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Wednesday, August 17, 2016

THE MILWAUKEE REBELLION

Saturday, August 13, 2016

A POLICY AGENDA FOR BLACK LIVES MATTER

 A Cut in US Military Expenditures and A Reallocation of those Funds to Invest in Domestic Infrastructure and Community Well Being
The Movement for Black Lives

What is the problem?
 
        
●  America is an empire that uses war to expand territory and power. American wars are unjust, destructive to Black communities globally and do not keep Black people safe locally. The military industrial complex offers massive profits to private corporations from the death of our global diaspora by handing out massive government contracts to expand US military presence across the globe, while resources for domestic infrastructure and social programs to meet the needs of Black people and working class communities within the US diminishes. 

●  The US military accounts for over 50 percent of discretionary federal spending, a total of 598.5 Billion dollars spent annually, as compared to 70 billion spent on education, 66 billion spent on healthcare, $63.2 billion spent on housing and 29.1 billion spent on social security and unemployment.1 In addition, approximately 3 billion dollars in US aid is allocated to Israel, a state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military occupation of Palestine for decades. Together with aid to Egypt ­­ Israel's most important regional ally ­­ this figure represents nearly 75 percent of all US aid dollars. As these figures demonstrate, resources and funds needed for reparations and for building a just and equitable society domestically are instead used to wage war against a majority of the world's communities.

●  In the years since September 11 and the US ­driven "global war on terror", US military spending has increased by 50 percent. This war has led to the killing of 4 million civilians in the Middle East. US arms and military corporations have made billions of dollars in profit off of waging disaster and destabilization in the Middle East, while increasing western control over the land and resources of the region. In South America and the Caribbean the war on terror has combined with a long ­running war on drugs intensifying forced migrations, land grabs, and political disenfranchisement. The war on terror, has not made us safer and has only increased hopelessness as our fears are realized.

●  In 2006, AFRICOM was established by the US government to expand US military presence on the continent under the claim of protecting the region against "terror" and "radical Islam". In reality, this effort was designed to expand western colonial control over the region, its people and their resources. AFRICOM is a major example of U.S. empire and is a direct threat to global Black liberation.

●  The U.S. militarization of Africa includes air strikes and commando raids in Libya; "black ops" missions and drone murders in Somalia; a proxy war in Mali; secretive actions in Chad; anti­piracy operations that result in increased piracy in the Gulf of Guinea; wide­ranging drone operations out of bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Niger, and the Seychelles; "special" operations out of bases in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; CIA bungling in Somalia; over a dozen joint training exercises a year; arming and training of soldiers in places like Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya; a "joint special operations" operation in Burkina Faso; base construction aimed at accommodating future "surges" of troops; legions of mercenary spies; the expansion of a former French foreign legion base in Djibouti and joint war­making with France in Mali.2

●  Somalia has not only experienced extended military intervention as a result of AFRICOM but has been treated as an experimentation site for the U.S. devastating drone policy.3 The Democratic Republic of Congo as a region has had a long history of U.S. intervention that have coincided with some of the worst genocides in the world.4 Not only have U.S. backed African intervention armies committed atrocities but U.S. private companies extract the worlds wealth from Congolese soil.5 And as is true here, women and the most vulnerable in our communities pay the price of U.S. intervention and the accompanying genocides and civil wars. The U.S. must make room for African ­led development and peace­making that is led by grassroots decision­ making of the most marginalized and directly affected. We insist on African leaders and demand resources be made to begin the process of community ­building at home.

●  The Garifuna have experienced rounds of forced migration leaving ancestral homeland in Honduras and across the Central American region in part because of U.S. war­making. Garifuna community members now living as part of the expanding local Black diaspora have dealt with U.S. backed coups in Honduras along with U.S. trained militaries that have devastated the region.6 They enter an American landscape where the resources for community life have been drained by the last 50 years of post­civil rights cuts. We need end to war, and shift of national resources to rebuilding our local communities and repairing the damage done by American empire abroad.

●  There may not be a greater example of the disastrous impact of U.S. military intervention and manipulation than Haiti. We remember and celebrate Haiti as a key center of global Black struggle, and we are disheartened as we recall the continual U.S. intervention that has filed modern Haitian history with coups and violence.7 On the border of Haiti we have also seen Dominicans of Haitian descent deported and mistreated with the most brutal violence. We can not sit idly by as U.S. funds are used to finance deportations and the border guard that violate the rights of Dominicans of Haitian descent under the guise of our global wars on terror and drugs.8 We need those funds to be repurposed to heal the damage U.S. intervention has wrecked and rebuild our communities locally.

●  The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US­made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US ­funded apartheid wall.

●  The expansion of the war on terror has been vividly expressed in the violence the West with U.S. leadership used to attack the people of Libya. Not only was a government overthrown but arms were given to rebel groups who have violated the human rights of all Libyans.9 In the wake of this war crime Somalis, Nigerians, Eritreans and other communities who have been taking the risk of traveling through LIbya for decades have are experiencing even more hardship. The right of migration for many Africans inside and outside Libya has been placed in even greater jeopardy. Our family, our diaspora are now faced with rebel groups who attack them and smugglers who make them risk their lives in unsafe boats in dangerous waters. It is now not uncommon for hundreds of Africans to drown in the mediterranean every week.10 This happens as the west ignores its role in creating this crisis, but we can not sit by.11 We can no longer fund coups, and civil wars. Our resources should be used to repair the damage we have done to our global community and rebuild our neighborhoods domestically.

●  The interlinked systems of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy shape the violence we face. As oppressed people living in the US, the belly of global empire, we are in a critical position to build the necessary connections for a global liberation movement. Until we are able to overturn US imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy, our brothers and sisters around the world will continue to live in chains. Our struggle is strengthened by our connections to the resistance of peoples around the world fighting for their liberation. T he Black radical tradition has always been rooted in igniting connection across the global south under the recognition that our liberation is intrinsically tied to the liberation of Black and Brown people around the world.

●  The movement for Black lives must be tied to liberation movements around the world. The Black community is a global diaspora and our political demands must reflect this global reality. As it stands funds and resources needed to realize domestic demands are currently used for wars and violence destroying communities abroad. State violence within the U.S. is intimately linked with empire and war­ making globally.

What does this solution do?
●  Severely limits the war ­making ability of the American military.

●  Cuts the US military budget by 50%, which will lead to the closure of the over 800 U.S. military bases the U.S. around the world, the elimination of the the sale of weaponry to violators of human rights, reduces the use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons12 and return all troops back from the current theatres of war.

●  Increases accountability of federal spending. Careful audits of Pentagon and military contractors to retrieve and address misallocated funding. 70% of pentagon budget goes to private contractors reviewing military contracts that currently have minimal to zero accountability is central to expanding resources for reparations.13

●  Drastically lowers war casualties by eliminating large share of casualties of civilians, "enemy combatants" and American soldiers.

●  Provides reparations to countries and communities devastated by American war­making, such as Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Honduras.

●  Cease the military aid and funding of countries and organizations with human rights violations.14 

●  Shifts national resources away from war­making institutions to peace­making.

●  Deploy military personnel in domestic peace­making roles that redesign and rebuild the country's polluting and crumbling infrastructure with released funds from war­making.

●  Expands resources available for reparations and the various demands of the broad movement for Black lives:

        ○  Universal healthcare.
        ○  Full employment.
        ○  Housing for all.
        ○  Free quality public education at all levels.
        ○  Etc.

●  Contributes to the stabilization of regions throughout the world who have been devastated by US and US ­backed military intervention, including Somalia, Kenya, Congo, Libya, Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, the Middle East and across the world.

Federal Action:

●  Build invest/divestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel's military industrial complex and any government with human rights violations.15

●  Detail rebuilding and repair plan for domestic infrastructure across the country based on a commitment to a green economy and deep understanding of the threat of climate change.

●  Expand American public transportation system with federal job guarantee for re­trained military personnel.

●  Repair domestic infrastructure that is currently dilapidated.

●  Engage the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to a foreign military unit where credible information exists that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

●  Organize campaigns against G4S and other global private prison companies that are profiting from the shackling of our community in the US, in Palestine, in Brazil and around the world.

●  Detail funding needs of priority community building efforts like healthcare, education, and housing and re­route funding to address outlined needs.

State Action:
●  Pass state resolutions supporting cuts in military spending and local re­investment in operations and resources for Black and working class communities.

●  Fight the expanding number of Anti­ BDS bills being passed in states around the country. This type of legislation not only harms the movement to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but is a threat to the constitutional right to free speech and protest.

●  Circulate sign ­on letters demanding an end to the building of military bases and factories locally.

●  Map out state wide infrastructure needs and pass resolutions calling for the necessary reinvestment and rebuilding efforts.

●  Coordinate direct actions of solidarity with South Africa, Columbia and liberation movements across the globe.     .    
        
Local Action:
●  Organize direct actions demanding a cut in military spending and local re­investment.

●  Circulate sign ­on letters demanding an end to local military spending.

●  Fight for the de­militarization of local police forces and elimination of purchases of military surplus equipment.

●  Map out local infrastructure needs and pass resolutions calling for the necessary  reinvestment and rebuilding efforts. Coordinate direct actions of solidarity with South  Africa, Palestine, Columbia and liberation movements across the globe.

How does this solution address the specific needs of some of the most marginalized Black people?
●  Eliminate much of the destruction and loss of life Black people experience as soldiers and victims of U.S. war ­making.

●  Provides massive resources for reparations.

●  Increase available resources to address a number of needs including:

        ○  Health care for Black LGBT youth and undocumented immigrants.
        ○  Housing for Black homeless community members.
        ○  Childcare for Black working class children and parents. 
        
Resources
        ●  How Can I Help Cut the Military Budget by 25 to 50 Percent
        ●  www.BDSmovement.net
        ●  www.blackpalestiniansolidarity.com

Organizations Currently Working on Policy
●  AFL­CIO16
●  NAACP
●  Green Party17
●  United for Justice with Peace18
●  The Dream Defenders
●  The US Campaign to End the Occupation
●  The Institute for Middle East Understanding
●  American Friends Service Committee
●  The Black Alliance for Just Immigration
●  The Black Immigration Network
Authors & Contributors of this Policy Overview
●  Ben Ndugga­ Kabuye, "Black Alliance for Just Immigration"
●  Rachel Gilmer, "Dream Defenders"
●  Nadia Ben­Youssef, Adalah "The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel"

CONFRONTING TRUMP: POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY

In the Face of Trump, the Democratic Party Is Revealing Its Own Ideological Bankruptcy

By Jake Johnson. Originally published on Commondreams.org.

As Donald Trump took the stage inside the lavishly decorated Quicken Loans Arena last week, much of the focus of major media outlets was on the crumbling Republican Party, a party that, we are told, lost its identity amidst the tumultuous rise of a billionaire reality television star.
Predictably, the much-publicized convention was a mess, featuring a failed candidate attempting to undercut the party's nominee, blatant plagiarism, and the expected hysterics.
The picture of America Trump so eagerly painted was stark: It is a nation beset by crime, racial tension, and terrorism. Lurking around every corner is an undocumented immigrant. Even the police are unsafe.
"Most striking about the liberal commentariat's approach to the Trump phenomenon is its almost singular focus on the collapsing Republican Party as the culprit of Trump's political success."
Needless to say, much of what Trump said was erroneous, and his attempt to revive the "law and order" message of Richard Nixon is just as fraudulent as almost everything else he has done and said during his campaign.
The speech, nonetheless, created quite a stir. In such a seemingly pivotal moment in American politics, journalists feverishly declared Trump's words to be some of the most terrifying in recent memory. His narrative of an America in decline also seemed to offend the sensibilities of many commentators, some of whom decried Trump's "sham patriotism."
Prestigious outlets, most notably the New York Times, have repeatedly expressed dismay in the face of Trump's rise to political prominence, and this dismay came to a boiling point in the aftermath of the convention.
In an editorial published the morning after Trump's speech, the Times bemoaned Trump's "campaign of fear" and denounced him for "playing to disaffected people's worst instincts."
But what is most striking about the liberal commentariat's approach to the Trump phenomenon is its almost singular focus on the collapsing Republican Party as the culprit of Trump's political success.
Further, in the face of this collapsing party, pundits and Democratic politicians have utterly failed to offer a counter-narrative — nor have they seriously attempted to examine the roles they themselves played in the emergence of Trumpism. Instead, they have channeled the sentiments of billionaire Steve Schwarzman, adopting a posture of mild confusion — and, at times, utter bewilderment — toward the deep-seated resentment being expressed by millions of Americans.
Here's the Times once more: "What historical shift, what tremors in American culture, yielded up Mr. Trump’s moment from the depths of the national id? How did a braggadocious Manhattan billionaire with a history of dodgy business deals convince 13 million people feeling battered by a changing world that he is their solution?"
Much of Trump's appeal is undoubtedly rooted in bigotry. But it is also, as Bernie Sanders has recognized, due to the general economic anxiety felt by much of the public — anxiety that outlets like the New York Times and other commentators seem content to downplay.
In response to Trump's America-in-decline narrative, some, as Nathan Robinson masterfully documented in Current Affairs, have even attempted to insist that things aren't really that bad, feeding into the confusion surrounding Trump's appeal.
In other words, in the face of a demagogue channeling the economic anxieties of millions, liberals are content to insist that the status quo, though it could use a few adjustments, is actually working quite well.
"All of this is a peculiar role reversal," Robinson writes. "Ordinarily, conservatives are the ones defending the status quo, while the left tries to rouse public interest in various pressing social problems. Now, Trump is the one speaking of the decline of the country’s fortunes, while liberals have become the new cheerleaders for America-as-it-is."
And while Trump has demonstrated his competence as a serial liar, he is, as Robinson notes, "not always lying."
Indeed, "there were portions of the speech that could have come straight from the mouth of Bill Big Haywood or Eugene V. Debs," Robinson adds, such as when he spoke of "laid-off factory workers" and "the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals."
The smug punditry — the pinnacle being Vox's Ezra Klein — has nothing to say in response, other than, "Things are not really, really bad."
Underlying much of the commentary detailing and analyzing the rise of Trump is a striking lack of self-awareness among those (ostensibly liberal Democrats, in particular) who have not only been impotent in addressing the nation's crises — often, they have helped to perpetuate them.
The Democratic Party's abandonment of the working class has been thoroughly documented, and so has its turn to a wealthier and more politically influential constituency.
"The elite professional class, in the 1950s one of the Republican party's most reliable constituencies, became the very heart of the Democrats by the 1990s," writes Kyle Smith. "The party of labor morphed into the party of lawyers. This didn’t happen by accident."
While much of the focus in 2016 has been on the Republican Party's "new incarnation," little attention has been paid to the role the gradual transformation of the Democratic Party has had on the political and economic order.
Far from embracing the tradition established by Franklin Roosevelt and continued, somewhat, through the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, Democrats today have happily filled their role as the nation's "second-most enthusiastic capitalist party."
They have embraced the neoliberal shift that now dictates the rules of the global economy; they have fought repeatedly for deregulation of industry; they have adopted right-wing meritocratic language in the face of unprecedented income inequality; and they have, despite rhetorical flourishes to the contrary, remained deeply committed to the donor class that bankrolls their political ambitions.
"While much of the focus in 2016 has been on the Republican Party's new incarnation,' little attention has been paid to the role the gradual transformation of the Democratic Party has had on the political and economic order."
What's left is ideological bankruptcy in the face of crippling poverty, a collapsing middle class, stagnant wages, and extreme concentration of wealth at the very top.
And often, Democratic Party liberals have not just been content to politely downplay the struggles of the working class they so flippantly abandoned; they, on some occasions, have expressed a startling lack of concern for the struggles of working people.
"I know Hillary Clinton’s economic team fairly well, and I’m very impressed by them," said NPR's Adam Davidson in a recent interview. "They really are top-notch economists and economic policy thinkers. They don’t have anything for a 55-year-old laid-off factory worker in Michigan or northeastern Pennsylvania. Or whatever. They don’t have anything to offer them."
Thus Pennsylvania Republican Michael Korns can offer a better assessment of Trump's appeal than the nation's most connected policy wonks.
"Many voters feel that the Democratic Party, which they had supported for generations, has largely abandoned blue-collar workers," Korns told the New York Times. "There's also increasingly a feeling that the Republican Party has abandoned them as well, that neither party has much interest in the day-to-day economics of working people. And then when Trump came in, he spoke to them, he grabbed them."
It is no surprise that Trump's appeal has been strongest in areas, particularly white working class areas, that are dying at a faster rate than the rest of the population.
But Democratic Party loyalists have been content to reduce Trump's support among white workers — and, indeed, Bernie Sanders's support among white workers — to bigotry alone, characterizing material concerns as a distraction.
By doing so, as Connor Kilpatrick has noted, the "liberal elite is spared from having to question the fundamental injustices of capitalism."
Which is, of course, the root of the problem: As the Democratic Party came to rely more on business than labor, its ideological center of gravity shifted rightward. Motivated by material interests and political ambitions, Democrats abandoned the language of class and accepted the free market Washington Consensus as axiomatic, effectively joining the side of those who emerged on the "winning" end of globalization.
And as historian Lily Geismer has observed, as "suburban knowledge professionals and high-tech corporations...supplanted urban ethnics and labor unions as the party's core constituency," the ability of Democrats to challenge capitalism, and to fight for workers, all but disappeared.
Bernie Sanders showed that there is an alternative to the corporate liberalism of Hillary Clinton and the phony populism of Trump, an alternative that can, and did, garner diverse and enthusiastic support among progressives.
But in his way stood an entrenched establishment almost unanimously opposed to his agenda — an establishment that, since the 1990's, has helped to ingrain the worst of Reaganism and that has, in the words of Adolph Reed, "renounced its commitment to any sort of redistributive vision."
Nathan Robinson correctly observes that Democrats have come to "count on fear of Trump" as their "sole campaign message."
But he is incorrect in suggesting that it could be any other way. Democrats cannot merely decide to begin fighting for the interests of the working class. Their ideological commitments, and their material interests, have rendered them incapable of addressing — or even understanding — the struggles of those they claim to represent.
"Democratic Party liberals have shown that we shouldn't expect much more than a tepid defense of a status quo that has bled out the middle class, eroded social mobility, and left millions living in deep poverty, without adequate nutrition and health care."
Interestingly, no one has elucidated this point better than Barack Obama.
In his book The Audacity of Hope, published prior to his 2008 presidential run, Obama noted, "I can’t assume that the money chase didn’t alter me in some ways...as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality, and frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population — that is, the people that I’d entered public life to serve."
As academic analyses and decades of anecdotal experiences have taught us, when money comes into conflict with principle in American politics, money almost always prevails.
Decades ago, John Dewey observed, "Whatever may be the convictions of individuals within the parties, the parties themselves are property-minded. In the clash between property interests and human interests, all their habits of thought and action fatally impel them to side with the former. They make concessions, but do not change the direction of their belief or behavior."
Thus, when Robert Reich asks "Does Hillary Get It?" and when Matt Taibbi laments Democrats' refusal "to see how easy they could have it" if they would only adopt a social democratic platform devoted to lifting working families and prosecuting Wall Street fraudsters, one can only shrug and ask, in response: What did you expect from a party whose donor base consists of those dedicated to maintaining the system that has enriched so few and pushed so many to the margins?
So far, Democratic Party liberals have shown that we shouldn't expect much more than a tepid defense of a status quo that has bled out the middle class, eroded social mobility, and left millions living in deep poverty, without adequate nutrition and health care.
But then again, there's the other side: Ezra Klein and members of the "happy, complacent" elite say that things aren't really that bad, after all.
Therein lies the reason Democrats can't, as Robinson put it, "articulate a comprehensive alternate political worldview": They don't even recognize the need for an alternative, and if they did, they wouldn't have one to offer.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

THE ROOTS OF TRUMPISM

An Anti-Trump Electoral Strategy That Isn’t Pro-Clinton

Pro-Bernie protesters outside the DNC, July 25 (Paul and Cathy / Flickr)
For UnconventionalDissent's DNC blog, David Greenberg and Jesse Myerson report from the convention floor.
I have spoken to many Bernie Sanders supporters here at the DNC in Philadelphia who find themselves in a bind. For the last year, they have been volunteering, phone-banking, and door-knocking for a candidacy premised on certain principles: overcoming neoliberalism, privileging the concerns of the working class and poor, and shifting to a paradigm where economic security is regarded as a universal human right directly guaranteed by the government. Now, they are being asked to support a campaign that embodies the Democratic establishment they ran against.
They know that, if the next president isn’t Hillary Clinton, it will be Donald Trump, an authoritarian-leaning billionaire capitalist who emboldens neo-Nazis, armed xenophobes, and organized misogynists. They know that ascendant fascism threatens the lives and well-being of their comrades and that far-right wing government would make organizing to advance Sanders’s agenda much more difficult. But they are wary of rewarding Clinton with their support after her team’s paltry concessions to their movement. Capitulating to Clinton, it seems, would validate her decision to take them for granted and could therefore neutralize the energy fueling the “political revolution.”
“The delegates phone banked, canvassed, went to parks and held up signs, and got the word out for Bernie Sanders,” says Winnie Wong, co-founder of People for Bernie, “and here they are in Philadelphia, and when they get home they’ll be $5,000 dollars out and knowing that in four months they’ll have to vote for someone who does not represent their politics.” Wong says that a lot of the frustration and anger on display among Sanders’ supporters here in Philadelphia “comes down to the fact that a lot of the Bernie Sanders delegates are working-class people. Many of them had to fundraise to get here. They don’t have thousands of disposable dollars to pay for transportation and food.”
“They’re genuinely good people who fought really hard for a candidate who they thought would improve their life,” says Wong. “Now they have to come and be surrounded by corporate branding and suites for billionaires. The actual wealth divide is palpable.” Against that backdrop, however determined they are to defeat Trump, “It might be hard for them to vote for a woman who, up until last year, was making $250,000 for a speech at a bank.”
Maria Svart, National Director of Democratic Socialists of America, is proposing a strategy that could offer a way out of this conundrum. “What we’re urging our chapters in swing states to do,” she says, “is reach out and find out who’s organizing in communities of working class, poor, and precarious people and support them in doing voter identification, registration, and protection. In the process, we want them to identify and organize people who are interested in democratic socialism.”
By “voter protection,” Svart means providing poor and working class voters with resources to confront the many ways in which the right wing seeks to prevent them from voting. These include not just being dropped from the rolls, but more flagrantly illegal means as well, from robo-calls delivering incorrect information to direct voter intimidation. Tactics to counter these include setting up and staffing legal hotlines, doing voter education, and taking voters to the polls. Svart emphasizes the importance of developing relationships with people already doing voter protection work, so that in time DSA will not just be some outside organization in working-class communities, but a trusted institution.
The strategy advances both DSA’s short-term goal of defeating Trump and its long-term goal of building a base that can sustain a grassroots mass movement for socialism and a left-wing party, both of which rely on empowering the same constituencies. “Whether we want to elect people inside or, depending on local conditions, outside the Democratic Party, we need to focus on organizing in black, Latinx, and poor and working-class white communities,” she says. “To build a viable party nationally, we can’t skip the step of building a base, and that’s not going to take just a year.”
Though it has long been DSA’s policy to support the Identify-Register-Protect strategy, the organization hasn’t often emphasized it to the degree that it has this year, when someone as palpably dangerous as Trump is running and, on the other hand, someone as compelling as Bernie Sanders has ignited national excitement about democratic socialism.
That excitement is reflected in the numbers. Over the last year, the rate of people joining DSA has quadrupled. So has the rate of new organizing committees and chapters forming. “We get a new one every few weeks,” says Svart, pointing to recent successes in Tacoma, Washington, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. “A lot of our growth is in the South, which is very exciting,” she says. New DSA groups are popping up at colleges too, and even in high schools. “Organizing in high schools is new, and we didn’t set out to do it. They found us!”
The growth is evident here at the DNC, where about 55 delegates are DSA members, including about 40 percent of Sanders delegates from Texas. “For years,” says Svart, “we haven’t viewed the DNC as a venue to organize openly as socialists, but this year it was obviously entirely different.” Svart is clear that the goal is not to realign the Democratic Party; “It’s just that the Democratic Party is where many progressive people do politics, and often it’s also where they experience the limitations of the current electoral system and become conscious of the need for a more radical long-term vision.”
“2016 will serve as an experiment in both supporting our own members as candidates for local office and developing the Identify-Register-Protect strategy.” DSA’s funding, she says, comes entirely from membership dues, which keeps its staff small, “so while we are urging chapters to do this, ultimately they’ll do what they feel is strategic in the context of their community. Some of our members will vote for Jill Stein and many others will vote for Hillary Clinton. Some chapters will focus on electing local, openly socialist candidates. Some chapters may not do electoral work at all.”
“We really fought a very, very long and sometimes difficult battle in order to win those states that we won,” says Wong of the Sanders campaign. “Sanders supporters are letting out their frustrations and processing all that they have experienced over the course of this primary cycle. They’ve really gone through some ups and downs.”
“But I also think that we as organizers—and Bernie as an organizer—can organize this frustration into something much more long-lasting.”

Jesse A. Myerson is an activist and writer living in New York City.
Correction: This article previously stated that two-thirds of Bernie Sanders delegates from Texas were DSA members. Svart estimates the number is closer to 40 percent. The text has been corrected.
Read more of Dissent's election coverage.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

STOPPING TRUMP WHILE CHALLENGING CLINTON




An Anti-Trump Electoral Strategy That Isn’t Pro-Clinton

Pro-Bernie protesters outside the DNC, July 25 (Paul and Cathy / Flickr)

For UnconventionalDissent's DNC blog, David Greenberg and Jesse Myerson report from the convention floor.
I have spoken to many Bernie Sanders supporters here at the DNC in Philadelphia who find themselves in a bind. For the last year, they have been volunteering, phone-banking, and door-knocking for a candidacy premised on certain principles: overcoming neoliberalism, privileging the concerns of the working class and poor, and shifting to a paradigm where economic security is regarded as a universal human right directly guaranteed by the government. Now, they are being asked to support a campaign that embodies the Democratic establishment they ran against.
They know that, if the next president isn’t Hillary Clinton, it will be Donald Trump, an authoritarian-leaning billionaire capitalist who emboldens neo-Nazis, armed xenophobes, and organized misogynists. They know that ascendant fascism threatens the lives and well-being of their comrades and that far-right wing government would make organizing to advance Sanders’s agenda much more difficult. But they are wary of rewarding Clinton with their support after her team’s paltry concessions to their movement. Capitulating to Clinton, it seems, would validate her decision to take them for granted and could therefore neutralize the energy fueling the “political revolution.”
“The delegates phone banked, canvassed, went to parks and held up signs, and got the word out for Bernie Sanders,” says Winnie Wong, co-founder of People for Bernie, “and here they are in Philadelphia, and when they get home they’ll be $5,000 dollars out and knowing that in four months they’ll have to vote for someone who does not represent their politics.” Wong says that a lot of the frustration and anger on display among Sanders’ supporters here in Philadelphia “comes down to the fact that a lot of the Bernie Sanders delegates are working-class people. Many of them had to fundraise to get here. They don’t have thousands of disposable dollars to pay for transportation and food.”
“They’re genuinely good people who fought really hard for a candidate who they thought would improve their life,” says Wong. “Now they have to come and be surrounded by corporate branding and suites for billionaires. The actual wealth divide is palpable.” Against that backdrop, however determined they are to defeat Trump, “It might be hard for them to vote for a woman who, up until last year, was making $250,000 for a speech at a bank.”
Maria Svart, National Director of Democratic Socialists of America, is proposing a strategy that could offer a way out of this conundrum. “What we’re urging our chapters in swing states to do,” she says, “is reach out and find out who’s organizing in communities of working class, poor, and precarious people and support them in doing voter identification, registration, and protection. In the process, we want them to identify and organize people who are interested in democratic socialism.”
By “voter protection,” Svart means providing poor and working class voters with resources to confront the many ways in which the right wing seeks to prevent them from voting. These include not just being dropped from the rolls, but more flagrantly illegal means as well, from robo-calls delivering incorrect information to direct voter intimidation. Tactics to counter these include setting up and staffing legal hotlines, doing voter education, and taking voters to the polls. Svart emphasizes the importance of developing relationships with people already doing voter protection work, so that in time DSA will not just be some outside organization in working-class communities, but a trusted institution.
The strategy advances both DSA’s short-term goal of defeating Trump and its long-term goal of building a base that can sustain a grassroots mass movement for socialism and a left-wing party, both of which rely on empowering the same constituencies. “Whether we want to elect people inside or, depending on local conditions, outside the Democratic Party, we need to focus on organizing in black, Latinx, and poor and working-class white communities,” she says. “To build a viable party nationally, we can’t skip the step of building a base, and that’s not going to take just a year.”
Though it has long been DSA’s policy to support the Identify-Register-Protect strategy, the organization hasn’t often emphasized it to the degree that it has this year, when someone as palpably dangerous as Trump is running and, on the other hand, someone as compelling as Bernie Sanders has ignited national excitement about democratic socialism.
That excitement is reflected in the numbers. Over the last year, the rate of people joining DSA has quadrupled. So has the rate of new organizing committees and chapters forming. “We get a new one every few weeks,” says Svart, pointing to recent successes in Tacoma, Washington, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. “A lot of our growth is in the South, which is very exciting,” she says. New DSA groups are popping up at colleges too, and even in high schools. “Organizing in high schools is new, and we didn’t set out to do it. They found us!”
The growth is evident here at the DNC, where about 55 delegates are DSA members, including about 40 percent of Sanders delegates from Texas. “For years,” says Svart, “we haven’t viewed the DNC as a venue to organize openly as socialists, but this year it was obviously entirely different.” Svart is clear that the goal is not to realign the Democratic Party; “It’s just that the Democratic Party is where many progressive people do politics, and often it’s also where they experience the limitations of the current electoral system and become conscious of the need for a more radical long-term vision.”
“2016 will serve as an experiment in both supporting our own members as candidates for local office and developing the Identify-Register-Protect strategy.” DSA’s funding, she says, comes entirely from membership dues, which keeps its staff small, “so while we are urging chapters to do this, ultimately they’ll do what they feel is strategic in the context of their community. Some of our members will vote for Jill Stein and many others will vote for Hillary Clinton. Some chapters will focus on electing local, openly socialist candidates. Some chapters may not do electoral work at all.”
“We really fought a very, very long and sometimes difficult battle in order to win those states that we won,” says Wong of the Sanders campaign. “Sanders supporters are letting out their frustrations and processing all that they have experienced over the course of this primary cycle. They’ve really gone through some ups and downs.”
“But I also think that we as organizers—and Bernie as an organizer—can organize this frustration into something much more long-lasting.”

Jesse A. Myerson is an activist and writer living in New York City.
Correction: This article previously stated that two-thirds of Bernie Sanders delegates from Texas were DSA members. Svart estimates the number is closer to 40 percent. The text has been corrected.
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