Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Nice lengthy history here getting into what happened to union organizing in the 70s and how that differs from the popular conception:

https://www.thenation.com/article/organized-labors-lost-generations/

she seemed set on the idea that there's a righteousness in subjecting ourselves to the torrent of others pain and sort of bathing in the rage it induces, and I just think that's deeply unhealthy.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, February 8, 2018 10:45 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reminded me of this thread:

problem with taking twitter break for mental health reasons is that the granularity of information you see here can't be found anywhere else

— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) August 13, 2017

haha i faved that tweet at the time

nicely drawn history lesson at the nib today on 20th century black socialists & their relevance today:

https://thenib.com/black-and-red

and again, can't recommend Robin Kelley's Hammer & Hoe enough, which was one of last year's life-changing reads for me and is available online

Thanks for the link, that was good

http://progressivearmy.com/

Anyone know anything about this group? Legit? Astroturf? I feel like a couple of the staff names look familiar, maybe Ben Dixon?

Dixon used to be on the Ring of Fire Network & i guess this is his new thing, everybody out here starting their own podcast networks now what a world

the democratization of graphic design & brand conscious copywriting makes it impossible to tell the difference between actually resourced projects & shoestring distributed operations anymore which lets anyone at least appear credible which makes me feel insane

maybe not that new, started in 2015 says

As I remarked long ago, you could format Time Cube like a Medium post and it would seem pretty credible

hm

https://i.imgur.com/fhijc13.png

:o

Oh shit I love cheap Aussie sci-fi I'm in

new Electoral Strategy guide from Metro DC DSA

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pa9qqalJ6dqy4w6s_ts9ijVh5Yo27za2gvFExJ_Sm6s/edit

and hey while we're at it here's DC's Stomp Out Slumlords anti-evictions manual:

https://mdcdsa.org/content/Anti-Eviction-Manual.pdf

that is REALLY good stuff

a little disappointed that the "how to beat a landlord" section doesn't contain actual fightin' tips though :)

anger is an energy, claimed that punter John Lydon

I get sensitive when I see folks online complaining repeatedly about DSA and ”electoralism.”

It’s like, motherfucker, what else you GOT? It’s not the only hook that the chapters are staking their hopes on, and there’s shit-tons of other work done by the groups nationwide. All the electoral criticisms I see launched seem like refuse from either the early 70s when a thousand sects splintered or the early 80s when Harrington first formed the group.

They never seem to take into account that shit is materially way fucking different from 35 years ago where you had a Dem-controlled Congress and a vast majority of state houses held by Dems. That’s all gone. Need to carve out some room just to stave off the constant attacks.

I agree that there’s not a little bourgeois spectacle to American electoral politics, but at the same time, it’s seems like there exists a tendency just to use that line an excuse not to do anything. Hell, at least *try* in some of these races, esp in non-Dem strongholds, while you work on building power and coalitions elsewhere. DSA-supported candidates lost in Brooklyn and Seattle, but they sure as shit won in VA and AL.

Some of my comrades might disagree but I think their electoral strategy is sound and, as you say, just one plank of a broader movement-building strategy. Like one of the slates' docs said, falling prey to electoralism vs. having an electoral strategy is the key distinction to be drawn.

Yeah, I think that distinction gets flattened, and you get some held-over 90s political thinking where any and every attempt to go for any sort of power is to be violently scorned.

The time for that thinking is over, if it was ever valid.

loving the expansion of this campaign, and also this ad

Having an out tail light is one of the most common reasons people are pulled over. Unfortunately, in @miamidadecounty this is enough to get you deported. #Miami @demsocialists are here to fix your lights for free. @MiamiHerald @newtropicmiami @MiamiNewTimes @tomaskenn @GeoffMiami pic.twitter.com/A8WsVoByEB

— Miami DSA 🌹 (@MiamiDSA) February 19, 2018

Seeing a lot of these today (plus one on here too :))

Thank you Wayne LaPierre, you have said the right things to make me finally become a due paying member of @DemSocialists . Any group that is keeping you up at night must be doing the right thing. I look forward to receiving my card in the mail. @pghDSA keep me posted on meetups!

— Michael 🌹 (@nekorook) February 22, 2018

Coverage of the W.Va teachers: http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/20955/west_virginia_teachers_strike_wildcat

that article's pretty light on research or quotes

Trillbilly Workers' Party did a special episode interviewing some of the teachers:

https://soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718/bonus-episode-voices-from-the-west-virginia-teachers-strike

and, predictably, Jacobin has a bunch of stuff on the strike.

The primary source of striking teachers’ dissatisfaction is the state’s meager offering of a “task force” to fix the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), West Virginia’s health insurance program for public employees. Tax cuts have resulted in changes to the insurance plan, sending co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses through the roof as teacher pay remains among the lowest in the country. One projection shows premiums under PEIA rising as much as 11 percent per year starting in 2020.

“This has been a huge issue, causing problems for years,” said one striking teacher. “They’ve been cutting our health insurance over and over, making it really expensive to survive.” Throughout the strike teachers held signs that read “Will teach for insurance” and “I’d take a bullet for your child but PEIA won’t cover it.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-teachers-strike-medicare-for-all

Teachers looking with trepidation at Janus have much to learn from our colleagues in West Virginia. They didn’t passively wait for “the union” to act on their behalf; the strike was not called from above, it was built from below, in part through social media, where workers were able to organize escalating actions independent of the union leadership. As one striker told me, “Leadership was largely based on communities and not always directly tied to the unions themselves. Communities looked to local leadership as to what to do, how to organize, when to hold votes, and when to hold impromptu walkouts.” Workers need strong unions, but they also need to organize independently in the workplace and learn to rely on their own power. Building durable rank-and-file networks and union caucuses is a crucial next step in revitalizing American labor.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-janus-right-to-work-unions

and it only took a week

WV Teacher’s strike finally being covered on @chrislhayes show right now.

— MitchellCares (@MitchellCares) March 3, 2018

Oh no, is Slavoj exhibiting palsy symptoms like Jim Ross did 15+ years ago?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrSUGgfM4Q4

😘👌 h/t @kath_krueger pic.twitter.com/q8IO7z98XM

— alex (@shitshowdotinfo) April 6, 2018

This should be required listening imo:

https://player.fm/series/jacobin-radio-1354006/the-dig-dsa-at-the-ballot-box

The latest installment in our ongoing series on the left and electoral politics and we're talking about Democratic Socialists of America's new electoral strategy. DSA has almost overnight become a serious force on an American socialist left that has for decades lacked much in the way of serious forces. One of the major reasons the organization's membership rolls blew up, of course, was because of Bernie Sanders' historic 2016 run for president, which not only electrified huge swaths of the country but reminded the radical left that the point is to win power and to govern—and that, after years on the margins, we could do so. This was in part because many Americans were no longer afraid of the s-word: socialism. Yet there is still, for many good reasons, a lot of skepticism about electoral politics in general and the Democratic Party very much in particular, inside DSA and across the socialist left. That's the needle that the new DSA electoral strategy document tries to thread.

Dan’s guests are Renée Paradis, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer (@ReneeParadis). She has frequently worked for electoral campaigns, including most recently as the National Voter Protection Director for Bernie 2016. Michael Kinnucan is a writer, researcher and activist in New York City. You should also follow him on Facebook, where he has a lively and incisive presence. Both are members of DSA’s National Electoral Committee and the organizing committee for NYC-DSA’s Brooklyn Electoral Working Group.

Michael and Renee are just scary smart, I feel like they are actually going to have a big impact on NY politics.

yeah, this is good. anyone who's interested in the possibilities and pitfalls of getting involved in US electoral politics should give er a shot.

Nice interview with Chokwe Antar Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, MS.

Gets into the limits of electoralism, Detroit, how to work around structural limits placed by the state of Mississippi & more.

https://www.blubrry.com/thedig/33478978/radicalizing-jackson-with-chokwe-antar-lumumba/

speaking of electoral strategy

DSA is proud to announce national endorsements for nine candidates who are running for local, state, and federal office. Congrats @KanielaIng @KareemForPA @Innamo @SummerForPA @zellieimani @GayleforCA @brandy4moco @chrisRwilhelm @DanielleMeitiv! pic.twitter.com/U9lGCeUiHO

— DSA 🌹 (@DemSocialists) April 26, 2018

Over in Iraq:

First female Communist elected in Iraq's holiest city calls for 'social justice'

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/female-communist-mp-heart-iraqs-holiest-city-1374412216

A nice post from Corey Robin:

pic.twitter.com/GBLfXYjYjR

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) May 16, 2018

I hope we can start to retire the hope we can start talk! Go team.

good news out of SF

Prop F won. Tenants in San Francisco have power where they didn't before. Thank you to our 100+ volunteers. Thank you to our partners and allies. Read our press release here: https://t.co/Mv3imxqYsH

— DSA San Francisco (@DSA_SF) June 6, 2018

also the ranked voting system means Ron Conway didn't win, and all the ballot measure results look good

Really nice Nation piece here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/trumpism-its-coming-from-the-suburbs/

Gets into the history of American leftist organizing to show the need to incorporate antiracism for any movement going forward

I would love a HOOS' take on the Poor People's Campaign

https://theoutline.com/post/5009/poor-peoples-campaign-march-june-23?zd=1&zi=4vm7ynzb

I have complicated feelings about it.

My current workplace has done a lot of the back-of-the-napkin research work for it. They're not getting a lot of coverage of the DC protests and that's now become part of their messaging, which I know must feel like a necessary move for them but I think is a waste of time. My former workplace gave me a lot of experience with mass civil disobedience at the Capitol that the media basically doesn't cover, or say does human interest stories about without meaningfully discussing the issues.

Why isn't it getting coverage? In my view, it's because polite sit-ins on the Capitol steps aren't high enough on the sacrifice/disruption axes to either move people to action through empathy or literally disrupt any valuable targets. This morning some PPC campaigners walked past me on the metro platform singing and for just a few seconds my heart leapt as I thought they might be about to block this major train station, but then I realized they were just on their way to another day of speeches & ceremonial sitting & frogmarching & tedious processing paperwork.

I think the decentralized civil disobedience happening in various states is much more useful and powerful largely because civil disobedience arrests are not nearly so neatly stage managed by police outside DC, so neither escalation nor particular dramatic sacrifice is quite as required to garner local media eyes & opportunities to build active public support.

(the intercept link above doesn't note that we had over 1,200 arrests during our action--PPC has now officially surpassed that if you include their decentralized actions, which, more power to em, but dang i liked having that "i organized the largest civil disobedience action in a generation" on my resume)

thanks HOOS, always happy to get the skinny on what's happening out there

so AMLO won in México, the New Yorker had a profile of him and his campaign. The major question raised there is what his all- things-to-all-people campaign persona will become in office, I think.

I first learned about him on the El Chapo drama on Univision. felt bad for him on the show so I'm glad he won an election :)

wanted to share this reflection from a pal on the kind of personal spiritual benefits of organizing, and particularly the catalytic effect of momentum, the training institute & community i've learned organizing through:

Momentum helped guide me through a life-changing spiritual transformation and leadership change. I learned new tools and practices for my organizing work. But on a deeper level, I was able to sustain myself in hope for the first time in my organizing career. I was connected to a larger organizing community. I met a group of incredible leaders who played roles in movements and campaigns across dozens of issues. These relationships supported me in transcending the feelings of not belonging that I often felt in social justice spaces. I didn’t have to be a “good organizer” in the Momentum community. I could be my broken, complicated, whole self for the first time. And I finally had a theory of change that posited current political structures could be disrupted so that a more fundamental liberation would be possible. The training structure helped me to integrate this new theory of change experientially, through song and chant. I was making change on a spiritual level.

http://stillharbor.org/anchormagazine/2018/no-small-project

("my" momentum ofc is different from corbyn's momentum, funny that they share a name)

thx for sharing HOOS

there's a lot more nuts-and-bolts organizing/campaigning stuff in this long AOC interview than I've seen from her elsewhere

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-interview-democratic-primary

all y'all forriners are just copying the true socialist rush of #ruddmentum