Socialism in the Time of Corona

This episode explores a perennial issue for socialist labor organizing, namely how to approach sexism, racism, and other violations of civil rights. When and how should unions fight against these violations for their own sake, rather than as strictly workplace issues?

My guest is Lisa Xu, a member of Boston DSA and previously co-chair of its Labor Working Group. Xu is also a member of the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color caucus. She is currently a staff organizer for Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a rank-and-file caucus in the UAW led primarily by auto workers with growing support in other sectors of the union. UAWD is fighting to pass a union-wide referendum vote later this year on adopting direct elections of its International Executive Board, otherwise known as "One Member, One Vote." You can find links in the show notes. She was also formerly a member of and staff organizer for UAW Local 5118, the Harvard Graduate Students Union.

Auto manufacturers in Detroit in the 1960s were among the largest private employers of Black workers. In 1969, black auto workers created the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In this episode, Jerome Scott, a founding member of the LRBW, tells us about its motivations and accomplishments, why it was Black workers who began these revolutionary union movements, and how highly they valued political education and analysis. 

Jerome Scott is a member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and a founding director of Project South Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. He is a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 

Further reading:

https://daily.jstor.org/league-revolutionary-black-workers/

https://daily.jstor.org/the-detroit-rebellion/

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying

We discuss specific demands socialists should make of the Biden administration with regard to climate change, and the administration’s potential responsiveness, or “push ability” as Riofrancos calls it. More generally, we consider the differences between the U.S.’s two major political parties on climate change: how large and significant are these differences? Riofrancos also describes her research on the extraction of lithium, a key component of rechargeable batteries, and the political challenges this extraction poses for the left.

Thea Riofrancos is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, and has served as visiting researcher in universities in Chile and Ecuador. She is the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Riofrancos is also an organizer with the Ecosocialist Working Group of the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA.

The 2020 Presidential election in the U.S. shows that the country’s electoral politics has entered a period of open “regime contention” between the two major political parties. One of these parties is coalescing around a nakedly anti democratic and racist resolve to subvert the electoral process by any means necessary.  Neither of them is interested in actually deepening mass political involvement. I discuss these developments with Amel Ahmed, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance” (Cambridge University Press, 2013). In a new book-length project, entitled Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional Sequencing and Regime Stability in Early Democratizers, she examines the long-term impact of institutions on democratic stability.

Capitol Siege panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT9D8Z7q0Co

Capital Siege footage: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siege

We continue our “counter-inauguration” event with organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. This second half presents the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus, who point out the racial discrimination inherent in the very first 100 Days programs announced by FDR, the Green New Deal campaign, which asserts the importance of organized labor in addressing climate change, and the International Committee, which enumerates specific socialist demands to curtail U.S. imperialism.

DSA: https://www.dsausa.org

Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color: https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/afrosocialists-and-socialists-of-color-caucus/

Ecosocialists and Green New Deal: https://ecosocialists.dsausa.org

International Committee: https://international.dsausa.org

Season 3 opens with an exercise in socialist imagination with organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. A few days after Biden’s inauguration, we held our own counter-inauguration laying out our alternative‘100 Days’ program. This is not purely a speculative exercise—the extent to which Biden’s presidency goes beyond a “return to normal” will depend crucially on the left’s ability to mobilize around some of the demands and aspirations you’ll hear in this episode. Part 1: DSA’s National Political Education Committee, the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) and the Socialist Feminist working group.

Political Education: https://education.dsausa.org

Democratic Socialist Labor Commission: https://labor.dsausa.org

Socialist Feminism Working Group: http://bit.ly/JoinDSASocFems

Soc Fem Day School: https://bit.ly/DSASocFemDaySchool

 

GND: Join the DSA Labor Commission & Green New Deal campaign in organizing to win the

PRO Act (in the actual first 100 days)! http://bit.ly/dsaproact

DSA’s ecosocialist Green New Deal principles: https://ecosocialists.dsausa.org/

YDSA: bit.ly/cancel-debt !

International Committee: https://international.dsausa.org/

Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus: https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/afrosocialists-and-socialists-of-color-caucus/

Should socialists in the U.S. be involved in electoral politics, and how? This episode looks at left and socialist involvement in the electoral politics of Rhode Island with Mie Inouye, PhD candidate at Yale University in Political Theory, and co-founder and Membership Coordinator of Reclaim Rhode Island. Mie is also co-chair of the Rhode Island chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color caucus. Reclaim RI offers a concrete example of socialists engaging with state budgets and elections to win specific campaigns and also communicate with people who would otherwise have little contact with left politics.

Even after Trump, the Republican Party will remain a powerful institutional base for the far right in the U.S. We cannot take on the far right without taking on the Republican Party. How we do this without compromising our independence as socialists will be a defining challenge over the next few years.

Sweden guarantees health care as a constitutional right, and its citizens have generally followed their national health experts’ guidelines during the pandemic. And yet the infection and death rates per capita in Sweden are shockingly similar to those in the U.S. Stellan Vinthagen, Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance, Professor of Sociology at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, explains why. His latest book is Conceptualizing Everyday Resistance (Routledge, 2020). Vinthagen has been active in several environmental, peace and migrants’ rights movements since 1980, and was one of the initiators of the Swedish Ship to Gaza 2008, a coalition member of the Freedom Flotilla.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html#countries

In their series ‘A people of color’s history of DSA,’ Alyssa de la Rosa and David Roddy present a detailed account of the role played by socialists of color in the DSA from its very origins. You’ll find this episode most useful as a supplement to their work (linked below). Alyssa De La Rosa has been a member of Sacramento DSA since 2016, and a Co-founder of the chapter’s Racial Solidarity Committee. David Roddy has been a Member of Sacramento DSA since 2009, a former member of DSA’s National Political Committee, and Western Regional YDSA organizer. He also hosts the leftist podcast Sh!t gets weird.

Part-1-Socialism-race-and-the-formation-of-DSA/

Part-2-DSA-enters-the-80s/

Part-3-DSA-and-the-first-rainbow-coalition/

Part-4-DSA-Looks-Inward/

Cornel West, "Toward a socialist theory of racism'

Joseph Shwartz, A history of DSA, 1971-2017