from a few jobs you can get in your area, but when you’re actually working, you have to do basically what the company requires from you. This can be enforced by

on this topic, frustrated with the insult that capitalism adds to our exploitation.

Most working people acknowledge Marx’s basic premise underlying his theory of alienation: our real life starts after work. This is even acknowledged in “management-speak” of a “work/life balance.” By the very existence of this common term, bosses acknowledge that we’re not fully living while we labor.

While the central aspect of Marx’s theory is obvious to millions, the deep implications are often obscured by our daily realities.

Virtually everything in society is created by this alienating work in the blind pursuit of profits. The products we buy, the experiences we pay for, the buildings all around us, the homes we live in: nearly everything is produced through this alienating and exploitative process, keeping us “estranged” from the world around us even when we’re off the job.

On top of this, we often are forced to work in jobs that are not useful to society. Over half a million people in this country work in the medical insurance industry in jobs that wouldn’t be necessary if we had “Medicare for all.” Nearly a million people work in the weapons manufacturing business. Many people in these industries would rather be working elsewhere given the opportunity. The best scientists are often forced to work on building new weapons instead of curing diseases.

Construction workers build luxury condo after luxury condo instead of quality affordable housing or schools and hospitals in the communities where they live.

Even jobs useful to society are warped by the profit motive. Nurses are forced to deal with too many patients in a sick, for-profit industry, and homeless shelter workers would rather see the root of the problem addressed.

The best artists often work in advertising, an industry that employs over a quarter-million people in the U.S. Most improvements to productivity are made by workers who want to make their own jobs easier. Instead of being rewarded for this with less hours and no loss of pay, every innovation is used by the capitalists to automate jobs and threaten layoffs.

WHY WORK SUCKS

Work Under Capitalism If you want stable food on your table and a roof over your head, then you have to sell your ability to work under capitalism. Companies wouldn’t hire people if they didn’t profit from using your work and paying you less than the value of your labor. Capitalism J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2

CAPITALIST ALIENATION AND SOCIALIST HUMAN POTENTIAL pushy managers, or at Amazon and UPS by technology designed to exploit us as much as possible, keep us from taking breaks, and make us feel dehumanized.

Company profits are all they want from your work, and the whole economy revolves around this. Each company competes with each other to maximize profit and cut every corner in the process. Only the most psychopathic billionaires rise to the top while working people suffer. So, for most of our waking hours, while we’re working, we’re not making decisions for ourselves and are only a productivity number for the capitalists.

In Marx’s time and place, the vast majority of working people were employed in factories doing repetitive tasks. While over 12 million people in the U.S. still work similar jobs today, we also have over 100 million workers in the service sector. This brings on another form of alienation at work: constantly pretending to be happy and docile as we feel the pressure of a dysfunctional world weighing down on us. At every store, restaurant, coffee shop, or call center, we’re forced to put on a smile and take a pleasant tone when confronted with absurd situations created by the companies we work for. Internet memes are everywhere

Does It Have To Be Like This?

Marx argues that work should be a uniquely human life-affirming activity. Many readers will say “whoa Karl, that’s quite a stretch, bro.” Some redditors in the “antiwork” group would likely laugh at this ridiculous idea by the bearded guy. Well, in order to see Marx’s point, let’s look at what we do for fun outside of work.

Many of people’s most treasured hobbies were forms of work in pre-capitalist societies. Do you like gardening? Knitting? Fishing?

Hunting? Cooking? Making crafts? All these were jobs at some point and they satisfy our

innate need to manipulate the world into something useful for ourselves and people around us. OK, maybe these aren’t your favorite things to do. But for another example, video games often connect us to millions of people working together for common goals and social interaction.

There’s another way to look at how work could be more fulfilling. Academics in management schools have spent decades trying to figure out what motivates us to work hard.

They do this to figure out how to maximize profits and productivity, but their findings support Marx’s theory.

In an extensive study, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Management School (hardly a bastion of socialism) found that two main things motivate people to work hard.

One factor above all else was control over your work! The other main factor that motivates us? Feeling like your work is doing something important to help others in society. Good pay and benefits doesn’t hurt either!

Unfortunately for these management gurus, they can’t deliver on what they know would motivate us to work harder. This system is controlled by the blind alley of profit, not by working people. We don’t control our individual workplaces or the wider economy which results in so few of our jobs feeling like we’re making a meaningful contribution to society even when we know our skills could be put to better use.

Unleashing Human Potential Over 26 million people internationally are refugees fleeing war, conflict, unrest, or disaster. On top of this, hundreds of millions more live in absolute poverty with no prospect of ever entering the formal workforce.

For all its talk of “efficiency,” capitalism is wasting untold amounts of human potential to change the world for the better. And economic inequality is only one factor in how capitalism wastes our abilities.

As the management gurus begrudgingly admit, unlocking human potential would need workers control, meaningful jobs, and good pay. Capitalism is the opposite of this.

Socialism, a workers’ democracy with a plan of production to meet the needs of people and the planet, is the way forward. While the environmental situation may seem dire, unlocking the abilities of our species would give us hope for a sustainable, stable future.

Marx’s “Estranged Labor” gives us an outline of capitalism’s deep dysfunction and the potential for what socialist transformation could achieve. Many of the concepts could be applied and updated to help us understand today’s situations of looming economic crisis, social isolation, racism, sexism, and deep dehumanization.

While understanding capitalism will not solve the mental health problems we all face, it can give us renewed confidence in the fight to make a better world. J

For the full version of this article, dealing more with how capitalism estranges us from nature, the role of the advertising industry, and more, go to socialistalternative.org!

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INFLATION NOW, RECESSION LATER: CAPIT Steve Edwards, Chicago Working people in the U.S. are facing the worst inflation in 40 years. Gas is at $6 a gallon in many places; groceries are up by more than 10% over the past twelve months; rent is skyrocketing. For millions who were barely scraping by, this is a disaster. And this time there are no government checks coming.

Official statistics confirm that in May, consumer prices were up 8.6% over a year ago.

Grocery prices had already breached the 10% mark in April. Meanwhile wages and salaries only rose by 4.7%. When prices rise faster than wages, workers lose. In other words, unless your pay went up by at least 8.6% in the past twelve months, you’ve seen a pay cut.

Your ability to pay for things has been reduced.

This process we are seeing unfold now began with the pandemic-induced stock market crash of February and March of 2020, when central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system through repurchases of securities from banks and big corporations as the world went into lockdown.

One of the ways inflation happens is when the supply of money exceeds the supply of goods and services, and in the U.S. alone, this stimulus to the banking system added more than $8 trillion to the money supply over a two year period. Inflation is also caused by the supply of goods not meeting demand.

This inflationary wave was initially triggered by supply chain problems linked to COVID lockdowns as demand for goods from China surged as well as the impact of climatechange on agriculture. The Russian invasion of Ukraine which began on February 24 has created even more shortages of food and fuel.

This is a perfect storm.

A Range of Causes Rooted in Capitalist Contradictions Not all of this inflation is new. Housing costs had already seen steady increases due to many factors – the destruction of public housing, the crooked practices of the mortgage industry, and decades of developer speculation – in a 50-year process that long predates the 2008 Great Recession.

In the last twelve months, the price of gas has gone up almost 50% while the prices of both new and used cars have also leapt upwards. Grocery shopping has become a jolting experience, with some price rises far exceeding the official averages. For example, in April the price of eggs rose 44% year on year due to an ongoing outbreak of avian flu – a disease whose spread is rooted in the factory-farming methods used by agribusiness.

Sudden increases in fresh fruit prices have had consumers putting them back on the shelves.

In 2021, 53 million people turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on the table. In March of 2022, two thirds of the 200 food banks in the

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Feeding America network reported seeing 15% more people applying for food assistance in March than in the previous month.

These figures inevitably raise comparisons with the 1970s. The last time food prices increased by double figures was 1979, the year before right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president – largely by promising to end inflation. The head of the Federal Reserve at the time, Paul Volcker, sharply raised interest rates in order to cut across inflation which caused the economy to crash in what became known as the Reagan Recession.

Working class communities were crushed with a deep and lasting wave of unemployment, officially reaching almost 11% and remaining above 5% until 1989. The most oppressed suffered the worst: by 1983 the unemployment rate for Black Americans exceeded 20%.

In other words, inflation was controlled through an all-out attack on working class living standards which ushered in the period known as neoliberalism.

Fed’s Cure: Much Worse Than The Disease The circumstances may be different, but the response of the capitalist class is the same: make workers pay for the crisis.

Six weeks ago on May 4, Fed chair Jerome Powell announced a 0.50% point interest rate increase and stated that his intent was to reduce employment, and through that wages, with the assumption that prices will then go down: “by moderating demand, we could see [job] vacancies come down, and as a result… to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially.”

The way “moderating demand” works in this scenario is to make borrowing costs higher for businesses and individuals, leading businesses to cut back on investment, thereby needing less workers.

Powell repeated the point on June 15, following an even larger 0.75% rate increase: “You have a lot of surplus demand, for example in the labor market you have two job vacancie s essentially for every person actively seeking a job, and that has led to a real imbalance in wage negotiating. You could get to a place where you would expect to see those wage pressures move back down to a level where people are still getting wage increases, but at a level that’s consistent with two percent inflation.”

In other words – slash jobs so that workers are forced to accept raises far below the level of inflation. Slash jobs, slash workers’ pay, this is Powell’s formula. And while Powell claims this can be done without

triggering a recession, most economists now disagree.

Wages Are Not The Cause!

As multiple commentators, from Krystal Ball of Breaking Points to a host of mainstream economists, have pointed out, Powell’s implication that wages are to blame for inflation is nonsensical: it is wages that have stagnated while prices have risen.

The prices of gas, rent and food reflect multiple factors in the world economy and – as Powell has since been forced to admit before the U.S. Senate – raising interest rates will have zero direct impact on them. Nevertheless his intent, clearly, is to keep going with the goal of attacking wages and jobs. Biden, for his part, has given the Fed carte blanche, saying he is leaving it up to the experts and will not intervene.

The result will almost certainly be a new recession which will destroy not just this or that job opening but millions of jobs. A number of major corporations – particular household names from the tech sector like Uber, Meta/Facebook, Twitter and Redfin – are already laying workers off, or rescinding existing job offers, in anticipation that there will be a major downturn. This will be the third such shock in 14 years and will be an absolute disaster for workers and working class families.

Sudan and in the “Pink Tide” of Left electoral victories in Latin America.

A New York Times headline says it all: “Food Prices Approach Record Highs, Threatening the World’s Poorest.” The article went on to say that “prices have climbed to their highest level since 2011, according to a U.N. index. It could cause social

Inflation is an International Phenomenon The Financial Times of London, an elite outlet offering advice to the capitalist class, reports that even before war broke out in Ukraine, prices had risen to multi-decade highs in many countries, with the IMF predicting economic slowdowns in 143 countries, accounting for more than four fifths of the world economy. Global inflation was already surging, with the February forecast at 6.2%, 2.25 percentage points higher than January’s.

The FT warns that measures like the U.S. Fed is proposing risk creating “stagflation” – a com - bination of rising prices with stalled economic growth which plagued Western economies in the late 1970s. They talk about the stagflationary shock of 2022 as a world wide phenomenon and describe similar trends playing out today, in country after country.

The United Nations confirms the FT’s analysis, and worries about the effects of “fasterthan-expected monetary tightening by developed country central banks” on the rest of the world. This is in part because sharp interest rate increases by the U.S. and European central banks will massively exacerbate the global debt crisis facing poor countries, especially for debts denominated in dollars. The UN knows that this will also create the basis for uprisings of workers and the poor, as we saw with the Arab Spring in 2011 and more recently in

unrest widespread scale,’ one expert said.”

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What Caused this Crisis?

Many supply side factors have exacerbated the inflationary effect of the Fed’s policies.

These, include: the murderous war in Ukraine, the effect of climate change and unsustainable

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

TALISTS WANT US TO PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS agricultural practices on food supplies, supply chain problems like the lockdowns in China which are blocking both ports and factories, all the way to the shortage of truckers in the U.S., which in itself is a direct result of neoliberal deregulation and the bosses’ 40 year war on truck-

ers’ living standards.

But ultimately the causes of the crisis are based in the anarchic nature of the capitalist system. While it’s true, as Robert Reich has pointed out, that the biggest corporations, with their virtual monopoly positions, engage in price gouging just because they can, this is a product of these mega-corporations’ domination of the economy and politics, rather than the root cause of inflation itself.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2

The attempt of central banks to deal with the economic crash in 2008 and subsequently restarting the economy and again in 202021 by turning on the money gusher, pumping “liquidity” into markets at unprecedented rates, and then the “stimulus” of 202021 the bulk of which went to big business – are collectively referred to in the financial media as the policy of “easy money.” They represented a reversal of thirty years of neoliberal, monetarist policies.

It is completely false to say, as many media commentators do, that the bulk of the stimulus went to ordinary people, or that lower income households’ savings remain “padded” by what’s left of their stimulus payments more than a year after the final check.

The reality is that of the $6 trillion figure which Congress originally authorized, one third was never spent. Only $1.497 trillion went to direct payments to individuals and families. The real money gusher was never voted on by Congress. It came from central banks like the Federal Reserve and its European equivalent the ECB, and is barely mentioned by most corporate commentators. The enormous sums involved were confirmed in February 2022 by researchers working for the United Nations: “Since the start of the pandemic, the central banks of Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the euro area have added roughly $10.2 trillion in security assets to their already large balance sheets, letting their total assets soar to over $25.9 trillion. The Fed has been buying $120 billion worth of securities every month and has accumulated a total stock of $2.6 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and $5.5 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities.”

While it did work to restart the economy, the vast sums spent on stock buybacks increased inflationary pressures. The United Nations admits this with surprising frankness: “One factor that has been holding back investment is a massive increase in stock buybacks, especially in the United States.

The increases in stock price often just benefit senior corporate executives and major shareholders… Instead of a sustained increase in investment, [we see] persistent supplyside bottlenecks, which have been feeding

inflationary pressures.”

In other words – the money gusher in the 2010s and again since 2020 did not relaunch productive investment in new technologies, or build affordable homes, or improve education or healthcare, or even replace the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or upgrade rail or trucking. It went into the pockets of the superrich and the above quotation shows the United Nations’ economists confirming it.

Over the last 14 years, the capitalist system has been lurching from crisis to crisis. Its failure to actually develop the real economy is a reflection of this deeper crisis. The capitalist class is turning from one desperate measure to another and each one creates new problems, including the looming probability of a recession.

This would be the third such major shock in only 14 years and will rock workers’ lives and consciousness. Already majorities of young people question the ability of capitalism to solve society’s (and the climate’s) problems. Such a renewed crisis will only broaden and deepen this radicalization and the search for a way to permanently end inequality and exploitation.

What Is to Be Done?

One of the reasons the central banks fear sustained inflation is because it can spur workers to fight back, as it did dramatically in the early 70s, building on the fighting spirit of the social movements that had developed to fight racism, sexism, homophobia, and the Vietnam War. The successive economic crashes, beginning in 2008, have smashed illusions in a golden future under capitalism. So have the successive betrayals of the Democratic Party and the rise of the right. These developments have created a different consciousness especially amongst young people but also amongst unionized workers. Following the walkouts of essential workers during the pandemic, in the summer of 2021 workers fought back in a series of hard-fought strikes.

Workers need to demand raises above the rate of inflation, and all future contracts need to include COLA (cost of living adjustment) language linking raises to a reliable measure of that rate, otherwise we will continue to lose ground. Historically, when inflationary pressures arise, the Federal bureaucracy comes under pressure to adjust the Consumer Price Index in ways that minimize the actual pain felt by workers, so the unions need to fight for committees of working class shoppers to create their own index.

In Britain, the Trade Union Congress (UK equivalent of the AFL-CIO) called a mass demonstration in London on June 18 to “Demand Better.” Tens of thousands marched demanding higher pay to fight inflation.

The following week the rail transport union, the RMT, brought rail transport to a halt with three one-day national strikes and further actions are expected. This is the kind of action that is needed, led by the unions with mass participation from working class people. But the AFL-CIO has not called a national demonstration since 1981.

Today, the union leaders, tied as they are to the Democrats, have said next to nothing about this huge problem facing working people. The AFL-CIO and other unions should be demanding price controls against the monopolistic gouging of particularly the food and energy corporations. They should also be demanding that the Democrats legislate a livable Federal minimum wage. But these leaders have spent decades retreating in the face of employer demands, and show no sign of giving a fighting lead at the present time. They’re the reason why union membership has plummeted.

To combat this assault on workers by big business, we will need to rebuild a fighting labor movement. The inspiring development of the Amazon Labor Union and the wildfirelike spread of worker organizing throughout the retail coffee industry is an indication that a generation of younger workers is ready to step up.

These rank and file union members will need to challenge the existing leadership and take over the leadership of our unions for the struggles that are coming. We need leaders who take the average worker’s wage and are supported and held accountable by an active and organized membership. To fight inflation and a bipartisan establishment whose only solution is to make workers pay for the crisis created by capitalism, organized labor will need to be armed with an unambiguous class struggle program and a movement-building approach, with a political voice independent of the two parties of big business. J

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WORLD

GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS EXPOSES CAPITALIST CHAOS Grace Fors, Dallas The world is approaching an unprecedented food crisis that puts the lives of millions of people at risk. Myriad capitalist crises including climate change, supply chain dysfunction, pandemic stress, and soaring prices had already pushed millions toward the edge of starvation. But if these, all severe and prolonged crises that capitalism has failed to alleviate, poured lighter fluid on the world’s food systems, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine set it ablaze.

The food shortage and massive public health crisis it will create are symptoms of the turbulent decline of globalized capitalism. If recent years have shown us anything, it’s that the world economy is a Jenga tower constantly on the brink of collapse from new developments. When the crisis hits such a basic necessity as food, it can only further feed into the cycle of volatility, conflict, and destabilization that only socialist transformation can point the way out of.

Fuel To The Fire Food security has been on a downward spiral for many years, with climate changeinduced droughts, floods, fires, cyclones, and hailstorms a key driving factor. Food production all over the world has been relentlessly jeopardized by damaged ecosystems, diminishing crop yields, unstable temperatures, and too much or too little rain.

The Horn of Africa is currently seeing its worst drought in 40 years, heat waves have compromised India’s wheat harvest leading to a ban on wheat exports, and floods battering South Asia have utterly destroyed crops and farmland. Furthermore, COVID-19 spiked

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world hunger and wrought a sixfold increase in people suffering famine-like conditions.

The economic shock of the pandemic and its impact on production and supply chains have imposed a number of major strains which was already driving inflation. A 40% and growing price increase across major food crops since December of 2021 has already imposed food insecurity on an additional 400 million people.

War Threatens Global Food Supply In addition to the millions displaced and thousands killed by the war in Ukraine, millions more could die globally from the war’s impact on energy and food supplies. Russia and Ukraine are critical exporters of grains and fertilizer.

Russia and Ukraine together supply 28% of the wheat, 29% of the barley, 15% of the maize, and 85% of the sunflower oil traded globally, altogether 12% of all calories in the world market. North Africa and the Middle East are heavily reliant on these exports with more than 26 countries relying on one or both for more than half of their grains.

Ukraine alone provides food to 400 million people worldwide, and supplies half the grain for the UN’s World Food Program. With the onset of a vicious invasion and land war, its supply has virtually disappeared. Wars drive people off land, kill crops, destroy infrastructure, create shortages, and drive up prices.

What can be salvaged and harvested among Ukraine’s agricultural products will have nowhere to go. Tanker drivers have been enlisted to fight. Fuel, water, and power is in short supply. And the country’s grain silos are half full with over twenty-two million tons

stranded by Russian naval blockade.

This is to say nothing of the major impact of the shortage of fertilizer – of which Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are major suppliers – the costs of which had already doubled to disaster levels before the invasion. Rising energy costs had begun forcing European fertilizer plants to curtail production for months before the war. Both energy prices and sanctions are having a major impact.

These compounding crises are making necessary transport of food and fueling of agricultural activity prohibitively expensive or impossible. A perfect storm of missing animal feed, fertilizer, fuel, and financing in the midst of a record-breaking affordability crisis that will leave no corner of the world unscathed.

Food Wars: A Global Battlefield The humanitarian disaster resulting from tens of millions sliding into food insecurity will be unfathomable. People in low- and middle-income countries, in regions experiencing conflict and economic crises, and those who directly experience the most catastrophic effects of climate change will be worst impacted.

Households in poor countries spend 25% of their income on food. With massive price hikes on the one hand, and extreme weather diminishing people’s ability to rely on their own production or local sources or earn income, direct aid is desperately needed.

Their governments – indebted to rich countries and with depleted financial reserves – will be under immense strain and have little resources to provide the direct aid needed.

It is certain that the masses of people will not take this sitting down. Protests are

already rocking Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Peru. Fear of uprisings, and of new refugee crises from mass displacement has begun to raise alarms for the ruling class.

Major multinational financial institutions like the World Bank have begun pledging billions in aid to address the food crisis, but the root problems are intensifying faster than money can be thrown at them. While food aid increased by nearly $667 million in 2020, the number of undernourished people also increased, and this trend is expected to continue.

A UN Security Council press report stressed “the international community must coordinate a global response and eschew a ‘to each their own mentality,’” noting the rising danger of “political instability” that could further destabilize the system should mass movements become powerful enough to challenge the system starving them.

However, the level of international coordination required to stave off total chaos from the food crisis is completely foreign to capitalism, especially in this period of inter-imperialist rivalry and economic protectionism.

Twenty-three countries have declared severe restrictions on food exports since the start of the war, removing 10% of globally traded calories from the market. These protectionist measures will only make the crisis much worse, while further exacerbating inequality globally as rich countries buy up energy and food supplies while leaving the rest of the world to fend for themselves.

Fight The System That Starves Us We are living through a particularly devastating stage in capitalism’s long declining ability to meet even an acceptable portion of humanity’s basic survival needs. We produce enough food to feed 10 billion people at 3,000 calories a day, but 2.5 billion are malnourished or hungry and 30-40% of the world’s food production goes to waste. The world’s food supply is over-reliant on very few commodity crops, and controlled overwhelmingly by a small number of multinational corporations.

This crisis could not be a more clear and urgent demonstration of the need for democratic economic planning worldwide, based on the needs of people and the planet, not profits.

To prevent the worst-case scenario of mass starvation, immediate and direct aid is needed for working people and the poor in countries in or nearing famine. We also need an immediate end to the war in Ukraine and its blockade of the Black Sea, as well as all imperialist wars which mean nothing but deprivation and chaos for working people.

The existential threat posed by the climate crisis to our food system mandates a total overhaul of our food system worldwide toward renewable energy, diversified crops, and sustainable agriculture.

Capitalism breeds war, famine, climate catastrophe, and deprivation. Capitalism is prone to shocks and lacks shock resilience.

As this crisis wears on and capitalist governments pursue “each nation for themselves” policies, working people and the poor need to save themselves using the tried and true methods of internationalist class struggle. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

WORLD

THE COSTS OF WAR Conflict In Ukraine Rages On Diane Stokes and Tom Crean The war in Ukraine demonstrates in the most brutal way the nature of modern imperialism. Russian imperialism has sought to break the will of the Ukrainian people by leveling whole cities while the U.S. and NATO have imposed vicious sanctions on Russia which are an act of war and whose main victims will be ordinary people.

Modern war is waged to defend and extend the interests of the ruling class to plunder and profit. As Vladimir Lenin, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, said over 100 years ago in the run up to World War I: “We see plainly here how private and state monopolies are interwoven in the epoch of finance capital: how both are but separate links in the imperialist struggle between the big monopolists for the division of the world.”

(Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)

The Costs of Afghanistan On August 31, 2021 the world watched as the U.S. Armed Forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq was also reduced to 25,000.

During 20 years of military engagement in Afghanistan, U.S. taxpayers lost $300 million a day in this war for imperialist prestige.

In the longest war the United States has ever fought, over 2,460 military personnel died.

Brown University’s Cost of War Project estimates the war killed 176,000 people.

After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, many Afghans lost their jobs as interpreters, aid workers, teachers, and journalists and many were forced into hiding. Millions now face extreme poverty and starvation inside Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and neighboring countries. This is to say nothing of the brutal suppression of women’s rights under the Taliban regime.

The New Militarism The COVID-19 pandemic has been a devastating experience which has lasted more than two years. Since 2020, many working class and poor people have lacked access to affordable health care and faced cuts in wages and rising prices on essential goods.

Most people in the U.S. looked forward to a period of relief and economic stability after the war in Afghanistan ended and the pandemic appeared to be receding.

Instead, in late December, Congress passed a massive $768 billion bill to fund J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2

military spending—the largest in history.

Meanwhile, inflation has reached a 40 year high in part due to massive problems with global supply chains.

On March 24, 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, once again raising the specter of truly global conflict and untold suffering for the people of Ukraine and Russia. The response of Western imperialism has been to pour armaments into the country and risk the escalation of the conflict into a far wider war.

The latest step was the U.S. Congress passing $40 billion in “aid” for Ukraine, much of it military, equivalent to one fourth of Ukraine’s pre-pandemic GDP. Disturbingly, this aid was supported by nearly the entire “left” in Congress including AOC and Bernie Sanders.

Gas and oil companies looked at the conflict in Ukraine as an opportunity to increase profits. The energy sector is dominated by a few corporations. Consumption of oil and gas decreased during the early days of COVID when large numbers of people stayed home.

Now the same companies are restricting production and hiking prices. The companies see increasing prices and volatility as a means to build more long-term contracting and security for fossil fuels. Price gouging is also taking place among corporations which produce and market consumer goods. The four major meat processing companies in the U.S. have increased prices 15% above prices in 2021.

As the U.S. expands arms shipments to Ukraine, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and other defense contractors are banking on increased sales and profits. Raytheon, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin fund the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank which is pressuring politicians to escalate U.S. military intervention in Ukraine.

The Cost of War Project reports military corporations paid over 700 lobbyists a year, over the last five years, to expand military and arms spending.

Military Buildup In The Pacific U.S. imperialism’s military buildup is not just in Ukraine and Eastern Europe but even more in the Western Pacific as part of its effort to contain and check the rise of Chinese imperialism. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, USINDOPACOM, homepage reports 375,000 military and civilian personnel are already present in the Asian-Pacific region.

The Biden Administration plans to expand U.S. military presence in the region. When Biden recently toured Asia, he stressed that

despite the conflict in Ukraine, countering China remained the top U.S. priority. He met with the “Quad,” the anti-China alliance of the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India, which is potentially the beginning of the “Indo-Pacific NATO.” But in fact the U.S. has been far outpaced

by China in recent years in the push for influence in the Pacific countries. In March, the New York Times reported a draft agreement between China and the Solomon Islands, a deal which has now been made official. According to the Times, “the deal would give Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands the ability to call on China for protection of his own government while granting China a base of operations between the United States and Australia that could be used to block shipping traffic across the South Pacific.” More broadly, China is leveraging extensive investment and “aid” in many Pacific countries, including Fiji, to strengthen its influence, both diplomatic but ultimately military as well.

At the same time, Chinese imperialism has expanded its presence in the IndoPacific region through a massive expansion of its navy and anti-ship missile capabilities and building artificial islands in the South China Seas. The key flashpoint remains Taiwan, which China claims is part of China and which Biden recently committed to militarily defend against a Chinese invasion.

The new Cold War between the U.S. and China has accelerated since the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. China has treaded carefully in its economic relations with Russia so as to not be caught up in the Western sanctions regime. However the war is clearly pushing Russia and China even closer together.

But if Biden wants to use the “Western unity” and sanctions regime as an object lessor for China, it must be borne in mind that trying to replicate the “radical decoupling” applied to Russia against China would be an entirely different proposition. Strategically, China is the world’s second largest economy and plays a far more decisive role than Russia in the global trade and financial systems.

Ukraine: The Fulcrum of Imperialist Conflict Today The invasion of Ukraine is an attempt by Putin to extend the reach of Russian imperialism. He thought he saw an opportunity in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan but in fact profoundly miscalculated, seriously underestimating the lengths Western imperialism

and especially the U.S. would go to oppose this move. He also seriously misjudged the Ukrainian people who have fought back tenaciously against the brutal occupation.

However, there is another side to this conflict. NATO and the U.S. have repeatedly extended NATO forces to Russia’s borders and have helped create the conditions for this war. The sanctions imposed on Russia will affect Russian oligarchs to some degree but the brunt will be borne by the Russian working class and the working class across the world. The war has become ever more clearly a proxy war fought between Western and Russian imperialism.

Imperialism must always develop a narrative to justify its actions. The Putin regime first claimed it was waging war to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine. Now it claims it is defending Russian speakers in the east of the country. All of this is transparent lies. But so is the claim of the U.S. that this is about defending “democracy” against dictatorship. While calling Putin a war criminal, the Biden administration has literally been sending Patriot missiles to the Saudi regime who are engaged in an equally brutal war in Yemen in order to get their help with increasing oil supply. Now Biden may be heading to Saudi Arabia to “mend fences.”

The hypocrisy is nauseating.

The U.S. is increasing its sales of arms to NATO countries while also increasing the U.S. military budget and using sanctions to limit Russian competition in the European energy market. Both U.S. arms manufacturers and oil companies stand to reap whirlwind profits.

Immediate Ceasefire and Withdrawal We oppose the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and oppose all imperialist wars. Russia should immediately ceasefire and withdraw all troops, mercenaries, and weapons from Ukraine. All Western imperialist troops, advisors, and military equipment should be withdrawn from Ukraine and Eastern Europe. We defend the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own fate, including the rights of national minorities within Ukraine.

The working class needs to build a powerful international anti-imperialist anti-war movement. We need to collectively own the means of production and natural resources of the earth. A cooperative planned economy in the control of the working class majority is the only way forward. J

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TA K I N G O N T H E B O S S

HOW TO UNIONIZE YOUR WORKPLACE You think your workplace would be better with a union. Luckily, you’re not alone: Americans approve of unions in record numbers, and a 2017 poll showed that a majority would join one tomorrow if asked, well before the wave of unionization at Amazon and Starbucks catapulted the labor movement into the national spotlight.

Forming a union today is a difficult task, and as an organizer you’re stepping out onto hostile terrain where the deck is stacked against working people in favor of your employer – the boss – who will do everything to try to stop you. This isn’t because the boss is a nice or a mean person. It’s because capitalism divides society into classes who have opposing interests.

From their standpoint, it’s their business and they need control over it to make profits.

A union that gives workers some power and control is an inherent threat to that mentality. This means organizing a strong, assertive, and disciplined union drive that knows what it’s fighting for is the best way to “convince” the boss to recognize a union.

A quick note before we start: Throughout the history of capitalism, and around most of the world today, de facto union recognition elections happened when workers vote to go on strike. If the strike involved an overwhelming majority of workers and was strong enough to stop production – the source of the profits – the boss would be pressured to negotiate with the union. This is still the most direct method of winning a union.

To prevent strikes, the US government set up a department called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to create a more formal and legally protected process to recognize new unions. It is purposefully set up in such a way so as to be as intimidating and inaccessible to working people as possible.

This guide assumes workers will want to take the most common route to forming a union through the NLRB.

Read the FULL GUIDE

With that said, let’s get into it.

1) Talk to coworkers It all starts with talking to people! In order to make the most of these conversations you should be a dependable worker, someone trustworthy and knowledgeable about the workplace, and personable with your co-workers.

Asking about specific issues will often be the best starting point for an initial conversation than keeping things general. Raise that the way to change things would be to organize collectively and take action. If they agree, make that more explicit: what we need is a union.

Be prudent. The boss will start unionbusting as soon as they catch any whiff of organizing talk, so it’s important to balance being bold and confident in approaching coworkers with being skillful and cautious.

2) Build a team: the Organizing Committee Once you’ve talked to a few people now who are supportive of unionizing you should start meeting together regularly as a team, which in the labor movement is called an Organizing Committee (OC).

At all points the strength and cohesion of the OC is key for building a strong campaign.

Make sure there are workers from every department, who speak different languages or work different shifts. Including their specific demands is essential to building the type of unity that will be necessary to overcome the boss’ anti-union campaign. It’s rarely enough to talk abstractly about the benefits of a union like “respect and dignity” or “a seat at the table” – the boss will use similar language to campaign against the union.

A big part of building that strength and cohesion is through having well-organized meetings that happen regularly. In these, the OC should discuss what demands to use, how conversations with workers are going, how to refine conversations and make them stronger, and all other aspects of the union drive.

All of this should be logged into a spreadsheet that includes every worker, their department, their contact information, and ranking their support for the union (learn more about how to do this by reading the longer version of this article online).

3) Choose a union, collect authorization cards, file them with the NLRB to unionizing your workplace.

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Many other guides on how to unionize a workplace will list choosing a union as one of

Read a sneak preview of Socialist Alternative’s NEW guide to organizing your workplace.

The longer version can be found online and includes answers to questions like: How do I know who should be on an organizing committee? Can I rely on the NLRB? How do we know when it’s time to strike? the earliest steps to take. Socialist Alternative disagrees, and we’ve found through our experience in the labor movement, and the many organizing efforts we’ve been a part of, that this unnecessarily locks workers into a specific union, one which might not have a strong approach to organizing or be best suited for the job.

The most important thing is to base your choice on which organization offers the best strategy to win. Once you’ve chosen a union, or if you’ve decided to form an independent union, you start collecting authorization cards. Check out our website for some example cards. Although the legal minimum to file for an election is only 30% of eligible workers, 70% or higher is ideal because it will take lots of momentum to overcome the boss’ union busting campaign.

4) Election time: stand up to union busting, respond to retaliation The NLRB will typically schedule a union election anywhere from a few weeks to a few months out from when the cards are filed, which heavily favors the bosses who have the resources and the time to carry out their union-busting campaign. The OC will need to continuously check in with workers, and respond to union-busting arguments – Amazon workers at JFK8 wrote a new leaflet every day!

Escalating actions should happen throughout this process: this can be as simple as organizing as many workers as possible to all wear a union t-shirt or button together.

While organizing is technically a legallyprotected right, retaliation against organizing workers is incredibly common and needs to be responded to immediately. There’s the law, and then there’s reality: employers can

simply fabricate a reason for disciplining or firing a workplace activist.

The bosses only care about one thing: profit. If we stop working, then they stop making it. A well-timed march on the boss with all your co-workers or a well organized strike is the best way to get them to back off. It can also build momentum to win the union itself. In Columbia, South Carolina, Starbucks workers went on strike after a pro-union manager was fired just two weeks before their election – they ended up winning their vote unanimously, in a state which has fewer unionized workers than any other.

5) Fight for a strong contract An election victory is a huge achievement, especially in the U.S. where every step of the process is designed to be an obstacle to working people. However, winning an election is in many ways the easy part, after that comes the fight for a strong contract which puts into writing all of what the workers are demanding. This is why it’s essential to prepare for bargaining from the very beginning of organizing, developing a strong organizing committee armed with clear demands and a strategy to win.

In recent decades, around 30% of new unions never even get to a first contract, and for those that do it takes an average of 409 days, and several years is not uncommon. This is because the bosses are going to fight you tooth and nail every step of the way to try and stop you from winning better wages, benefits, and working conditions - the things that eat into their profits. The best way to shorten the process is to be prepared to take collective action, including strikes, to demand the boss negotiate a good contract with the union. J

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

JOIN SBWU!

Ty Nolan and Liam EastonCalabria, SBWU members in Boston (personal capacity)

Coffee worker solidarity rally in Philadelphia, Spring 2022.

In the past year there has been a resurgence in the American labor movement. The union election victory at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse and the events of Striketober, with workers at John Deere, Nabisco, and Kellogg’s striking for better conditions has inspired a new generation of workers like ourselves. Over 160 Starbucks stores, including our own, have excitedly voted to unionize with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU).

Young workers, who make up the majority of Starbucks’ workforce, are at the forefront of this movement – though all workers have grown sick of rising inflation, stagnant wages, and abysmal working conditions. Only 11.6% of the U.S. workforce is unionized, so for many of us, this is our first experience being in a union and there are understandably a lot of questions about what comes next.

Some of these questions were discussed at the June Labor Notes conference in Chicago where nearly 100 Starbucks workers attended! Both authors of this article were able to be there and were so excited to meet other Starbucks workers from across the country fighting for many of the same things we are in Boston.

In this article we hope to map out what we see as next steps, including how to win a first contract, the role of clear and publicized demands, how to wage successful strikes, and the need for democratic, national coordination of unionizing Starbucks workers.

Leading with Demands from Day One

Socialist Alternative City Councilmember Kshama Sawant joined striking Marysville Starbucks workers.

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One of the key takeaways from Labor Notes was the importance of demands in a union drive. We heard from Amazon Labor Union organizers about the role of demands in their successful campaign at JFK8. Their materials prominently displayed their key demands for a $30/hr base pay, two weeks paid time off, two half hour breaks with an hour for lunch, and an end to “time off task.”

Our campaign needs to be based around concrete demands that are developed democratically by our coworkers that send a clear message to workers that winning improvements in our workplaces only happens when we fight for it. Our experience is that demands like $25 base pay, an end to the healthcare audit with guaranteed access to trans-inclusive and comprehensive healthcare, and guaranteed hours are overwhelmingly popular with our coworkers.

Demands that we decide on ourselves also cut across corporate’s anti-union propaganda that the union is an unnecessary

third party that won’t help workers. Unfortunately, the leadership of SBWU has advised organizers to avoid talking about demands and instead focus on convincing coworkers of the importance of democratically deciding whether or not we want to be in a union.

As members of SBWU, we think this is a grave mistake. Winning the confidence of our coworkers to fight tooth and nail for a union can’t happen with vague “unions are good” arguments. People need to know exactly what they’re fighting for, and what they can win.

The other thing we have heard is that putting forward demands this early on could sabotage negotiations. But this assumes Starbucks is negotiating in good faith, which CEO Howard Shultz has clearly said he won’t do.

When the New York Times interviewed some of our leading spokespeople about this, they claimed that if they were only able to get a meeting with Howard Shultz, they could persuade him to support the union through charm and charisma. Given that Shultz has overseen the firing of 45 Starbucks workers who support the union, we think we’re going to have to force him to the table.

The Strike is Our Strongest Weapon Starbucks has not hesitated to use brutal union busting tactics including retaliatory firings. They subject workers to intimidating 1-on-1 meetings, captive audience meetings, and hour cuts (often targeted at the most militant workers). For workers to have the confidence to keep fighting, it’s essential that retaliation is responded to immediately and effectively.

We can’t put our trust in the incredibly lengthy legal process of the courts and the NLRB to deliver justice or reinstate workers, if they ever do at all. Already some fired workers have expressed frustration with the lack of support they are getting from the SBWU leadership in fighting for their reinstatement (beyond pointing to the NLRB which has already been proven completely unreliable like in the case of Laila Dalton).

Over a dozen individual Starbucks stores have already taken up strike action.

Immediately after winning their store vote, Starbucks workers in Buffalo went on strike demanding paid COVID time off. Starbucks was so scared of strikes spreading that they gave COVID pay to every store nationally. Workers in Marysville, Washington went on strike demanding an end to hour cuts and understaffing before even collecting cards. However, on day three of the strike, workers started collecting cards on a strong political basis knowing exactly what it is they’ll be fighting for.

L ABOR MOVEMENT

FIGHT FOR A STRATEGY TO WIN

Recently, Workers United committed $1 million to a strike fund which is fantastic, and a huge step forward. At our stores, this immediately boosted the confidence of our coworkers to keep fighting. A key task for SBWU and Starbucks workers, which came up on multiple occasions at the Labor Notes Conference, is to immediately democratize the strike fund so that workers can decide how and when to use it.

Nationally Coordinated Action Rooted in Every Workplace Nothing scares the bosses more than militant collective action that spans the entire country, not just individual stores here and there. A first step towards this would be to lay clear plans for a one day nationwide strike. To pull something like this off, SBWU should organize a national conference, open to all unionized Starbucks workers, to discuss, debate, and even vote on various aspects of strategy needed to organize more stores, get more workers to join our union, and win strong contracts.

For months, we were told that bargaining would be done on a store-by-store basis but more recently, it seems like the thinking has shifted more in favor of a regional approach. SBWU has correctly organized a national bargaining committee and regional bargaining committees are being set up. To make these bodies legitimate, representatives from every unionized store should be elected by their coworkers, rather than handpicked by union staff.

There is also a question of how to connect militant actions nationally. Key to building up our leverage in negotiations now and in the future will be for SBWU and Starbucks workers to fight for every contract to expire on the same day so we can organize joint action. That said, individual stores prepared to strike should not hesitate or wait around for more stores to get on board.

Rebuilding a Fighting Union Movement!

The questions we face as Starbucks workers have major implications for the U.S. labor movement as a whole. The struggle for a union and strong contract at Starbucks can cause a ripple effect through the rest of the service industry.

That’s why it’s essential we unapologetically fight for demands based on our needs, not what the boss may be willing to give right now; base ourselves on the power workers have to disrupt profits on the shop floor; and lay plans for nationally coordinated actions to bring a corporate giant like Starbucks to the table. J

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C L I M AT E C H A N G E

action necessary to achieve the former. The frustration that fuels these stunts is completely under standable, though.

In the United States, the Democrats have shown a total disinterest in attacking climate change, and have even accelerated it by expanding oil and natural gas drilling.

If elected officials won’t act without the threat of a movement upon them, this begs the question: what DOES a climate movement need to win?

1. A Program That Speaks to Working People Jesse Shussett, New York City In the past year, we’ve experienced climate catastrophes on a greater scale than ever in recorded history. This has included the heat dome in Canada that resulted in hundreds of deaths, floods in Germany obliterating entire towns, the highest recorded temperatures in Moscow, typhoons across the Philippines, catastrophic wildfires in Greece, and hurricanes making impact to a degree never seen before in regions they’ve hardly touched previously. We now look towards more wildfires, a likely massive oncoming smoke season, destructive heatwaves in the Indian subcontinent, and runaway effects on ecology globally.

But, these days, to point to individual disasters fails to do the impact of climate change justice. We are nearing a new phase of history itself – not just where climate disasters are more common, but where the whole of human society has to adapt itself to a changed planet.

People are increasingly turning to fringe media stunts to get attention for climate change while leadership repeatedly fails to take action. One example of this is a climate activist that pelted the Mona Lisa with cake at the end of May to draw attention to the crisis at hand.

Stunts like this, while they do cause a buzz for a period, ultimately do little to pressure world leaders to enact the necessary change and don’t inspire the kinds of broader

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A strong program and demands that speak to the core of the struggle that people are facing is the difference between speaking to hundreds and speaking to millions – and the climate movement needs millions.

A Green New Deal, with a jobs program for a fully-renewable energy grid, was a real start in the right direction. It tied the interests of working people together with the climate and pointed toward the need for organized labor to take up this struggle, as well as showing the scope of what was necessary to start to fight climate change.

At this point in the game, we need a more comprehensive set of key demands speaking to the moment that we’re in – that is to say, climate disasters aren’t just on the horizon, but they are very much here. We need a program that responds to disasters as they happen, one that is inclusive of relocation funds for working people in affected areas.

We need to shore up infrastructure capable of standing up to catastrophes and build disaster-resistant affordable housing, and reduce heat-capturing of cities. We need green, effective, and accessible public transportation spanning across the country, not just focusing on major metropolitans or regions where the rich live and the poor have been pushed out. We need a massive reforestation effort enacted to begin capturing carbon. And this only scratches the surface!

Most crucially, we need this program to be based on not taking a dime from working people and instead taxing the rich. For years, corporations have propagandized that “individual action” was responsible for killing the planet and a strategy of taking shorter

showers, recycling, and composting at home would solve the problem. Not only was this a complete falsehood, the push to popularize this line of thinking cost the effort to stop climate change decades.

Capitalism, with its wasteful industry and ceaseless chasing of profit, caused this crisis – and it’s the capitalists that must pay for it.

2. Militant Tactics to Exact Real, Not Theoretical, Pressure Over the last decade, we’ve largely seen two types of actions – large marches like at COP26 and the 2014 climate march and then fringe groups that held smaller actions before being swept out by police, such as Keystone XL. Both of these things create a kind of “theoretical” pressure. The amassing of thousands in the street demonstrates clearly how many people care and are willing to fight. It can temporarily disrupt day-to-day life, but as we learned during the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020, street protests alone – without a sustained movement with democratic structures and an escalation plan – are not enough to exact real concessions from those in power. The small actions that threaten to occupy refineries, oil pipelines, and factories point towards the impact of shutting those things down, but can almost never do it successfully for a sustained period of time.

We’ve seen the ferocity with which the police and state will defend private industry and profit over the interests of wider society, with the “No DAPL” movement of 2016 being a prime example. As hundreds of activists gathered in Standing Rock, the entire country looked on in horror as the government tear gassed and arrested protesters en masse through the winter rather than cancel the pipeline that was slated to demolish the historical and religious sites of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

A successful climate movement will need to use a combination of tactics, including mass action and civil disobedience. But the most important thing will be that the movement has genuine democratic structures so we can discuss and debate tactics and strategy. This will often need to include occupations like we saw at Standing Rock, but a successful occupation of a factory or pipeline will need to include thousands, not hundreds.

Crucially, the movement needs to develop demands that mobilize the wider working class, including paid job retraining for workers currently in polluting industries with the guarantee of well-paid union jobs carrying out a green transition. It is the workers currently in polluting industries that ultimately have the most power to shut down production and demand a green transition.

3. A Clean Break from the Democratic Party The Democratic Party has willfully ignored any opportunities to enact change and save lives in favor of maintaining relationships with (and getting money from) corporate America. Biden’s time in office has been absolutely disastrous for the environment, with his plans to turn public lands back over to big oil being just the tip of the rapidlymelting iceberg.

Meanwhile, climate organizations like Sunrise Movement have shamefully provided left cover for Biden, and DSA members in office have refused to withhold their votes in order to force action.

A successful climate movement cannot be drawn into the world of Democratic Party politics. If the climate movement has any hope of winning necessary climate demands, our political strategy must be one that includes candidates running on an independent basis that are held accountable to the program of the movement, and with its primary emphasis on building a mass movement on the outside that forces Congress’s hand.

So, Now What?

Alongside a strong program, militant action, and a clean break from the Democrats, we must take stock of how we got here in the first place.

Climate change is a natural result of an economy that is driven by profit, rather than democratically planning the best path forward for the planet and society.

Karl Marx once argued that exploitation of the planet was as natural to capitalism as exploiting working people, and the period we’re in has done nothing if not prove that.

As we watch climate disasters unfold, we also see those most at risk of exploitation impacted at much higher levels than anyone else.

To truly “de-warm” the planet and prevent future ecological catastrophes, a planned economy based on democratic ownership of society, a socialist society, is imperative.

This is the only way that we can take back the huge corporations that are destroying the planet and develop a system so that everyone has sustainable jobs that balance the needs of people and protect the planet.

It’s also the only way that we can truly protect communities from natural disasters by developing safe and affordable housing, organized evacuation plans, and more with working people in mind – not the profit margins of the rich, who will never feel the burn of the climate crisis the way we do. J

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C O N T I N U AT I O N S reality it was this strategy of turning out the vote that drove Petro to victory.

Challenges, Compromise and Conciliation

HISTORIC VICTORY FOR GUSTAVO PETRO PAVES THE WAY FOR NEW STRUGGLES International Socialist Alternative (ISA) After a tense and uncertain second round, Gustavo Petro has won the Colombian presidential elections with 50.4% of the vote, beating right-populist opponent Rodolfo Hernandez who picked up 47.3%, a difference of 700,000 votes. Voter turnout was 58%, up from 54% in the first round and the highest in a Colombian election since 1998.

Petro will be the first left president in the 213 year history of the Colombian state. Joining him is running mate Francia Marquez who will become Colombia’s first ever black vicepresident. Workers, young people and the oppressed masses will draw confidence from Petro’s victory in the hope that a new period is opening up, one that leaves behind the successive regimes of violence and social misery that have dominated Colombia for decades.

Ultimately, the triumph of Petro and Pacto Historico is a product of the mass struggles that have rocked Colombia over the last period; the student demonstrations of 2018, the Paro Nacional of 2019 and, above all, last year’s social explosion triggered by the ‘paro nacional’ (general strike) that saw millions take to the streets in every corner of the country.

We too share the enthusiasm and desire for social transformation that has been expressed in this extraordinary result. Nevertheless, as we have warned previously, Petro’s limited reformist program and his drift towards accommodating himself to the establishment will not be enough to meet the needs and demands of the Colombian masses. As a decaying world J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2

capitalism becomes further engulfed in a plethora of crises, Petro will be confronted with economic and political turmoil and a ruling class desperate to maintain control of the situation.

How Petro Won Unfortunately, some are claiming Petro owes his victory to his increasingly moderate approach and his ability to calm the fears of those concerned by his radical credentials. But is there any truth in this?

For much of the last year Petro’s victory seemed all but certain. That changed after the first round when the unexpected rise of opponent Rodolfo Hernández complicated things.

As the results came in May many Pacto Historico activists and supporters were seized by a sense of danger and even demoralization at the prospect of the reactionary, sexist Hernández becoming president.

Hernandez, a 77 year old multi-millionaire, went out of his way to distance himself from a completely discredited Uribismo, posing as being neither left nor right, but rather antisystem and anti-corruption. Nevertheless the ruling class were quick to line up behind him as the figure best suited to serve the rule of capital. Serving as a ‘kiss of death’, these endorsements helped expose Hernandez amongst a section of workers and youth who voted for him in the first round, believing he was a genuine anti–establishment candidate.

We must emphasize it was the heroic efforts of many rank and file activists who recognized the threat posed by Hernandez and went all out to convince friends, family, co-workers and neighbors to vote for Petro and Marquez. In

Other sections of the bourgeoisie are attempting to domesticate Petro and are already congratulating him on his willingness to seek compromise and respect the integrity of the law and institutions. US imperialism took a similar approach. In the context of a waning influence in the region, president Joe Biden phoned Petro to congratulate him on his victory in an effort to maintain links with its most important ally in Latin America.

Although Pacto Historico are the largest force in Congress they fall significantly short of a majority. In order to calm the fears of big business and foregin investors Petro will name a moderate finance minister, looking towards Alejandro Gaviria — a former presidential candidate whose policies Petro criticized for being “unable to overcome neoliberalism.”

All of these moves towards the right and, above all, the alliance with the Liberal Party are being justified as a means for Petro to form a stable government that can see through legislation.

However, this will come at a price and, as a recent Bloomberg article stated, “[Petro] may be forced to tone down some of his more radical proposals to keep his allies on board.” This is a mistaken approach that will only serve to demoralize and demobilize those activists and supporters who rallied around Pacto Historico in the hope of breaking with the status quo.

Although Petro and others justify their conciliation with establishment figures as seeking ‘governability’, that is extremely unlikely in the current period of capitalist crisis. 40% of the Colombian population live in poverty and 11% inflation will impact many more. As the US Fed raises interest rates Colombia’s peso risks further devaluation, creating problems for Colombia to service its foreign debt, which stands at over 50% of its GDP. If Petro chooses to simply manage capitalism he will oversee greater misery inflicted on the Colombian masses, and create the space for the far-right to grow further.

That’s why these elections must not be seen as an end in themselves but rather mark the beginning of a new period of class struggle and social change. Reflecting the more radical rank and file of Pacto Historico, environmental activist Francia Marquez declared in her victory speech: “Let’s fight for dignity, let’s fight for social justice. Let’s go for women to eradicate patriarchy from our country. Let’s fight for the rights of the LGBTIQ community, let’s fight for the rights of our mother earth. Let’s eradicate structural racism.”

But the question remains: what program and strategy are required to carry out these fights?

For us it is only through the continued mobilization of the working class and oppressed masses in the streets, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in the countryside, and in schools and universities that we can guarantee that the limited reforms proposed by Petro and Marquez will be carried through. But to defeat the right, to win a lasting peace and to point a way out of the economic and social crisis will require going further and mounting a challenge against capitalism and imperialism. J

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

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

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SOCIALIST ISSUE #85 l JULY/AUGUST 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

NO ROLLING BACK OUR RIGHTS!

STOP THE RIGHT-WING OFFENSIVE George Martin Fell Brown, Madison Going into the midterms we are facing a resurgence of right-wing attacks. With the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Right-wing state governments have gone on the offensive with some of the most draconian homophobic and transphobic legislation, with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and Ohio’s “Save Women’s Sports Act” providing templates for reactionaries across the country. While Republicans whip up hysteria over “critical race theory” Democrats move to “refund the police.”

The right-wing legislative attacks accompany growing cultural backlash against the ascendant social movements of the past decade. The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the vitriolic support for Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard signify hostile reactions against Black Lives Matter and #MeToo respectively from a section of society.

All in all, this paints a devastating picture.

This reaction is a real threat and women, people of color, and LGBTQ people are right to be worried. But that’s only one side of the picture. Through the mass struggle of the working class and all oppressed groups, we can beat back the right-wing attacks.

Behind The Right-Wing Resurgence In spite of the apparent momentum and intensity of the right-wing resurgence, there isn’t an embrace of right-wing ideas by the broad mass of the population. For instance, polls taken at the time of the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe showed overwhelming majorities, ranging from 63% to 72% depending on the poll, opposed to its repeal.

Nonetheless, in the past few months, the right has been emboldened and the left has been weakened. To challenge the right-wing attacks, we need to understand how this state of affairs came to be.

Biden assumed office with a honeymoon, spurred on by mass vaccinations and the promise to boost the economy with massive infrastructure spending. But with the Covid variants and botched re-opening, the collapse of Build Back Better, and growing inflation, the Biden administration entered a crisis that hasn’t gone away. Right-wing

populists pander towards justified anger over low wages, rising prices, and mounting debt. But instead of pointing toward the real reasons for these challenges and their roots in capitalism, these figureheads redirect that anger against the oppressed. So Adam Laxalt, the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Nevada, goes after “the radical left, rich elites, woke corporations, academia, Hollywood, and the media.”

While this scapegoating is convenient in the short term for the candidates and media figures who employ it, the ideas they espouse offer nothing in the interests of working-class people, even the ones they successfully deceive into supporting them. It is a dead end that will only severely exacerbate the crises driving mass anger and disillusionment.

While the right is explicit in naming their enemy, the left has fumbled. Bernie Sanders and the Squad have lined up behind Biden.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has explicitly prioritized maintaining a Democratic majority in 2022 over challenging the Biden administration. Liberal NGO leaders have followed suit, telling their supporters to vote blue rather than mobilizing them into the streets against the right-wing attacks.

This has resulted in a weakening of movements against oppression, leaving a void of opposition to the Biden administration that the right has been able to fill up until now.

How Do We Fight Back?

We need class politics, and class struggle on a mass scale. Class struggle politics means a recognition that society is fundamentally divided between the masses of working-class people who make society run, and the capitalists who profit off of our work.

It also means a recognition that, through our collective action, we can bring society to a halt and even run it for ourselves.

A mass, class-struggle approach can bring about meaningful victories. It can cut across right-wing attempts to sow divisions through racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Organized counter-protests can beat back attempts of the right to organize with sheer force of numbers. This is what happened the 40,000-strong

ALTERNATIVE

anti-fascist rally in Boston in 2017 which forced the far-right to retreat in the wake of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally.

Organized campaigns need to put forward a positive program that can draw in the mass of the working class to fight back against the right. Campaigns like these can bring about meaningful victories.

Abortion rights were won under the Nixon administration under a Supreme Court with a Republican-appointed majority. This period also brought about fundamental gains for civil rights and labor rights, as well as massive expansion of social services. This wasn’t because Nixon or the Supreme Court were progressive. Rather it was because the 60s and 70s were a time of massive social upheaval. The Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women’s liberation movement, Stonewall, and a wave of wildcat strikes, created a situation where the ruling class was forced to concede.

In contrast, under subsequent administrations in both parties, the Democrats used the threat of the right repealing Roe v. Wade as a means to pressure working people into holding their noses and voting for uninspiring – even widely disliked – corporate Democrats. But when the Democrats were win office they did nothing to enshrine abortion rights ino law.

More recently, working-class people were attracted in huge numbers to Bernie Sanders’ promise to be the “organizer in chief” if elected president and Alexandria OcasioCortez’s promise to “govern as part of the m o v e m e n t .”

Initially, they provided direction to the classbased struggles that had broken out from Occupy to the Fight for $15 to Black Lives Matter.

But as Sanders and OcasioCortez have accommodated themselves, first to Clinton and then to Biden, the right has gained.

The failure of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez also points to the need for class inde-

pendence from the Democratic and Republican parties. Many on the left, especially in the Democratic Socialists of America, argue for strategic use of the Democratic Party ballot line, and for support for Democratic politicians as “harm reduction.” However, the experience of recent attempts to rely on the Democratic Party apparatus shows it’s impossible to believe that any harm has been reduced through this strategy..

Challenging the right will require the left, the labor movement, and anti-oppression struggles to break from the prison of the corporate-run Democratic Party. It will mean building a new party, outside of the two major parties, democratically run by working-class people completely free of corporate finance and rooted in struggle. This will allow us to democratically determine the platform we stand on and how to wield our collective power to achieve it. Through this, we can beat back the attacks of the right and win a life free of oppression and exploitation. J