NYC DSAers Support Striking Workers at Verizon

By Dan DiMaggio

The strike this past spring by 39,000 Verizon workers in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast was the largest and most significant since United Parcel Service workers struck the package giant in 1997. After decades of retreat in the face of attacks by employers and right-wing politicians, it’s a hopeful sign.

Verizon infuriated landline and call-center workers from Massachusetts to Virginia with demands to outsource more jobs, cap pension contributions at 30 years of service, and force workers to live away from home for months at a time.

After 45 days on the picket lines, the unions beat back these concessions. In the end, Verizon committed to adding 1,300 more jobs in the United States, doing away with a hated disciplinary program, and phasing in 10.5% raises over four years. Although the unions still took a hit on healthcare, workers emerged feeling that they had achieved an overwhelming victory against a corporate behemoth.

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

Individually signed posts do not necessarily reflect the views of DSA as an organization or its leadership. DSA’s perspective on the 2016 elections can be found here. http://www.dsausa.org/election2016

By Jesse A. Myerson

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.

Statement of the DSA National Political Committee

Democratic Socialists of America believes that the Left must balance two crucial tasks in the November 2016 elections. On the one hand, the progressive movement must roundly defeat Donald Trump’s racist, nativist, Islamophobic and misogynist presidential campaign, as well as isolate and delegitimize the far-right hate groups that his campaign has strengthened. On the other hand, the Left must sustain and expand the independent electoral and social movement capacity built by the insurgent Sanders campaign, while broadening it out in an explicitly antiracist and multiracial direction. Thus, through November, DSA will prioritize two goals:

1. Building an independent “Dump Trump” movement, primarily in swing states where we have the capacity to make an impact, and
2. Developing local multiracial coalitions and campaigns that can build independent socialist organizing capacity and challenge neoliberal, pro-corporate Democrats in November 

Community members attend a vigil for Anthony Hill last spring. Credit: Metro Atlanta DSA

By Adam Cardo

I first became involved with DSA in the fall of 2014, as part of my larger political realignment brought on by the Black Lives Matter movement. After spending the summer volunteering for a moderate Democrat in Georgia, I began a semester at American University in Washington, D.C., taking classes while interning for another moderate Democrat. Fully enmeshed in mainstream “progressive” politics, I was all set to become a neoliberal Democratic Party apparatchik. However, two events transpired to lead me to the socialist light. The first was my involvement with the Metro Washington, D.C. DSA chapter, which I discovered through a mutual acquaintance. The other crucial event was the non-indictment of the police officers who murdered Eric Garner. The murder and rise of the Black Lives Matter movement brought into focus the entrenched racism that formed the bedrock of the U.S. society and economic system, the critical link between capitalist exploitation and white supremacy and the need for a total replacement of capitalism with socialism to create a better world.

By Lawrence S. Wittner

The shock and disbelief with which many political pundits have responded to Bernie Sanders’ description of himself as a “democratic socialist”—a supporter of democratic control of the economy—provide a clear indication of how little they know about the popularity and influence of democratic socialism over the course of American history.

Participants at the national convention.

National Director Maria Svart shared the following remarks with attendees during the first day of DSA’s National Convention on Nov. 13-15 in Bolivar, Penn. – Ed.

We are gathered together in a moment of tremendous opportunity. Who among us could have imagined even two years ago that the question of capitalism vs. socialism as a viable alternative would come up in a mainstream presidential debate? Or that over 700,000 people would donate to an avowed socialist candidate for president? 

James Cajuste and Jeevan D'souza, members of the NYC DSA local, participated in a bilingual tabling in Spanish Harlem last month. (Credit: Miko Brandini)

By Elizabeth Henderson

These are remarks that DSA’s We Need Bernie campaign co-chair Elizabeth Henderson gave during a plenary at DSA’s recent convention in Bolivar, Pa., Nov. 13-15. -- Ed.

It’s great to be here and to be able to talk with you all this afternoon about DSA’s We Need Bernie campaign. We hope that this plenary will give you all more insight into how we are all putting socialist theory to work in this campaign. 

When Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, announced his presidential bid last April, political activists throughout the country — myself included — maintained a cautious optimism about his candidacy.

Since then, Sanders has more than proven himself as a presidential contender, drawing crowds of tens of thousands of supporters in Portland, Los Angeles, and Boston and bringing in enough donations in the last fundraising quarter that his campaign raised $2 million shy of Clinton’s $28 million.

Sanders is using this momentum to call for a “political revolution.”

A statement by the National Political Committee of Democratic Socialists of America.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) call on all progressives across the United States to join together in a broad coalition against the rising tide of racist and nativist politics in the United States. The nativist fear-mongering by one Democratic and 27 Republican governors about the alleged threat posed to U.S. residents by Syrian refugees (themselves often fleeing ISIL violence) and undocumented immigrants obscures the true violent threat to our collective security: nativist, racist and misogynist terrorism.

Recent tragedies have shown all too clearly the state of crisis in which we find ourselves. The Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting illustrates how right-wing hostility to women’s rights makes those providing and seeking reproductive services targets for murder. The shooting of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis by white supremacists demonstrates that anyone doing work around racial justice must now expect and prepare for a violent racist response. And in Chicago, recent revelations of a year-long cover-up by city officials of the blatant police murder of Laquan McDonald add yet another chapter to the shameful history of police terror against African Americans and other communities of color. Meanwhile, ongoing harassment of individuals and groups who appear to be Muslim or immigrants goes under-reported in the press, as do attacks on mosques and Black churches.  

Steve Liss/the LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

By Duane Campbell

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made his promised substantive speech on democratic socialism to a packed crowd of 700 students and press at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on November, 19, 2015.  He explained democratic socialism and his policy proposals by touching upon New Deal liberalism, the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement, Lyndon Johnson, and Pope Francis. He also addressed current issues facing the nation’s voters, with an emphasis on climate change, global terrorism, and the promise of young people.  The speech is available here.