If you don’t think you can organize and push the powerful to do things they said they wouldn’t do, what is point of calling yourself a socialist or communist, or even a rad lib?
If you have never worked at UPS this tactic is one of the most powerful weapons UPS drivers have without going on strike. UPS is totally dependent on having access to drivers before start time. We did this in our local under similar circumstances and management lost their minds.
On Tuesday morning 150 UPS drivers in Chicago took a simple action: they *didn’t* go into work early. This departure from routine was enough to throw their management into a panic.
@Ad_Inifinitum
What is weird about “chasers” is that Red Warriors were thought of as a “Redskin” crew aka socialist skins. They were part of the trend that spawned ARA outnof the left wing “Baldies” from monks. I was part of that in another city. Later we formed RASH (Red and Anarchist skins)
John Sweeney Passed away. He was a
@DemSocialists
member and ended the formal ban on Communists in the AFL-CIO. He was not perfect, but he turned the battleship to the left a pretty good bit. In fact hugely on the question of immigrant workers.
Two days ago the NYPD's violent SRG unit skipped a city council hearing about its conduct. Today the unit, which is theoretically for counter-terrorism, is escorting fascists to go harass an abortion clinic and arresting people who are trying to defend the clinic.
My Dad died. He was a vocal and active Reaganite GOP supporter, a racist, and a misogynist. Obama winning ended our relationship. We had not spoken in 10 years. I am still sitting here crying. I just wanted to be real about it somewhere.
Bill Fletcher was fired from a senior position at the AFL-CIO for signing a statement against bombing Afghanistan after 9/11. Reactionaries in labor tried to blackball him.
@BillFletcherJr
is one of the most principled socialists I know of. You could only hope to be on his level.
🧵DSA’s grievance process prevents members from being able to politically defend themselves or others from political charges. I was suspended for publicly disagreeing with the suspension of other members.
@dhk242
@AOC
Huh. It’s almost like Lenin said different things based on the actual stage of the class struggle and conditions in Russia at that moment.
A progressive super majority with a socialist wing that can implement significant labor and democratic reforms is a likely prerequisite for a socialist majority.
I have built unions in the south. We were successful in doubling my locals membership during my tenure. We did that DESPITE the very real obstacles created by RTW. We diverted major resources from external growth just to maintain our membership at hi turnover employers like UPS.
@dhk242
@AOC
Just to continue this. The piece you are referencing is from a period where revolution was literally on the agenda and reformists were arguing against a revolution. In other periods he saw the need to not be a stupid LARPer and worked with reformists against the greater danger.
@FreeDaveSchwab
Why does that matter if they ran as socialists? That is also actually my point. Thinking what you think is important is loser shit that real people thinking about building real power give zero shits about.
Actual Marxists grasp the best way to assist the struggle of people in another country is to build a movement big enough & broad enough to shift the foreign policy of their country. Idealists & dogmatists performatively support armed struggle & tail whatever force waging it.
One of the things about left politics is on day you will wake up and realize you’ve been doing the work for 10 years. Try and make something resembling a plan or a decision for what you want those 10 years to be. You will be better for it.
Before people start on the "protests don't stop wars" ultra bs....
No one protest changes anything.
Sustained mass protest creates conditions and possibilities of bringing forces into motion that can change everything.
#NoWar
#NoWarWithIran
#NoWarInIran
#NoWarOnIran
Prioritizing leaders being paid so they can think and talk with each other over staff to maintain and run the functions of an organization is a freight train towards being a sect y’all.
@TheBabylonBee
“You just don’t understand capitalism like I do“ says College grad with business degree to Haitian child in a refugee camp at the border.
If you live in a city with a “strong left” yet your “strong left” cannot influence the direction of said city in any meaningful way, (like you can’t can’t defeat attacks on unhoused folks by the city for example…ahem) you don’t have a “strong left”.
My mom has Covid. She is massively vulnerable. She hid it from me bc she is best friends with a Q person so dismissed everything I asked her to do to stay safe. She might not make it. Sorry for being this heavy but I can’t type this anywhere else & I am very sad. Stay safe y’all.
Reminder that racism is the CENTRAL contradiction within the class struggle. It’s not just “divisive”, it is weaponized subservience putting elements of the working-class at the beckon call of the ruling class.
@SamAdlerBell
A guy I knew back in the day, who is now a local union president, punched Kahane in his youth at an event here in the U.S. that he and friends disrupted.
It’s clear that some don’t want the unity it would take to win a ceasefire because they in fact don’t want a ceasefire. They think Hamas is winning and their role is to support the armed struggle.
I’m gonna say this because others can’t due to an undemocratic gag order.
The vast majority of members charged in the latest
@atldemsoc
scandal have done nothing wrong and are victims of an attempted political purge of opponents of the sitting steering committee.
The idea that you can reach socialism in the USA without successfully defending and extending the existing democratic gains conquered by our predecessors enjoys far too much consideration in today’s socialist left.
There is no world where RTW doesn’t suck to exist under or where it’s effects are symbolic. Also the notion that RTW is simply a system of weak unions led by bad leaders is ridiculous. The bulk of RTW states where created to BOLSTER the existing repression and terror.
Social collapse is not revolution and is more likely to lead to a fascist coup than anything progressive. It’s not just the state holding folks down. See there’s this thing called hegemony….
I was never even told I had been charged. If this isn’t fixed at convention, I prob won’t rejoin after my suspension ends. Honestly it was shocking how undemocratic it was.
“There is a difference between a society in which sexism is expressed in the form of female infanticide and a society in which sexism takes the form of unequal representation on the Central Committee. And the difference is worth dying for." -Barbara Ehrenreich
RTW was conceived of to enhance the divisions among workers created by the subservience of white workers to white bosses and encouraged workplace organizing by the kkk to keep unions out or dismantle existing unions.
Everyone assumes that they will successfully ratfuck Bernie and burn the party down. I say they can’t and he wins the nomination and goes against Trump if we just keep doing the work. Obama not moving against him is the canary in the coal mine.
So…..my DSA chapter (ATL) is now being run in a way that would make any union bureaucrat blush and would def get any union local trusteed. Not awesome at all.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about Emilia, but since she’s running as a Democratic Socialist, it’s disappointing she’s announced before DSA started our endorsement process. The socialist candidate for this seat should be whoever we democratically decide to endorse.
@cmkshama
@JamaalBowmanNY
Trots are so awesome at being flat wrong about everything but fitting their sectarian nonsense in wherever they can. Just straight up make shit up and say it with your whole chest.
I was never told I was charged.
I was never given a hearing or given an opportunity to defend myself. I have been in literal political cults where I had more of a right to politically disagree with a clearly political charge.
🧵My friend Glenda Jo Orel passed away yesterday. Daughter of a coal miner and veteran of the “New Communist Movement” (October League/CPML). She ran for City Council in Birmingham on an antiracist ticket at the height of a new KKK resurgence in 1980.
So I missed the email that told me I was suspended from DSA membership for 6 mo bc I objected publicly to the purging members from the ATL chapter. I wasn’t purged (just forced to take a loyalty oath to stay member) but the suspension was for “organizing to avoid accountability”
If your takeaway from a major organization in the Palestinian liberation movement protesting two DSA congresspeople is that the protesters have the wrong target and not that DSA has the wrong congresspeople, you're living in an upside-down world
These people have never led a strike. They are nobody sectarians trying to become somebody by attacking real world leaders bc they think Trotskyism gives them the keys to the class struggle cosmic brain.
Last week, political commentator
@ryangrim
blasted our broadcast for raising questions about strike strategy, and what it will take to win
@UAW
members' demands, like a 40% raise. We think it requires an all-out strike, not slow escalation.
Last year, Grim defended
@AOC
& the
Russian intelligence earns their money. They’ve turned a section of the American left into an opp. “Communists” repeating great Russian nationalist tropes about Ukraine being a “fake country” and everything.
There MUST be a different structure to handle political charges and disputes. The current grievance procedure is ridiculously undemocratic and stain on an org that has “Democratic” in its name.
I’ve deleted like ten tweets in the last few minutes that essentially were marveling at how the delusional sectarians are so earnest and full of hubris in their delusions. I’ve been seeing this a long time but it is much more scaled up. The wreckage is palpable.
@Quirknky
It’s bc if you acknowledge it’s a for real coup that would make it serious enough to possibly form broader alliances to stop it from happening again. Obv there are folks who want to deny that for sectarian reasons. Conscientiously or not.
One of the most dangerous things we can do is accuse fellow members of DSA of being ‘fascist collaborators’ for holding the view that Biden must lose—Biden must lose AND Trump must lose. The best means we have of fighting back—both ways—is the organization of struggle we’ve
Thinking Russian colonialism is the only solution to fascist organizing rather than the Ukrainian left and progressive forces is is pretty fucked up y’all. Thinking that is 💯 indicative of political degeneration. Gotta give Russian intelligence credit. They got y’all fucked up.
Independent Political Organizations were central to the 2021 defeat of Trump and to the runoff victory in Georgia. I have never seen the actual Democratic Party play such second fiddle.
@unitehere
played a unique role. Let’s do that shit from now on. K?