By Kurt Stand
March 25, 2025
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
Image by Alisdare Hickson, Creative Commons 2.0
“The Democratic Party’s failure to address the cost of living crisis, its refusal to maintain the expanded pandemic safety net, and its continued funding of a genocide fueled much of the despair that paved the way to Trump’s restoration. In order to survive his presidency, and defeat his movement, we must defeat this very despair. Otherwise, it will continue to be used by Trump, who has shown himself adept at exploiting genuine pain and alienation, only to carry out the billionaire class’ arsonist agenda.
“In an earlier era of rising fascism, FDR said, ‘Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations — not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion, government weakness.’ The task before us is to end this false choice — to build the institutions that protect the most vulnerable among us while putting forward an agenda that improves working peoples’ lives.”
Four months since the Republican election triumph, New York State Assembly member and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s commentary remains valid: to defend political democracy, we need to be able to use the rights that inhere in popular rule to address the needs and wants of working people. To do so requires understanding the roots of what has befallen our society and understanding how to develop alternative politics for an alternative society. Mamdani, a member of DSA, expressed in that statement a way of addressing this moment that speaks to a way of seeing and engaging relevant to wider socialist and progressive communities.
The Crisis of Division
Donald Trump’s reelection as president reflects the deep crisis of U.S. (and global) capitalism – a crisis powerful corporate sectors are seeking to resolve by placing new restrictions on democratic rights and removing existing restrictions placed on capital. Although marked by chaos and confusion, the measures taken by Trump and – perhaps more relevantly – by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, reflects that orientation: destroying government regulatory agencies, attacking work-place protections and worker rights, eliminating any hint of civil rights and racial or gender justice by destruction of DEI programs. The attacks on immigrants and Palestinian rights activists, cruel in their implementation are designed to inhibit the ability of people who defend the rights in their communities, schools or workplaces, to inhibit global solidarity and opposition to war. As such, they serve as an opening wedge to a more generalized assault on civil liberties and democratic rights.
The narrow nationalism promoted by Trump similarly seeks to limit restrictions on US trade and military policy inherent in multinational bodies – even those the U.S. dominates. This attempt to overcome the relative decline of the U.S. in the world economy is behind a seeming “go-it-alone” assertion of unbridled power. The “free hand,” pursuing foreign policy has its analogy in asserting a “free hand” domestically. Hence his rejection of police accountability, his threat to use the military for domestic repression, threats against political opponents. More to the point, his rejection of any concept of international law reflects his rejection of the rule of law domestically. Constitutional law is fundamental to the functioning of political democracy – and the law has provided a framework within which working people have defended their rights, the terrain through which popular movements for social justice have sought to expand those rights. Thus what we see is an ever clearer assertion of the power of capital, of US militarism, of the wealthy elite, to eliminate any impediments to expansion. It is a sign of weakness, not strength, but is all the more dangerous for that.
Trump’s victory rested on a different appeal. His and Vance’s campaign was marked by vicious attacks on immigrants, on the transgender community, on “childless cat ladies”, on the “enemy within.” Yet he also campaigned as a leader who would bring back jobs, end inflation, create economic growth, bring peace to the world by displays of power. The slogan “Make America Great Again,” was designed to promote an image of safety and stability. Holding this together was Trump’s projection of himself as someone invincible, an appeal to the irrational that was stoked by the violence of his rhetoric.
Kamla Harris’ campaign was unable to sufficiently counter this because corporate power in the Democratic Party did not want to challenge the corporate power at the heart of our country’s political and economic failings. Critically, she challenged Trump as an individual, without addressing the underlying fears that generated his support. She stressed the multi-racial character of our society, supported reproductive rights, promised to raise the minimum wage, roll back Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy, address price gouging. All positive albeit inadequate. Running on the Biden Administration’s record of a strong economy failed to resonate when most people live from paycheck to paycheck. Her unwillingness to address those who live in or at the edge of poverty left those most in need, unmoved. A reliance on demographics, on appeals to fear, on the assumption that support’ support could be taken for granted reflected a narrowness of view and perspective that undermined the attempt to build a broad, positive alternative to reaction.
Harris’ commitment to rebuild U.S. global power via Cold War alliances and increased arms spending, her silence witnessing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, made her seem less an alternative than a representative of discredited politics of old. She rejected Trump’s attacks on immigrants but called for similar border policies. So too, her defense of democracy and freedom were abstractions, never made concrete. Failing to defend free speech and the right to protest of students demanding universities divest from Israel, refusing to allow a Palestinian to speak at the Democratic National Convention, reflected a costly gap between words and deeds.
The weaknesses in both Biden’s and Harris’ campaigns were forerunners of the response of Democratic Party leadership since Trump’s inauguration – the lack of an unambiguous condemnation to the arrest and possible deportation of Mahmoud Khalil by all but a few elected representatives is clear example, as is the continued unquestioning backing of Israel’s genocidal policies. Schumer’s willingness to approve the Republican budget an equally clear example of standing outside or against the protests, mobilizations, the anger Trump’s actions have aroused. It is not a stretch to recognize in this an unwillingness to confront the underlying basis of reaction, instead wanting to return to a “normalcy” of the recent past that was itself unjust and which opened the doors to our current dangerous course. Opposition to the destructive tariffs Trump is proposing by wanting to go back to free trade policies that were themselves destructive of lives and livelihoods is an instance of this, as is opposing Trump’s unabashed assertion of imperial US power by threatening neighboring countries by calling for a return of US power through endless wars fought through NATO, via sanctions, and innumerable military bases around the world.
To note this is not to deny the need to find common ground amongst all those who stand in opposition to Trump and Vance’s authoritarianism, to Musk’s rapacious greed and megalomania, opposition to those who authored and stand to profit by Project 2025’s implementation. Many in the corporate sector, the mainstream leadership of the Democratic Party and broad sections of people with wealth and power oppose Trump’s actions in office and the direction he is taking the country out of fear of instability as well as an ideological and political commitment to traditional U.S. institutions and history. And millions of people legitimately see in Trump’s attacks on federal workers, on existing institutions, as attacks on themselves and the world they wish to see. No politics that dismisses such views or condescends to people who hold such views will have sufficient strength to overcome the crisis of authoritarian reaction that stands before us.
Yet, important as it is to develop political strategies that link with all who oppose the anti-democratic and authoritarian path that lies before us, it is critical to keep in mind that popular unity in defense of democratic rights will only be created when unmet needs and aspirations are at the programmatic core of a movement of resistance. The fascist threat we face requires mobilization of working people, it requires mobilization of communities Trump’s policies have singled out for attack, and that cannot be achieved by lowest common denominator politics which inevitably entails leaving behind those whose needs are considered divisive by commentators and funders who live in comfort. No politics that doesn’t build and work to create bonds between the millions who took to the streets after George Floyd’s murder, who have worked in state after state to pass referendums defending the right to abortion, who are opposed to US war-making in all its forms, alongside anti-corporate initiates reflected in organizing drives, strikes, union internal reform movements will have sufficient strength to overcome the crisis Trump’s election has brought to the fore.
Overcoming Division
The underlying issue we face is that corporate globalization and neoliberalism – capitalism’s response to the challenges faced by the global upsurge in labor, freedom and national liberation movements that crested in the 1970s — have failed to resolve the contradictions of our political and economic system. Recent decades have undermined democratic institutions – favoring the private over and above the public – while providing too little for too many. And this has been accompanied by persistent wars, the unchecked danger of nuclear war and the reality of environmental destruction. That system is breeding alienation and economic uncertainty, the foundation of authoritarianism, creating the danger of fascism that November’s election accelerated. Extreme inequality marking our society has its corollary in precarity, indebtedness, downward mobility. which people legitimately see as our country’s downward spiral.
Trump’s campaign spoke to those willing to turn to a “great man,” “a winner,” for ready-made solutions – punishing those with less than themselves, those using democratic rights to demand equality. Most unions, social justice, immigrant rights, black freedom, reproductive rights, civil liberties organizations supported Harris, despite her limitations, out of recognition of the dangers posed by Trump. Tens of millions of working people rejected appeals of hatred, rejected appeals to racism and misogyny, understood that individual good cannot be separated from social good.
Organizing amongst those voters is needed to build resistance to the repression the Republican trifecta this election signals. So too is reaching those unengaged politically, those who shifted to reaction out of desperation. What that requires is independent working-class politics – a phrase that does not mean declaring oneself independent without any base amongst working people. Discussion around third party/Democratic Party politics, electoral participation/issue organizing is a distraction when posed as an either/or equation. The key question is whether activity is building unity and strength in support of economic and social justice, of peace and environmental protection, beyond small circles of the self-selected. Jill Stein’s campaign provides a model of an approach that was destructive to those goals. Using her campaign to draw lines of division within and between movements for alternative politics in order to gain a few votes and somehow seeing a victory in that marginal achievement. Yet the Green Party, far from being at the forefront of resistance today, stands largely on the sidelines for that electoral activity was miles away from the organizing people were and are doing. Despite that continuing legacy of failure of such go it alone left politics, the siren song of moral rectitude devoid of popular consent or organization stands as an impediment to popular democracy.
Something similar can be said of mainstream Democrats who taunted Palestinian activists at the Democratic National Convention, who insisted that any unscripted activism was destructive to the campaign were similarly divisive, an attitude which today finds expression in advocating jettisoning social justice advocacy, proposing silence around trans rights or mass incarceration or universal health care in favor of a waiting game of glittering genealities in the illusion that Trump et. al. will self-destruct. A politics of silence, a politics that fears popular anger, a politics that attacks raising the concerns of those most under attack for being divisive, is itself divisive, narrow and self-defeating. The rise of reaction after congressional democratic gains following the Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden presidencies is not due to pendulum swings of anti-incumbency, it is due to the inability or refusal of Democratic Administrations to enact structural reforms that limit the power of corporate capital or the military establishment, to fail to implement economic and social benefits that immediately and directly meet job, housing, education, health needs of the proverbial 99%.
Genuine political independence, by contrast, requires organizing within and outside existing political structures – in unions, neighborhood organizations, churches or social groups to reengage involvement. It was working through such networks that Sanders’ presidential campaigns gathered such massive support, that Occupy spread so quickly, that Black Lives Matter protests brought millions out to the streets, that the ceasefire/arms embargo movement was built. Similarly, such networks are building a culture and support circles around bodily autonomy, are creating a framework to defend immigrant rights activists, are the basis of the revival of union organizing and militancy.
The challenge is to build flexible organizational forms that grow out of such movements, connecting not just activists but reaching the communities that gave birth to the waves of protest and resistance movements of the past two decades. To the extent that we can sustain open organizations engaged in electoral activity and building community across lines that divide working people, is the extent to which these can become mutually supportive and build a counter-movement, a counter-culture that overcomes fractures between and amongst working people. Only through political engagement alive to various streams of thought and experience will we be able to confront the fascist right, to advance beyond what militarized corporate liberalism proposes.
A starting point lies with the Progressive Caucus – such as Congressional Representatives Sumner Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressly, Rashida Tlaib, Greg Casar, Pramila Jayapal, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – who collectively provide a public face and legislative framework to address popular need. Equally important are organizing drives, strikes, demonstrations, town halls, community forums, national campaigns, house meetings, teach-ins; any and all initiatives striving for peace and justice.
Looking Forward
If we strengthen connections between participatory politics and progressive/left wing elected representatives at all levels of government through broad-based membership organizations, we can build a creative alternative, a politics that envisions different possibilities for life than what currently seems graspable. Therein lies the basis of unity with people with whom we otherwise disagree to preserve civil liberties in opposition to those who speak of fellow human beings as “vermin;” the basis of unity at workplaces or in communities with people who hold divergent views – even individuals caught in the grip of MAGA – around shared needs for better wages, affordable health care and housing. Organizing to undo economic insecurity while upholding a vision of how living in harmony with each other and within nature can coexist, ought to frame an alternative national politics, ought to frame the socialist politics wherever espoused, and specifically, ought to frame the perspective and organizing undertaken by DSA.
Washington State Labor Council President April Sims and Secretary Treasurer Cherika Carter captured that spirit in a statement released after the results of November 5th election were announced:
“The election of Donald Trump is a gut punch for Americans committed to unity, equality, and workers’ rights. Eight years ago when he was first elected, many of us were paralyzed by our grief over the direction of this country. As we face those same emotions today, we cannot let our grief hold us back from action. We know Trump’s playbook; we can and we will organize to defeat it.
“And yet, we cannot deny that fascism, fueled by racism and misogyny, has been leveraged to divide and weaken working people. But our movement was built to fight the forces that seek to undermine democracy and enslave the human soul; we are made for times like these.
“Anti-worker politicians benefit when we give into fear and division. Our movement includes people with diverse political views; no matter our differences, we all want safe communities and secure futures for our families. We will remain united to protect one another and build power for working people.”
This sensibility, the essence of socialism, of class-conscious unionism, was succinctly expressed in the 1930s by German anti-fascist playwright Bertolt Brecht: “All of us, or none.”
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate
Kurt Stand has been a member of DSA since 1983, and has been long active in the labor movement in various capacities. He spent 15 years in federal custody and after his release, he worked as a bookseller for 10 years and then two years for Progressive Maryland focused on reentry issues. A Portside Moderator his articles have appeared in the Washington Socialist, Stansbury Forum, Socialism & Democracy, Socialist Project; The Bullet and elsewhere.
Image by Alisdare Hickson, Creative Commons 2.0
“The Democratic Party’s failure to address the cost of living crisis, its refusal to maintain the expanded pandemic safety net, and its continued funding of a genocide fueled much of the despair that paved the way to Trump’s restoration. In order to survive his presidency, and defeat his movement, we must defeat this very despair. Otherwise, it will continue to be used by Trump, who has shown himself adept at exploiting genuine pain and alienation, only to carry out the billionaire class’ arsonist agenda.
“In an earlier era of rising fascism, FDR said, ‘Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations — not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion, government weakness.’ The task before us is to end this false choice — to build the institutions that protect the most vulnerable among us while putting forward an agenda that improves working peoples’ lives.”
Four months since the Republican election triumph, New York State Assembly member and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s commentary remains valid: to defend political democracy, we need to be able to use the rights that inhere in popular rule to address the needs and wants of working people. To do so requires understanding the roots of what has befallen our society and understanding how to develop alternative politics for an alternative society. Mamdani, a member of DSA, expressed in that statement a way of addressing this moment that speaks to a way of seeing and engaging relevant to wider socialist and progressive communities.
The Crisis of Division
Donald Trump’s reelection as president reflects the deep crisis of U.S. (and global) capitalism – a crisis powerful corporate sectors are seeking to resolve by placing new restrictions on democratic rights and removing existing restrictions placed on capital. Although marked by chaos and confusion, the measures taken by Trump and – perhaps more relevantly – by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, reflects that orientation: destroying government regulatory agencies, attacking work-place protections and worker rights, eliminating any hint of civil rights and racial or gender justice by destruction of DEI programs. The attacks on immigrants and Palestinian rights activists, cruel in their implementation are designed to inhibit the ability of people who defend the rights in their communities, schools or workplaces, to inhibit global solidarity and opposition to war. As such, they serve as an opening wedge to a more generalized assault on civil liberties and democratic rights.
The narrow nationalism promoted by Trump similarly seeks to limit restrictions on US trade and military policy inherent in multinational bodies – even those the U.S. dominates. This attempt to overcome the relative decline of the U.S. in the world economy is behind a seeming “go-it-alone” assertion of unbridled power. The “free hand,” pursuing foreign policy has its analogy in asserting a “free hand” domestically. Hence his rejection of police accountability, his threat to use the military for domestic repression, threats against political opponents. More to the point, his rejection of any concept of international law reflects his rejection of the rule of law domestically. Constitutional law is fundamental to the functioning of political democracy – and the law has provided a framework within which working people have defended their rights, the terrain through which popular movements for social justice have sought to expand those rights. Thus what we see is an ever clearer assertion of the power of capital, of US militarism, of the wealthy elite, to eliminate any impediments to expansion. It is a sign of weakness, not strength, but is all the more dangerous for that.
Trump’s victory rested on a different appeal. His and Vance’s campaign was marked by vicious attacks on immigrants, on the transgender community, on “childless cat ladies”, on the “enemy within.” Yet he also campaigned as a leader who would bring back jobs, end inflation, create economic growth, bring peace to the world by displays of power. The slogan “Make America Great Again,” was designed to promote an image of safety and stability. Holding this together was Trump’s projection of himself as someone invincible, an appeal to the irrational that was stoked by the violence of his rhetoric.
Kamla Harris’ campaign was unable to sufficiently counter this because corporate power in the Democratic Party did not want to challenge the corporate power at the heart of our country’s political and economic failings. Critically, she challenged Trump as an individual, without addressing the underlying fears that generated his support. She stressed the multi-racial character of our society, supported reproductive rights, promised to raise the minimum wage, roll back Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy, address price gouging. All positive albeit inadequate. Running on the Biden Administration’s record of a strong economy failed to resonate when most people live from paycheck to paycheck. Her unwillingness to address those who live in or at the edge of poverty left those most in need, unmoved. A reliance on demographics, on appeals to fear, on the assumption that support’ support could be taken for granted reflected a narrowness of view and perspective that undermined the attempt to build a broad, positive alternative to reaction.
Harris’ commitment to rebuild U.S. global power via Cold War alliances and increased arms spending, her silence witnessing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, made her seem less an alternative than a representative of discredited politics of old. She rejected Trump’s attacks on immigrants but called for similar border policies. So too, her defense of democracy and freedom were abstractions, never made concrete. Failing to defend free speech and the right to protest of students demanding universities divest from Israel, refusing to allow a Palestinian to speak at the Democratic National Convention, reflected a costly gap between words and deeds.
The weaknesses in both Biden’s and Harris’ campaigns were forerunners of the response of Democratic Party leadership since Trump’s inauguration – the lack of an unambiguous condemnation to the arrest and possible deportation of Mahmoud Khalil by all but a few elected representatives is clear example, as is the continued unquestioning backing of Israel’s genocidal policies. Schumer’s willingness to approve the Republican budget an equally clear example of standing outside or against the protests, mobilizations, the anger Trump’s actions have aroused. It is not a stretch to recognize in this an unwillingness to confront the underlying basis of reaction, instead wanting to return to a “normalcy” of the recent past that was itself unjust and which opened the doors to our current dangerous course. Opposition to the destructive tariffs Trump is proposing by wanting to go back to free trade policies that were themselves destructive of lives and livelihoods is an instance of this, as is opposing Trump’s unabashed assertion of imperial US power by threatening neighboring countries by calling for a return of US power through endless wars fought through NATO, via sanctions, and innumerable military bases around the world.
To note this is not to deny the need to find common ground amongst all those who stand in opposition to Trump and Vance’s authoritarianism, to Musk’s rapacious greed and megalomania, opposition to those who authored and stand to profit by Project 2025’s implementation. Many in the corporate sector, the mainstream leadership of the Democratic Party and broad sections of people with wealth and power oppose Trump’s actions in office and the direction he is taking the country out of fear of instability as well as an ideological and political commitment to traditional U.S. institutions and history. And millions of people legitimately see in Trump’s attacks on federal workers, on existing institutions, as attacks on themselves and the world they wish to see. No politics that dismisses such views or condescends to people who hold such views will have sufficient strength to overcome the crisis of authoritarian reaction that stands before us.
Yet, important as it is to develop political strategies that link with all who oppose the anti-democratic and authoritarian path that lies before us, it is critical to keep in mind that popular unity in defense of democratic rights will only be created when unmet needs and aspirations are at the programmatic core of a movement of resistance. The fascist threat we face requires mobilization of working people, it requires mobilization of communities Trump’s policies have singled out for attack, and that cannot be achieved by lowest common denominator politics which inevitably entails leaving behind those whose needs are considered divisive by commentators and funders who live in comfort. No politics that doesn’t build and work to create bonds between the millions who took to the streets after George Floyd’s murder, who have worked in state after state to pass referendums defending the right to abortion, who are opposed to US war-making in all its forms, alongside anti-corporate initiates reflected in organizing drives, strikes, union internal reform movements will have sufficient strength to overcome the crisis Trump’s election has brought to the fore.
Overcoming Division
The underlying issue we face is that corporate globalization and neoliberalism – capitalism’s response to the challenges faced by the global upsurge in labor, freedom and national liberation movements that crested in the 1970s — have failed to resolve the contradictions of our political and economic system. Recent decades have undermined democratic institutions – favoring the private over and above the public – while providing too little for too many. And this has been accompanied by persistent wars, the unchecked danger of nuclear war and the reality of environmental destruction. That system is breeding alienation and economic uncertainty, the foundation of authoritarianism, creating the danger of fascism that November’s election accelerated. Extreme inequality marking our society has its corollary in precarity, indebtedness, downward mobility. which people legitimately see as our country’s downward spiral.
Trump’s campaign spoke to those willing to turn to a “great man,” “a winner,” for ready-made solutions – punishing those with less than themselves, those using democratic rights to demand equality. Most unions, social justice, immigrant rights, black freedom, reproductive rights, civil liberties organizations supported Harris, despite her limitations, out of recognition of the dangers posed by Trump. Tens of millions of working people rejected appeals of hatred, rejected appeals to racism and misogyny, understood that individual good cannot be separated from social good.
Organizing amongst those voters is needed to build resistance to the repression the Republican trifecta this election signals. So too is reaching those unengaged politically, those who shifted to reaction out of desperation. What that requires is independent working-class politics – a phrase that does not mean declaring oneself independent without any base amongst working people. Discussion around third party/Democratic Party politics, electoral participation/issue organizing is a distraction when posed as an either/or equation. The key question is whether activity is building unity and strength in support of economic and social justice, of peace and environmental protection, beyond small circles of the self-selected. Jill Stein’s campaign provides a model of an approach that was destructive to those goals. Using her campaign to draw lines of division within and between movements for alternative politics in order to gain a few votes and somehow seeing a victory in that marginal achievement. Yet the Green Party, far from being at the forefront of resistance today, stands largely on the sidelines for that electoral activity was miles away from the organizing people were and are doing. Despite that continuing legacy of failure of such go it alone left politics, the siren song of moral rectitude devoid of popular consent or organization stands as an impediment to popular democracy.
Something similar can be said of mainstream Democrats who taunted Palestinian activists at the Democratic National Convention, who insisted that any unscripted activism was destructive to the campaign were similarly divisive, an attitude which today finds expression in advocating jettisoning social justice advocacy, proposing silence around trans rights or mass incarceration or universal health care in favor of a waiting game of glittering genealities in the illusion that Trump et. al. will self-destruct. A politics of silence, a politics that fears popular anger, a politics that attacks raising the concerns of those most under attack for being divisive, is itself divisive, narrow and self-defeating. The rise of reaction after congressional democratic gains following the Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden presidencies is not due to pendulum swings of anti-incumbency, it is due to the inability or refusal of Democratic Administrations to enact structural reforms that limit the power of corporate capital or the military establishment, to fail to implement economic and social benefits that immediately and directly meet job, housing, education, health needs of the proverbial 99%.
Genuine political independence, by contrast, requires organizing within and outside existing political structures – in unions, neighborhood organizations, churches or social groups to reengage involvement. It was working through such networks that Sanders’ presidential campaigns gathered such massive support, that Occupy spread so quickly, that Black Lives Matter protests brought millions out to the streets, that the ceasefire/arms embargo movement was built. Similarly, such networks are building a culture and support circles around bodily autonomy, are creating a framework to defend immigrant rights activists, are the basis of the revival of union organizing and militancy.
The challenge is to build flexible organizational forms that grow out of such movements, connecting not just activists but reaching the communities that gave birth to the waves of protest and resistance movements of the past two decades. To the extent that we can sustain open organizations engaged in electoral activity and building community across lines that divide working people, is the extent to which these can become mutually supportive and build a counter-movement, a counter-culture that overcomes fractures between and amongst working people. Only through political engagement alive to various streams of thought and experience will we be able to confront the fascist right, to advance beyond what militarized corporate liberalism proposes.
A starting point lies with the Progressive Caucus – such as Congressional Representatives Sumner Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressly, Rashida Tlaib, Greg Casar, Pramila Jayapal, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – who collectively provide a public face and legislative framework to address popular need. Equally important are organizing drives, strikes, demonstrations, town halls, community forums, national campaigns, house meetings, teach-ins; any and all initiatives striving for peace and justice.
Looking Forward
If we strengthen connections between participatory politics and progressive/left wing elected representatives at all levels of government through broad-based membership organizations, we can build a creative alternative, a politics that envisions different possibilities for life than what currently seems graspable. Therein lies the basis of unity with people with whom we otherwise disagree to preserve civil liberties in opposition to those who speak of fellow human beings as “vermin;” the basis of unity at workplaces or in communities with people who hold divergent views – even individuals caught in the grip of MAGA – around shared needs for better wages, affordable health care and housing. Organizing to undo economic insecurity while upholding a vision of how living in harmony with each other and within nature can coexist, ought to frame an alternative national politics, ought to frame the socialist politics wherever espoused, and specifically, ought to frame the perspective and organizing undertaken by DSA.
Washington State Labor Council President April Sims and Secretary Treasurer Cherika Carter captured that spirit in a statement released after the results of November 5th election were announced:
“The election of Donald Trump is a gut punch for Americans committed to unity, equality, and workers’ rights. Eight years ago when he was first elected, many of us were paralyzed by our grief over the direction of this country. As we face those same emotions today, we cannot let our grief hold us back from action. We know Trump’s playbook; we can and we will organize to defeat it.
“And yet, we cannot deny that fascism, fueled by racism and misogyny, has been leveraged to divide and weaken working people. But our movement was built to fight the forces that seek to undermine democracy and enslave the human soul; we are made for times like these.
“Anti-worker politicians benefit when we give into fear and division. Our movement includes people with diverse political views; no matter our differences, we all want safe communities and secure futures for our families. We will remain united to protect one another and build power for working people.”
This sensibility, the essence of socialism, of class-conscious unionism, was succinctly expressed in the 1930s by German anti-fascist playwright Bertolt Brecht: “All of us, or none.”
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. Donate
Kurt Stand has been a member of DSA since 1983, and has been long active in the labor movement in various capacities. He spent 15 years in federal custody and after his release, he worked as a bookseller for 10 years and then two years for Progressive Maryland focused on reentry issues. A Portside Moderator his articles have appeared in the Washington Socialist, Stansbury Forum, Socialism & Democracy, Socialist Project; The Bullet and elsewhere.
