In California, when you can’t pay your bill, Pacific Gas and Electric turns off your electric power. But when investor-owned PG&E can’t pay what it owes, it goes to the courts and state legislature for relief. After deadly forest fires caused by its negligence, in January, PG&E filed for Chapter 11, a form of bankruptcy…
In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway’s novel of a “lost generation,” one of the characters gives a pithy description of how he went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.” The same is often true for breakthrough policy ideas like the Green New Deal or a federal jobs guarantee. Once confined to the left fringes of…
What does it take to spark an uprising? In France last November, the answer—a carbon tax—caused consternation among liberal climate activists. “I don’t understand why any progressive is cheering French protesters who are amassing against a carbon tax,” observed Center for American Progress director Neera Tanden, even as the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, then…
If you feel guilty about your carbon footprint (the amount of energy you consume that adds to greenhouse emissions) and you’re not in the 1%, you’re buying into a false ideology. We hear too often that the responsibility for climate change rests with all of us. We all have “carbon footprints” and must share the…
The history of environmentalism up to the present is the history of the realization that only a total transformation of the global economy will stave off climate catastrophe. This realization is a fairly recent one. For a long time, the ecologically minded thought we could avoid environmental destruction by “greening” our consumption habits: composting, eating…
In early February, DSA member and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled her plan for a Green New Deal. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi responded with condescension. “The green dream or whatever they call it,” she quipped, “nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” Actually, we do know what it is, and…
Starting right now, DSA’s membership is participating in an advisory poll on whether the organization should endorse Bernie Sanders right now, instead of going through its standard process via chapters and committees. The discussion here at DSA Weekly has been so lively that it’s spilled over on social media. Below, Dave Kamper elaborates on some questions he first raised on Twitter, to help the dialogues happening in chapters and homes everywhere. –
By Ravi Ahmad Being in leadership in DSA has been quite a trip. Most folks are probably at least somewhat aware that I’ve been through several cycles of activism and organizing, from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to Occupy Wall Street to DSA, with several stops along the way. I also have a…
By Thea Riofrancos How should a growing socialist movement position itself vis-à-vis the recent announcement that Bernie Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist whose last campaign resulted in an unprecedented boost in our membership and in political-ideological visibility? DSA is now in a different place than we were in 2016. We are over 50,000 members strong,…
For the first time in our lifetimes, Medicare for All appears to be within reach. For decades, one rogue Senator has repeatedly proposed single-payer healthcare, agitating against the profiteering of private insurers and drug companies while calling for a movement of working people to wrest healthcare out of the market. That Senator is Bernie…
