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

correction: the SWP (The Militant is their paper) are apparently *former Trots*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_(United_States)

*throws up hands wildly*

On the challenges of organizing tech folks:

https://thebaffler.com/latest/which-side-are-they-on-banks

thanks for that ^^^ very relevant to my interests

fuck yeah bjoooorn

thanks to a HOOS for RTing this, a necessary response to the Nordic fetishism we're seeing in some circles

https://bostonpewg.org/2018/09/07/one-weird-trick-to-building-socialism/

every time somebody brings up sweden's immense amounts of paid work leave i'm like "how the fuck can you even do that"

for people interested in DSA infighting, the boston political education working group is doing among the very best countering work to both Jacobin's worse takes and the new _totally unaffiliated we promise_ DSA publication The Call which is totally a genuine DSA rank and file thing and definitely not a political vehicle for Jacobin's tendency inside of DSA, even if every link on their 'about' page goes to a Jacobin article

new publication BUILD, about ongoing grassroots basebuilding work across DSA chapters, is really fucking cool and inspiring

here's a PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzX2vTL0jLbedUZXX0lLTEY4eXRYX2JaNnBQaXdzc0RlV3Rr/view

Jacobin's been breaking new grounds in trash lately so this is a welcome development

I got a doorknock/canvassing visit from some guy last night telling me about the new DSA-endorsed candidate for Supervisor in my District. He's light-years better than the other candidates so my support is not even a question.

To be a little less opaque for folks who don't follow the factionalism, and hopefully not condescending to those that do, here's a breakdown of the internal stresses I'm aware of in the org rn:

- Last year at the convention there were several slates for leadership positions on the National Political Cmte, the national leadership body

- These slates as such no longer exist, but the names for the slates continue to be used for the tendencies they represented that are now basically factions

- "Momentum" and "North Star" factions lean heavily toward prioritizing canvassing as a tactic to pursue Medicare for All and electoral volunteer work, typically angling for the deliberate exclusion of other kinds of work. There are lots of people who think like I do, that Medicare for All is a necessary idea that we need grassroots work to win and that cold-canvassing ala Greenpeace-on-sidewalks is the stupidest possible nonstarter to build a serious campaign.

- In many chapters, like East Bay DSA or Philadelphia DSA and others, there have been allegations that Momentumites have aggressively gamed votes and other processes to ensure their agenda is the only one pursued. There's understood to be significant overlap between Momentum/NS and Jacobin--partly because much of what appears in Jacobin either argues in favor of Momentum positions or attacks positions held by Momentum opponents.

- Jacobin has rather plainly been used as a mouthpiece for views representative of Momentum faction while stridently maintaining they don't advocate for any faction--helping along this argument, now the new publication The Call appears poised to be the standard bearer that's inside the organization.

- Other tendencies & caucuses, generally those further to left (and so they call Momentum et al "the right" of DSA) are aligned in opposition to Momentum's approach as much as their politics. While Momentumites tend to hold that their priorities should be the only ones forcefully pursued by their chapters, opponents hold that simultaneous ongoing approaches within chapters, from M4A to work on housing to brake light clinics, are a good thing. These factions, like Refoundation (who's especially strong in Boston, hence Boston PEWG's strengths) or the LibSoc caucus (strong in the Pacific NW), are much more interested in the kind of base building work you see in the BUILD zine above, but don't make a concerted effort to block work by the opposing gang. That's where I tend to place myself, if anywhere.

Also a report was released yesterday regarding a long investigation of an alleged assault by an NPC member -- it's very damning of the org's internal dysfunction at the national level, and raises thorny questions about the leadership's approach to resolving this issue, even as it paints the accused in an unflattering light.

In solidarity with Billings #plaidshirtguy who was escorted off the risers after wearing a @DemSocialists sticker for 20 minutes. pic.twitter.com/wNH08GzMU4

— Billings DSA (@Billings_DSA) September 7, 2018

i...cant see the sticker?

HOOS do you think a formal DSA split is inevitable?

https://www.dsausa.org/weekly/identities-mistaken-where-the-rubber-meets-the-road/
Oh lovely

Naschek’s caucus opposed a reading group on Haider’s book and Naschek, as co-chair of the Steering Committee, then censured a committee of the Local whose members independently organized said reading group.

HOOS do you think a formal DSA split is inevitable?

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Friday, September 7, 2018 8:47 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think rather than a split we're gonna see attrition; my gf often says that her fear is 'after we win medicare for all, DSA is over, all the 2016 new members go home'

I thought about that, but I dunno; it’s not like folks are going to be _less_ stressed by that point

fair! i don't tend to think things will unfold in that way either -- i think just the stream of amateurish administrative dysfunction plus legitimate political conflict is going to burn a lot of people out

xps all the tools in the toolbox, all the time, I don't trust any approach that valorizes/prioritizes/excludes

ya same

Also a report was released yesterday regarding a long investigation of an alleged assault by an NPC member -- it's very damning of the org's internal dysfunction at the national level, and raises thorny questions about the leadership's approach to resolving this issue, even as it paints the accused in an unflattering light.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, September 7, 2018 4:33 PM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is also a perennial issue in local chapters, fwiw -- I've said this before but this is my number one hesitation about being involved. even without actual assault, I wish there was a way to get involved in this sort of thing while completely avoiding the bro/"dirtbag left" atmosphere*

* a perennial complaint, I've found, of women involved in this stuff throughout history

To be a little less opaque for folks who don't follow the factionalism, and hopefully not condescending to those that do, here's a breakdown of the internal stresses I'm aware of in the org rn:

I had to lie down with a hot towel over my face after reading HOOS's post

i would like to be organized but I only trust Hoos to do it

See here's a little hit of the madness --

East Bay DSA: hey guys here are our voting recommendations, make sure you vote *against* a measure that would levy taxes on million plus dollar homes to find affordable housing

Everyone Else: you what now

We try not to wade into internal DSA squabbles, but this is #actually appalling. Not really sure how you can claim to be a socialist and oppose raising property taxes to fund affordable housing. https://t.co/BTpSDbwLC0

— Stomp Out Slumlords! (@StompSlumlords) September 7, 2018

I’m anti-solidaristic with homeowners

“Nonprofit industrial complex” you mean the orgs that build and manage affordable housing units?! JFC

This is such a “how many levels of socialism are you on” thing it hurts my head

"to hell with the good, we demand the perfect and we want it now"

I don't even think that's the argument, sleeve, I think they're just betraying that they (this subcmte) have appallingly bad political instincts and don't really understand why it doesn't make sense for ex to use median home prices of all things as their determinant figure here.

Occupy Our Homes was a good reminder to me that middle class homeowners are not generally of the material conditions to be really radicalized in an otherwise humdrum period. It's the people who've got little already who have the most to gain and least to lose from demanding radical change -- to be a little reductionist for the sake of conversation, it's the very people who need access to affordable housing. And as a consequence, they ought to be the center of gravity in any political analysis around housing.

So this whole thing just stinks

thx for clarifying, that makes sense

jesus christ

Shortly after the convention, a friend warned me not to be alone with RL. A few months later, the person he raped reached out to me directly. I believe them. I started giving other people the same warning: don’t drink with him, don’t hang with him alone.

— allison (@allisongeroi) September 7, 2018

And as you may or may not have seen, Al is now the subject of a hit job by a friend of RL's about being a **government employee** engaged in a **political hit job** because she's a DOJ functionary by day. This fact about her has previously been ""exposed"" when Al was one of the main organizers of that first shaming of Miller at the restaurant.

And had this idiot writing this hit piece on Al had done a second's diligence (as if he's operating in good faith) he would have realized that Al is actually politically *friendly* to RL, and an *opponent* of the people this jackass claims engineered this "political hit job."

meanwhile..

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/08/john-mcdonnell-labour-proposal-workers-ownership-funds

xp

This is all heartbreaking to me to learn--RL and I go back to Occupy, and back then he resisted participating in a restorative justice process brought to him for a long time.

Ultimately he and the victim completed the process and worked together again and she spoke well publicly on his behalf afterwards, so I'd hoped behaviors like these were left in the past, tied to a time and place of great confusion and grief. Gutting that it's not the case. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time I suppose.

I do think there's something to the point made that many of the behaviors coding as aggressive that people complain about in the report have at least something to do with RL as a loud & passionate & occasionally razor-sharp young black man. That this aspect of all this says something about the old guard & momentum folks low tolerance for those characteristics.

thanks to a HOOS for RTing this, a necessary response to the Nordic fetishism we're seeing in some circles

https://bostonpewg.org/2018/09/07/one-weird-trick-to-building-socialism/

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Friday, September 7, 2018 3:32 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

socialists against owning the means of production 🤔

hyup

H/t to Hoos for pointing this out:

Students are striking at Mexico’s largest university, and elected a new Economics Dept

Striking students from the Economics Faculty at UNAM in Mexico City updated their department directory pic.twitter.com/bhRA3IuYZr

— Haymarket Books (@haymarketbooks) September 7, 2018

Excited for new season of walking dead

Excited for new season of walking dead

Coordinador de Revolucion Permanente made me lol

I like the fact that the second best university in Mexico costs 200% of the average national salary per year in tuition and the best university in Mexico costs nothing - though both are great tbf.

New Socialist is publishing a series on how Labour could / should create a bolder policy set, which might be interesting.

https://newsocialist.org.uk/tag/beyond-the-manifesto/

The whole RL thing is uncomfortable for me, or an example of a larger discomfort I feel when women I don't know are tweeting about men I don't know via secondhand accounts from other women I don't know, because I do feel inclined to believe the women, but I also don't know what context might be missing, whose agenda might be in play, etc. Occasionally there are cases where an accusation without its context can seem like more than it is. I'm leaning toward believing that is the case for Keith Ellison, for example, although I honestly don't know.

re thread title, i don't think this ostensible news feature (not an op-ed) would have been published in the NYT even a year ago (it still wouldn't be published as an op-ed!)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html

Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not.

Unemployment is down and jobs are going unfilled. But for people without much education, the real question is: Do those jobs pay enough to live on?

American workers are being shut out of the profits they are helping to generate. The decline of unions is a big reason.

e.g.

Democrats may scoff at Republicans’ work requirements, but they have yet to challenge the dominant conception of poverty that feeds such meanspirited politics. Instead of offering a counternarrative to America’s moral trope of deservedness, liberals have generally submitted to it, perhaps even embraced it, figuring that the public will not support aid that doesn’t demand that the poor subject themselves to the low-paying jobs now available to them. Even stalwarts of the progressive movement seem to reserve economic prosperity for the full-time worker. Senator Bernie Sanders once declared, echoing a long line of Democrats who have come before and after him, “Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.” Sure, but what about those who work 20 or 30 hours, like Vanessa?

etc.

Horatio Alger has a lot to answer for.

I've also been thinking about those Marx and anarchism explainers in Teen Vogue. They've obviously decided that these sorts of pieces, which go well beyond a simple "woke" rebranding, are a good investment, and that's as solid an indication of the broadening appeal of far-left politics as you're likely to find.

ya hiring extreme metal writer & union organizer kim kelly as a columnist made me go 'oh here we fuckin go'

(the anarchist piece was a column of hers!)

Yeah I don't like anarchism that much but it was still cool to see

after the NY elections tonight i look forward to the new media narrative that socialism is over/is victorious over all

— September Tweets (@bombsfall) September 13, 2018