Hollywood Unions Are Back at the Bargaining Table

Two major strikes by Hollywood writers and actors dominated headlines last year. Only months after the strikes’ end, contract negotiations are now underway for the entertainment industry’s crew members — and the possibility of a strike is not off the table.

IATSE joins SAG-AFTRA and WGA members on strike on September 14, 2023 in New York City. (John Nacion / Getty Images)

BY ALEX N. PRESS

Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.
03.15.2024

Just three months after members of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) ratified their national contract in December 2023 following a hard-fought 116-day strike, Hollywood’s workers are again at the negotiating table with the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPTP). The double strike by the entertainment industry’s actors and writers — the latter ratified their own contract in October after a 148-day work stoppage — may have just wrapped up, but the contracts for the industry’s below-the-line workers, those who work off-camera, are nearing expiration. Before the industry can even catch its breath after last year’s strikes, Hollywood is once again facing an uncertain future.


Negotiations began on March 4 and encompass a host of unionized workers whose contracts expire on July 31. The thirteen West Coast Studio Locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) — which include workers ranging from camera operators to makeup artists and costumers — need agreements, as does IATSE Local 52, IATSE Local 161, and the Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839). Then there are the Hollywood Basic Crafts, which represents laborers like drivers, electrical workers, cement masons, and plumbers employed on film and television sets and includes the 6,500-member Teamsters Local 399 as well as International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 40, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA!) Local 724, United Association Plumbers (UA) Local 78, and Operating Plasterers’ and Cement Masons’ International Association (OPCMIA) Local 755. They, too, need contracts.

For the first time since 1988, IATSE and the Basic Crafts are jointly negotiating their shared Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans, which serve some seventy-five thousand current and retired workers. The coordination follows the shared experience of last year’s strike, in which below-the-line workers stood with actors and performers, declining to cross their picket lines and thus shutting down the industry. In January, IATSE vice president Michelle Miller said joint negotiations on the shared plans are important “not only because sustainable benefits is a shared priority of our memberships, but also because recent hardships have brought behind-the-scenes crews together in historic fashion.”

Following the joint benefit negotiations, the Basic Crafts will step aside as IATSE negotiates its Basic Agreement (covering West Coast locals) and its Area Standards Agreement, which applies to locals outside New York and Los Angeles. Teamsters Local 399 expects to begin its own talks with the AMPTP on craft-specific concerns in June.

At a joint rally in Encino’s Woodley Park on March 3, thousands of crew members and their supporters gathered in a show of unity to mark the start of negotiations. Under the banner of “Many Crafts, One Fight,” an array of labor leaders addressed the crowd, who held signs adorned with slogans like “Fighting for living wages,” and “Nothing moves without the crew.”

“Every union in the entertainment industry is standing here together, and that has never happened before,” said IATSE international president Matthew Loeb. Said Teamsters Local 399 president Lindsey Dougherty, “What’s different about going into our negotiations is that we’ve already established these relationships in a much more impactful and meaningful way in terms of labor solidarity.”

Teamsters international president Sean O’Brien referred to the studios as a “white-collar crime syndicate” (a favorite phrase of his), adding that “it’s time to make them aware that if they thought they had a fight last summer, they can’t even predict what they have now.” “We are desperate,” he said, “and being desperate is great. It means we don’t care about the consequences of our actions.”

From the microphone, California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher led a call-and-response of “Fuck around and find out.” (A speech by Directors Guild of America president Russell Hollander drew the most lukewarm response from the crowd, the union having quickly caved during last year’s negotiations, provoking criticism and resentment across the industry’s labor movement.)

Solidarity with the striking actors and writers was a wise stance by the below-the-line workers, as the performers and writers were fighting to wrest control from executives and reign in threats to industry labor, from artificial intelligence (AI) to stagnant wages to the dwindling residuals of the streaming-platform era. The wins secured last year set a precedent for this year’s negotiations, offering a model for protections and improvements sought by IATSE and the Basic Crafts.

But the solidarity also came at a cost: the unions’ health and pension funds took a major hit from the work stoppage, a problem they now must address at the bargaining table. Members were out of work for months, and as the strike dragged on, crew members struggled to afford basic necessities; whatever savings they may have had are now significantly depleted. That helps the studios, which have demonstrated their willingness to play hardball even if it drives their workforce into destitution.

But all of that doesn’t necessarily mean the unions now at the table won’t strike if they feel they must in order to make their work sustainable going forward. Workers are against the ropes, and that’s a clarifying position in which to be.

“We will strike if we have to,” said Dougherty at the Woodley Park rally. In January, IATSE president Loeb noted, “Nothing is off the table, and we’re not going to give up our strength and our ability because they [studios] think they sapped us and everybody’s bank account got sapped because they were unreasonable for months and months.”

Plus, the studios are hurting too, and it’s unclear how they would weather another strike. A contraction of the entertainment industry was long in the making, and the disruption of last year’s strike has been followed by mass layoffs at Amazon MGM Studios, Paramount, Pixar, Prime Video, and, among other studios.

“As we enter negotiations, the AMPTP is committed to engaging in an open and productive two-way dialogue with our union partners that focuses on keeping crew members on the job without interruption, recognizes the contributions they make to motion pictures and television, and reinforces a lasting collaboration that ensures the industry and those who work in it thrive for years to come,” a spokesperson for the AMPTP told the Los Angeles Times.

IATSE members came nail-bitingly close to striking in 2021, the last time these contracts were negotiated. The strike-averse union, which has never engaged in a nationwide work stoppage, faced a groundswell of rank-and-file outcry at the time as concerns around grueling schedules and long workdays led to a determination among members to win improvements at the bargaining table. As I detailed extensively at the time, the twelve- and fourteen-hour days were a safety concern, with cases of crew members getting into car accidents after a long day foremost in workers’ minds as they pushed the negotiating committee to win longer turnaround times and higher penalties for making crew work through meal breaks.

Updated overtime provisions and rest periods remain an issue, and last year, members launched a reform caucus in hopes of democratizing the union. The union has made it clear that it will not extend the contract this time around, meaning that if a tentative agreement is not reached in July, workers will be on strike.

AI protections are also a priority for the union members. The threat AI poses to actors, who can be replaced by scanned likenesses of themselves, also applies to many below-the-line workers. Fewer performers on set means fewer hair stylists and costumers are needed too, for example, and a host of other IATSE members face similar threats to their livelihood from new technology. The Teamsters’ motion-picture division is likewise seeking guardrails on technology: computer-generated imagery can replace the need for real-life animal trainers, and autonomous vehicles are a concern for many drivers. The unions have not yet held strike-authorization votes, though IATSE president Loeb has said “it’s always possible.”

The guilds are also expected to push for a streaming residual, similar to those won by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA. Below-the-line workers do not individually receive residuals, but employers pay the equivalent of a residual into the unions’ benefit plans, an important source of funding for plans that are under more strain than ever.

Wages are also an issue, with members needing a major bump to keep up with inflation. WGA and SAG-AFTRA members received initial pay bumps of 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively — background actors got a separate 11 percent raise — and the below-the-line unions are expected to seek comparable pay increases. (IATSE’s current contracts mandate 3 percent annual raises.) Health and safety, too, are particular concerns for IATSE members, with Alec Baldwin’s fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021 infuriating long-frustrated crew.

It’s a lot to address, by workers who do an enormous range of labor. These workers will be looking to their above-the-line counterparts for solidarity this time around, returning the favor paid last year (a standing ovation for these manual laborers and their unions at this year’s Oscars suggests they may receive it). But if last year showed anything, it’s that Hollywood runs on union labor, and these days, union members are less afraid than ever of putting up a fight

Before Shawn Fain, There Was Jerry Tucker

Tucker, a UAW member and union leader, called for a union in solidarity with its workers, not businesses.

IN THESE TIMES EDITORS 

MARCH 14, 2024

Jerry Tucker announcing his candidacy for president of the UAW outside of the UAW Solidarity House in Detroit, Mich. on January 30, 1992.

PHOTO BY JIM WEST.

In March, the United Auto Workers voted out its Administrative Caucus leadership, ending a 77-year dynasty superseded by a fighting reform caucus.

In 1992, John E. Borsos wrote about another UAW reform movement, ultimately unsuccessful, with the campaign of Jerry Tucker, who voiced frustration at the union’s seeming unwillingness to fight for better contracts.

Today, UAW President Shawn Fain is pushing an unprecedented list of demands to the Big Three automakers and leveraging a massive strike. Borsos’ now 30-year-old claim — that only new, progressive leadership could recenter the UAW around the militant solidarity it was founded to achieve — is finally being tested.

In 1992, John E. Borsos wrote:


In December, General Motors boldly announced its plans to cut its American workforce by more than 70,000 people, touching off a flurry of editorials, news articles and television stories. Remarkably, amid all the recent controversy regarding the auto industry, the once-powerful United Auto Workers (UAW) and its president, Owen Bieber, have been noticeably silent in the escalating national dialogue.

Ironically, GM Chairman Robert Stempel was one of the very few who expressed concern with the role of the UAW in the automaker’s future. When he announced the dramatic cutbacks, Stempel said he wanted to work with the current UAW leadership — Owen Bieber and the head of the union’s GM department, Steve Yokich. This off-hand remark — a corporate executive expressing his preference of union leadership — should have set bells ringing among rank-and-file UAW members, particularly when the downsizing announcement elicited little protest from Solidarity House, the UAW’s international headquarters. The announcement was especially disastrous for GM’s hourly employees since the company’s failure to designate which of the 21 plants it plans to shut down is sure to instigate intraunion competition as locals offer concessions and enhanced productivity to ensure that theirs is not the plant hit.

Stempel’s approval expresses how completely the UAW is now willing to accept whatever scraps management throws its way. It also helps to explain why the national media has found it unnecessary to talk to the head of the UAW: There is virtually no difference between the corporate and business union agendas. But the failure of the alternative press, including In These Times (David Moberg, ​“Can Detroit overcome its car sickness?” Jan. 22) to consider the role of the union is puzzling, considering that for the first time in more than 40 years, the presidency of the UAW is being openly challenged in a national campaign, making it necessary, in Stempel’s estimation, for him to declare his preference.

Where others, in knee-jerk fashion, join in Iacocca-esque Japan bashing, New Directions centers its blame on those most responsible for the plight of the" auto industry—the corporations themselves.



A fresh perspective: The alternative is Jerry Tucker, an avowed progressive. Seemingly, the ​’90s are a decade ripe for union insurgents. In 1990. Ken Coss won the presidency of the United Rubber Workers on a platform opposed to the concessionary tactics of his predecessor Milan Stone. Last December. Ron Carey dramatically captured the Teamsters’ presidency. If reformers could win the Teamsters, then perhaps no union was invulnerable. But where Coss and Carey are committed to winning better contracts and benefits, Tucker’s candidacy, as part of the New Directions Caucus, offers a fresh perspective to the contemporary debate. Where others, in knee-jerk fashion, join in Iacocca-esque Japan bashing, New Directions centers its blame on those most responsible for the plight of the” auto industry — the corporations themselves.

Speaking to a group of autoworkers in Cleveland after he formally announced his candidacy for the UAW presidency on January 31, Tucker squarely focused the blame: ​“The Big Three, GM especially, didn’t want to compete for the small-car market because there is more money to be made in building bigger cars. They don’t really build cars — they make profits.” Through the 70s, this was less of a problem as the small-car market remained small. But more recently, the implications of the Big Three’s myopia has proved too damaging for the domestic auto industry as American consumers have clearly indicated their preference for fuel-efficient, safe, well-engineered cars.

Unfortunately for autoworkers, the once-militant UAW has capitulated to the corporate agenda. Where the union once pushed the industry to build safer and more fuel-efficient cars, it now joins corporate efforts to lobby Congress to relax fuel standards, pollution emissions and other regulations that business leaders say inhibit competitiveness and cost jobs.

“That’s crazy,” Tucker says. ​“If you force the corporations to build safer cars, you save jobs.” Lost in the rhetoric, Tucker points out, is the fact that the Japanese are able to produce such vehicles. And, according to Tucker, those who say that American autoworkers are lazy and ignorant are just plain wrong. It’s the cozy relationship between the company and the union that has immobilized the UAW, leaving it unable to pose an alternative to the corporate agenda, Tucker says.

Characteristically, the New Directions agenda is an end to the labor-management ​“jointness” programs. Rather than make workers more competitive, contends Tucker, it ​“makes people afraid and atomized. People are afraid that they’ll lose their jobs, and the union played a part in that.” It is no revelation that the auto industry has been ailing lately, but it is often overlooked that the costs have been borne largely by the hourly workforce.

Despite concession bargaining and ​“jointness” programs, the number of hourly workers continues to dwindle. UAW membership has fallen from 1.4 million in 1979 to 930,000 today. Contract provisions that preclude closing plants during the life of a collective-bargaining agreement are ignored, work rules are renegotiated and plants are pitted against each other to retain the decreasing number of jobs. And, contrary to its progressive past and its prominent role in the American labor movement, the leadership of the UAW seems to be doing nothing to turn this situation around. This has been the impetus for the creation of the New Directions Caucus and Tucker’s candidacy. In the past, Tucker says, ​“the union didn’t win them all, but they fought most of them.”

Fighting back: Jerry Tucker, now 53, began his UAW career as an hourly worker at the GM Assembly in St. Louis. Holding a variety of local union offices, he was appointed by Walter Reuther to the UAW international staff in 1970. By the late 70s, he was the UAW’s Washington legislative coordinator. In 1980, he returned to the St. Louis district to become a service representative and assistant regional director in UAW Region 5.

In that capacity, Tucker drew notice for initiating a series of innovative workplace strategies that enabled rank-and-file workers successfully to challenge concessionary contracts without having to strike. The linchpin of Tucker’s strategies was ​“working to rule,” in which workers performed their jobs just as their work manuals and job descriptions prescribed them to be carried out rather than utilizing the shortcuts workers naturally develop on the shop floor.

Significantly, Tucker’s successes in fighting concessions, especially in the aerospace industry, occurred as the international union was giving away the store to the car companies. Initially, Tucker believed concessions ​“were a strategic retreat,” a device for the union to catch its breath before once again taking on the companies. But by the mid-’80s, he and others came to believe that the union lacked a constructive policy. In 1986, Tucker was drafted to run as director of UAW Region 5, where he was declared defeated in a controversial election marred by numerous discrepancies. Taking his case to the Department of Labor, after a two-year court battle Tucker was installed as the Region 5 director, just a few months before the term was to expire. In 1989, he campaigned for re-election and was defeated after intense politicking by the administration caucus, which pressured each of the nearly 800 UAW staff members to contribute $500 to defeat Tucker.

Following Tucker’s defeat, New Directions organized in 1989 as a national movement and Tucker was elected its national organizer. In November, the national New Directions Movement ratified a 1992 convention platform and drafted Tucker to run for the international presidency. Since its founding in 1989, the New Directions Movement has achieved a following in every UAW region in the country. Among the movement’s most vocal supporters has been Victor Reuther, who urged the running of an opposition candidate to get the issues into public debate. Unlike many reform candidacies in which the office seekers’ primary campaign message has been to do a better job than his opponent or to clean up shop, Tucker’s is an issues-oriented campaign.

The New Directions 1992 platform has five main points: internal democratization and reform; more equitable collective bargaining; organizing the unorganized; political relationships and the UAW’s relationship to other unions and community allies; international labor solidarity.


"We are offering," Tucker writes, "a new vision of democratic unionism for the '90s and into the 21st century based on solidarity among workers, not with bosses."



The most important is democratization and reform. Using the Teamsters’ effort as a model, New Directions is demanding a one-person, one-vote structure for the international. At present, rank-and-file members elect delegates who then vote for the president at the national election. New Directions proposes referendum balloting by the entire membership for all members of the international executive board. It also advocates electronic voting by delegates at the national conventions to make roll-call voting more readily accessible and as a way to ensure delegates’ accountability to their constituents in the shop. At present, according to Tucker, the UAW ​“is a one-party state.” As one New Directions pamphlet states it, ​“Russian citizens can have glasnost and perestroika and new freedoms — why can’t UAW members?”

A new vision: Tucker and New Directions are most significant in that they promise to re-establish labor as a major force of social change. ​“We are offering,” Tucker writes, ​“a new vision of democratic unionism for the ​’90s and into the 21st century based on solidarity among workers, not with bosses.” This vision includes both solidarity with other international labor organizations and with preexisting community groups here in the U.S., particularly with environmental activists. New Directions is firmly committed to national health insurance and is exploring the possibility of independent political action. As Tucker told the Cleveland autoworkers, ​“I view unionism as community. It provides a source of solidarity and community.”

Undoubtedly, a candidate running on such a platform faces an uphill fight in a less-than-democratic union election. Like Carey’s candidacy in the Teamsters, New Directions faces the challenge of getting its message out to rank-and-file workers in the shops who may be unaware of Tucker’s challenge. This task has recently been made more difficult as many local unions have stepped up the date by several weeks of their elections of delegates to the national convention. Traditionally, these elections were held in April or May, before the June convention. This year, some are being held this month.

Concluding his campaign talk in Cleveland, Tucker observed, ​“It won’t bother me a whole lot if I never win another election in the UAW. But it will bother me if the membership doesn’t stand up for their union.

Putin’s Plebiscite, Russia’s “Left” & Russia’s Left

By Ernest A Reid

March 16, 2024

Source: Left/East

CPRF candidate Nikolay Kharitonov in a campaign video. A disgruntled pensioner shaking his fists.

In the run-up to the upcoming presidential election in Russia, the Western media have focused on the capitalist contenders such as Vladimir Putin and the more West-friendly Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova while unsurprisingly failing to acknowledge the absence of a genuine left candidate from the picture. After touching briefly upon the thwarted liberal contenders, I am going to discuss the inane nature of the nominally “communist” candidate Nikolay Kharitonov and of Russia’s “systemic” (parliamentary) opposition as a whole, first and foremost the so-called “Communist Party of the Russian Federation” but also its awkward clone “Communists of Russia”. I will then go back in history (albeit not as far as Putin does) to show how the systematic destruction of the Left in post-Soviet Russia led to the current state of affairs. In the final section, I get to the more positive development of recent years – the emergence of new leftists, facilitated by the affordances of YouTube and other social media.

Candidates on the Right

There is no denying that Nadezhdin and Duntsova, who were subsequently barred from running in the election, ran on a platform that differed from that of Putin on a number of aspects such as a peaceful resolution in Ukraine and release of the political prisoners, as well as broader democratic reforms related to political decentralisation and social liberalisation (e.g., LGBT rights). At the same time, at a more systemic level, as liberal democrats Nadezhdin and Duntsova offered nothing more than a partial regime and elite change. Their vision for the Russian society appeared to be a combination of relative socio-political egalitarianism and economic inequality of capitalist relations, as exemplified by most Western regimes. Considering the nature of liberal democracy, as well as a strong presence of Yeltsinite Westernisers in the supporter base (certainly in the case of Nadezhdin), these candidates most likely envisioned a neo-liberal acceleration and return of Russia to the position of a junior partner in the US-led bloc, both of ambiguous benefit to the Russian citizens and to the world. Thus, Nadezhdin’s and Duntsova’s long-term programmes, much like those of Putin and of the other two right-wing candidates, offered no prospect of a progressive, egalitarian society in the broader, Marxist sense.
“Systemic” “communist” “opposition”

While a more democratic system may indeed have produced at least one leftist candidate, the Russian regime draws the line at the “Communist Party of the Russian Federation”. On the one hand, the CPRF’s program may well be centred around the idea of socialist revival (nationalisation of the natural resources, progressive taxation, etc.), and they have at times shown support for the working class. On the other hand, neither the occasional opposition to the ruling United Russia nor the Sovietesque cosplay can mask the CPRF’s habitual flirting with nationalism, religion and Putin. Furthermore, their siding with the capitalist elite on the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine leaves a big question mark on their proclaimed commitment to socialism because a socialist always stands in opposition to any elite-perpetrated use of force that is not defensive. This is not to say that there are no socialists and communists in the CPRF. There are a few, but they have been silenced and suppressed. Those who do not cave in to pressure, like Yevgeniy Stupin, for instance, are banned from the parliamentary faction and expelled from the party. Therefore, at this stage, the presence of the word “Communist” in the name of the party is somewhat misleading to say the least.

CPRF candidate Nikolay Kharitonov, who has backed the party line on the war in Ukraine, very much embodies the contradiction that is at the heart of Russia’s main systemic opposition party. It is therefore rather hard to not only consider him a leftist candidate, but also to take his presidential bid seriously. First of all, he has refused to criticise Putin in the run-up to the election. Secondly, he has been something of an afterthought on the CPRF website’s home page. Thirdly, his personal campaign website is still “under construction” less than a week before the election. His recent campaign video does not do him justice either. It features Kharitonov as a disgruntled pensioner who clenches his fists when hearing the news anchors mention “inflation” and “dollars” and tells his wife he is going “to work”. He then finds himself outside of the Kremlin, looking somewhat lost and clenching his fists once again, this time for no apparent reason, which makes the viewer think the presidential hopeful may be suffering from a medical condition of some sort. This belief is further amplified when the candidate appears to fall into a trance-like state, during which he experiences a series of flashbacks from the Soviet era (the only emotional, inspirational part of the video).

The overall impression one is left with is that of Kharitonov being not so much a serious presidential candidate but rather a confused elderly man, something of a Russian Joe Biden, which seems to be the role the CPRF candidate has been given in this spectacle. This makes perfect sense, considering that Putin is no spring chicken himself. In fact, the younger non-systemic opposition crowd have increasingly been calling the president “grandpa” in recent years. Therefore, 75-year-old Kharitonov is the perfect candidate for making 70-year-old Putin look like a young buck who has “still got it”.

Finally, Kharitonov’s trip ends with him uttering a clichéd slogan “That’s it, enough playing about with capitalism” in the best traditions of campaign videos from twenty odd years ago. This not only suggests the lack of serious intent to win, but it also reflects the reality of Kharitonov’s potential. He may have been able to come in the second place in 2004, but a significant part of those 13.7% were already pensioners then, and they are unlikely to have made it to 2024. So, it feels almost as if the only relatively left candidate’s campaign is targeting the small percentage of the electorate that is the aging CPRF loyalists. Therefore, they are merely aiming for the second place at best, which is something Kharitonov has hinted himself.

Having understood the redundancy of the CPRF candidate, it may be reasonable to search for other candidate hopefuls from the Left, who may have tried to register but did not make it through the sieve of Putin’s regime. There was indeed Sergei Malinkovich of a minor party called the “Communists of Russia”, who got as far as submitting the signatures to the Central Electoral Committee before facing the “faulty signatures” roadblock. However, while this splinter of the CPRF had initially formed as a result of a protest against the CPRF’s increasingly pliable position vis-à-vis Putin, it has been accused of being a Kremlin project aimed at weaking the only relatively oppositional force in Russia’s systemic politics. Furthermore, it has recently undergone another internal split, with the two factions accusing each other of collaborating with the ruling United Russia. This is all while sharing United Russia’s CPRF’s loyalist position on the war in Ukraine, which has served as the apple of discord for many leftist organisations in Russia since 2014, and even more so, since 2022.

A screenshot of the CPRF’s website. The presidential campaign appears as an afterthought.

In fact, Malinkovich, heading one of the factions, has recently proposed to introduce a law according to which those who labelled “foreign agents” by the Ministry of Justice “should be given shovels by the police constables to clean the streets under convoy, just as the Bolsheviks used to do with the former aristocracy in the [19]20’s”. Thus, instead of criticising the authorities and the political economic system for failing to keep the streets clear of snow, Malinkovich chose the safer option of attacking the weak, scapegoating those stigmatised by the regime he was meant to oppose. Needless to say, his metaphor is anything but problematic.

First of all, Russia’s current political elite is as capitalist they come and diametrically opposite to the Bolsheviks in that regard. Secondly, most of those branded a “foreign agent” had never been part of the ruling class and include not only liberal activists and celebrities but also prominent figures from Russia’s non-systemic Left such as Mikhail Lobanov and Boris Kagarlitsky. The former is a unionist activist, professor and socialist politician who had such a strong potential to win the 2021 parliamentary election in his local district that the ruling party had to bring in a celebrity candidate, a famous TV show host Yevgeniy Popov, to beat him (by a landslide). If there could have been a genuine presidential candidate from the Left in Russia, it would have been Lobanov. Kagarlitsky is a socialist, Marxist intellectual, professor and the person behind Rabkor, a moderately successful media project that has been broadcasting progressive ideas in Russia ever since the 2008 Global Economic Crisis. Imprisoned in the late Soviet period, incarcerated, beaten and threatened under Yeltsin’s regime, 65-year-old socialist dissident Kagarlitsky has recently been sentenced to five years in a penal labour colony. Considering that these are the sort of people the “Communists of Russia” leader Malinkovich attacks, there is little credibility to his proclaimed commitment to communist ideals.
Destruction of the Left in post-Soviet Russia

How did Russia go from having the building of communism promoted at the level of state ideology for most of the Soviet era to having to make do with the scarcely socialist, pliable CPRF?

Of course, the degree to which the Soviet Union was socialist is subject to many a debate in the leftist circles all of the world. Nevertheless, most would agree that the most full-scale assault on socialism and on the society as a whole took place under Boris Yeltsin. His efforts to dissolve and dismember the USSR precipitated in the events of the “Black October” 1993. After having been dismissed by the extant parliament and the Supreme Court due to his breach of the Constitution, Yeltsin took power by force, shelling the parliament building and causing multiple deaths and injuries among the civilians. The opposition to Yeltsin, spearheaded by a group of left-leaning state capitalist officials and flanked by communist, socialist as well as some nationalist formations, was brutally suppressed. The leaders were arrested. Most of the parties and organisations were banned along with their newspapers. Many activists, like Kagarlitsky, were also subject to physical assault and death threats by Yeltsin loyalists. Yeltsin’s head of security, currently a member of Putin’s United Russia, Aleksandr Korzhakov, would later brag proudly how they were able to scare the communists “so that they would not try to stick [their heads] out” again.

Apart from being a major blow to the Left in post-Soviet Russia, the tragic events of the Black October also served as a launchpad for Zyuganov, allowing him to demonstrate his ability “not to stick his head out” on demand. At the most critical moment, he left his comrades at the Supreme Council and went on national television to call on the public opposed to Yeltsin to stay at home. Hence, he emerged as the pliable moderate leftist leader who would pacify the large socialist-minded segment of the society by representing them on the political arena all while keeping any particularly contentious politics challenging Yeltsin’s regime to a minimum. This was in part what allowed him to have a successful political career while those who defended the Supreme Council until the end in 1993, such as Viktor Anpilov, would gradually become outresourced and marginalised. This is not to take away from the former’s Stalinist “Labour Russia”, other small leftist organisations such as the Russian Communist Workers’ Party and the Russian Party of Communists, the trade unions and various grassroots initiatives. However, most of them were gradually weakened and decreased in numbers throughout the post-Soviet era.

As for Zyuganov, his party came first in the 1995 parliamentary election, winning 40% of the seats in the GosDuma. Considering that together, with the other, minor leftist parties Zyuganov’s CPRF controlled over a half of the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament, they could have led a popular political revolution against the ruling ultra-capitalist oligarchic regime despite Yeltsin’s super-presidential constitution. However, the events of the following year killed off any hope of socialist revival in Russia.

Kharitonov’s recent hints at aiming for the second place are actually reminiscent of Zyuganov’s acquiescence to the role of the “Number Two” in 1996. The official results of the dirtiest and most fraudulent presidential election in post-Soviet Russia assigned a landslide victory to extremely unpopular Yeltsin. However, numerous accounts suggest Zyuganov had won but was either unprepared for a potentially dangerous struggle against the regime or was pressured behind the scenes to admit defeat. Years later, the leader of the opposition would stand silently with an embarrassed look on his face while being praised by the power elite’s TV propagandist-in-chief, Vladimir Solovyov, for accepting the official results and not fighting back. While there were some manifestations of Zyuganov’s opposition to Yeltsin, the most extreme being an attempt to impeach him in 1999, they always came up short.

By the time Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene, the conditions had already been ripe to neutralise the only major political force on the Left. Almost a decade of Yeltsin’s super-presidential, ultra-capitalist and increasingly oligarchic regime, defined by skyrocketing economic inequality and lawlessness, took a significant toll on the working class and on all of the CPRF’s potential electorate. Many of them were hit badly by the post-Soviet collapse and never recovered. Some adopted to capitalism and turned into petit bourgeois or nouveaux riches. The extant “red directors” (of the formerly state-owned Soviet enterprises), who had long comprised the CPRF’s support base, were either pushed out or coopted by the regime. Zyuganov failed to capitalise on the trust the progressive-minded public had invested in him, and the momentum was lost.

Younger and fresher, straight-talking Putin, with little apparent association to the previous power elite, had a strong public appeal at the time. With the initial backing of Yeltsin’s oligarchs, first and foremost late media mogul Boris Berezovsky, Putin was able to win the 2000 election and emerge as in the eyes of many as the revanchist leader that Zyuganov ought to be. However, after bringing the oligarchs under his control, restoring order, and sharing some spoils from the high oil prices with the masses, Putin was in no hurry to establish an egalitarian democratic society. Instead, he continued what was started under Yeltsin – dismantling the extant socialist elements of the system and further marginalising the Left in the best traditions of those he called his “Western partners”. His new Labour Code significantly curbed the ability of the existing trade unions to exercise their democratic right to strike and for the new unions to be formed. Some of the key members of the Federation of the Independent Unions of Russia were coopted. There are still some active unionists today, but many of them, like Kirill Ukraintsev for instance, have been subject to legal persecution.

Furthermore, following Putin’s return to presidency in 2012, a series of federal laws, which appeared to contradict the Constitution, made protesting against the regime extremely problematic, whereby organising or participating in protests would result in a fine, administrative arrest, or even a criminal persecution and imprisonment. Since March 2022, in an attempt to curb the anti-war protests, the Russian lawmakers have passed another strand of legislation, which bodes criminal prosecution for challenging the officially approved narrative about the Russian military in the public domain.

With this severe limitation on their capacity to engage in both instrumental and symbolic action, such as strikes and demos, respectively, Russian leftist activists have been forced to choose between toeing the line like Zyuganov or engaging in non-systemic politics (e.g., street protests). The latter carried a risk of persecution by the regime or meant a life on the margins of politics at best. As a result, their electoral potential decreased significantly. Moreover, since the hardening of authoritarianism in Russia over the past two years, the few leftist politicians such as Lobanov and Stupin who had had some electoral success faced repression and had to flee the country. Even CPRF-adjacent Left Front’s Sergei Udaltsov found himself arrested and added to the list of “extremists” and “terrorists”.
YouTube & Russia’s non-systemic Left

However, not everything is lost for the Left in Russia. In recent years, the Russian segment of YouTube has turned into an anti-Putin counter-public sphere, an alternative to Russia’s elite-aligned television. While it has been dominated by neoliberal celebrity personalities, a number of leftist YouTubers have also emerged from this technological phenomenon. Kagarlitsky is unlikely to be released any time soon, but his comrades at RabKor (127k+ subscribers) continue to release new videos, which attract thousands of viewers. Notwithstanding his relatively moderate position vis-à-vis the current regime, leftist journalist Konstantin Syomin (772k+ subscribers) continues to produce news bulletins that provide an alternative to the mainstream capitalist variants. There is also Yevgeniy Bazhenov, better known as BadComedian (5.98m+ subscribers), who should also be mentioned despite not being a socialist activist as such. In his satirical film reviews, which have repeatedly got him into trouble with the authorities, Yevgeniy never fails to ridicule the anti-communist and anti-Soviet capitalist propaganda prevalent in the film industry in Russia and around the world.

Another YouTuber that stands out is former history teacher Andrey Rudoy and his channel Vestnik Buri (321k+ subscribers), which can rival those of the most popular neoliberal figures when it comes to producing regular high-quality content that generates high views (sometimes over a million). Being in his early 30’s, like Bazhenov, and having taught at school for several years, Rudoy is able to communicate the Marxist perspective to the younger audiences. In his videos he covers a wide range of interesting topics – from the current developments in Russia, China, the US, Palestine, Cuba and beyond, to feminism, African national liberation movements and the Black Panthers, to climate change, “Squid Game” and Russian leftist rap music.

Against the backdrop of gradual rise in popularity of leftist content on YouTube, there has been a mushrooming of Marxist youth groups around the country. While the current power elite may have paralysed the Russian Left politically, they are unable to stop the ideological proliferation of progressive ideas on platforms such as YouTube and Telegram. Provided that the likes of Rudoy are able to capitalise on the current leadership vacuum in the neoliberal camp, they may be able to steer the younger and open-minded Russians to the left and cultivate critical and progressive thinking, which will find its practical outlet in one way or another and eventually lead to a brighter future.

Meanwhile, Rudoy’s Vestnik Buri, Russian Socialist Movement, Lobanov, Stupin and a number of other progressive organisations and activists, including Mariya Menshikova, and Marxist media influencer and political refugee Irina Shumilova, have united under the “Just World” initiative. While the neoliberal influencers have called on their followers to vote for “anyone but Putin”, the activists behind the “Just World” initiative draw their audience’s attention to the absence of a single progressive candidate on the ballot and call on everyone to cross out all the four presidential candidates and write progressive slogans over them. The idea is that those ballots would still have to be counted and would therefore reduce the share of the regime candidates’ votes – a high share of invalid ballots would represent the extant opposition to the current regime to both the power elite and to the public, potentially empowering the silent dissenters. It is more of a symbolic action, but it is the best one can do at this stage, and it exemplifies the defiance of Russia’s non-systemic Left.

*****

At the system level, the post-Soviet capitalist regime, set up by Yeltsin and continued by Putin, has been central to the gradual destruction of Russia’s Left over the past three decades. The systemic CPRF and their mini-clones present no threat to the system and arguably never have. No one expects any surprises from the upcoming presidential election. Nevertheless, the emerging new cohort of leftists, guided by the likes of Kagarlitsky, offers hope for the future. They have been able to instrumentalise the Russian-speaking segment of YouTube and other social media to engage in a long-haul “war of position”. Many of them refuse to keep their heads in the sand even in a seemingly hopeless situation and stay politically active against all odds. This means that the revolutionary flames have not been fully extinguished and may yet burn brightly.

Ernest A Reid is a PhD Candidate at Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Rent Increases Are Driving Inflation — and Pessimism About Economy Under Biden

Democrats say the economy is great, but millions of tenants are struggling to pay historic rent increases.

By Mike Ludwig

March 16, 2024

Source: TruthOut




We’re told that, at least by conventional measures, the U.S. economy is doing great: Inflation is cooling and unemployment remains low. Pundits claim consumers just feel like the economy is troubled because they are still adjusting to higher prices after a global pandemic, and that helps to explain President Joe Biden’s dismal poll numbers as he seeks reelection in November.

However, traditional economic indicators often fail to capture the extreme wealth inequality in the United States. The rich have been getting richer for decades amid stagnating wages for workers. By 2023, nearly 80 percent of people making less than $50,000 a year were living paycheck to paycheck, along with 4 in 10 workers making more than $100,000 a year.

The nation faces a deep crisis of housing and homelessness that gifted inordinate power to landlords, and it’s difficult to put a positive spin on the economy when you’re struggling to pay rent and the landlord ignores your calls to fix the plumbing. Nationally, rent remains a key driver of inflation, with costs rising 0.5 percent since January and 5.8 percent over the past year.

“Tenants are paying more in rent than they have ever before, for the worst conditions that they have ever lived in,” said Grace White, an organizer with the Homes Guarantee campaign, in an interview.

The pandemic caused major disruptions in the housing market. People lost jobs or moved in search of more living space, and construction on new housing came to a halt. Inflation is easing in other parts of the economy, and the Federal Reserve is eager to lower interest rates as post-pandemic housing prices cool in some major cities after a period significant overheating in 2021 and 2022.

However, the nation is still dealing with an affordable housing shortage despite new construction efforts, and landlords have few incentives to refrain from gouging their tenants (or promptly fix the plumbing, for that matter).

A record number of people in the U.S. are houseless after policy makers allowed the pandemic-era safety net for workers and tenants to expire despite soaring housing costs. About 653,100 people reported living without a house in January of 2023, up roughly 12 percent from the same time last year and the largest single-year increase on record, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Overall, homelessness has increased by 48 percent since 2015.

An estimated 37 percent of tenants say they are very or somewhat likely to be evicted in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent Pulse Household survey, which tracks real-time data on the pandemic’s impacts on everyday life. While the survey’s sample size is small and the results are a national estimate, a majority of households surveyed reported a rent increase in the past year, and the data clearly suggests that millions of people worry about losing their homes due to rent increases.

“As long as landlords have the power to price gouge or inflate rents at whatever rate they so choose, they will,” White said.

White organizes with a national network of tenants’ unions, and she told Truthout that it’s all about power. Landlords leverage access to a basic human need that costs many people a significant chunk of their income. When housing markets are tight and lower-income tenants have few or no options, landlords can continue raising the rent even as inflation cools and simply evict tenants who can’t afford to pay.

If a low-income family’s choice is between an apartment they can’t afford alongside their budget for groceries, or having no apartment at all, then what choice do they really have? White said this is a crucial question for policy makers.

“Time and time again, inflation numbers show that landlords are hiking rents far beyond the rate of inflation, and they are going to continue to do that until the Biden administration steps in and regulates rents and rent gouging,” White said.

President Biden knows that the affordable housing shortage and rent prices are problems for millions of voters — and for him politically. Administration officials met with the Homes Guarantee campaign and housing justice activists from across the country last summer, and Biden pledged to crack down on price-gouging “big landlords” in his State of the Union speech last week.

Biden was referring to the Justice Department throwing its support behind a landmark antitrust lawsuit filed by tenants against RealPage, a real estate website accused to colluding with landlords to inflate rent prices. Biden is also calling on Congress to pass his housing plan, which would expand tax credits for affordable housing construction and incentivize the construction of 2 million housing units with $20 billion in federal grants for cities and tribes.

Building more affordable housing units is a necessary but long-term strategy. White said tenants need relief in the interim, and the most efficient way to help tenants is limiting rent hikes by landlords who finance their properties with federally backed mortgages.

“Currently the federal government, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are in business with landlords and sometimes the worst rent gougers,” White said, adding that about 12 million units are backed by federal mortgages. “This business should be conditioned on limits to rent hikes and tenant protections.”

After two years of organizing by the Housing Guarantee campaign and its allies, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) agreed to take public comments on proposals for enhancing protections for tenants renting from landlords with federally backed mortgages. White said any new regulations would apply to about 12 million homes nationwide, and the goal is to restore some balance of power between tenants and landlords.

“Time and time again tenants have called for the administration to regulate rent, and the most efficient way for the president to address rent inflation and rent gouging is limiting the power of landlords to hike rents, and the administration has the power to do that by conditioning enterprise-backed mortgages for multifamily homes,” White said.

Comments poured into the FHFA from tenants’ unions, the real estate lobby and renters with lived experience across the country. Unsurprisingly, landlords and real estate lobbyists submitted comments to the FHFA arguing against rent controls, which they say would prevent investment in new units.

Last summer, a group of 32 economists signed off on a letter to the Biden administration pushing back on the industry’s economic arguments and supporting national rent controls for multifamily homes with federally backed mortgages. In order to finance their properties with federal loans, landlords would agree to meet certain housing standards and avoid predatory rent increases.

“Implementing rent regulations as a condition on federally-backed mortgages will protect tenants, stabilize neighborhoods, promote income diversity in regional economies, and improve the long-term outlook for housing affordability,” the economists wrote.

The Biden administration says its currently reviewing the comments to FHFA, and White said activists and tenants eagerly await a proposal from federal regulators.

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE!

A New Alliance Could Change Puerto Rican Politics

The Citizens’ Victory Movement and the Puerto Rican Independence Party are forming a coalition called La Alianza. Their goal: a radical shift in Puerto Rican politics.

By Rafael Bernabe, Ed Morales 

March 16, 2024
Source: Jacobin

Photo by José Fuentes



Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since the 1898 Spanish-American War. It had only US-appointed governors until 1948, and in 1952, Congress passed a joint resolution that approved its first constitution, which provided for limited autonomy. It would become a “Commonwealth,” but the island remained an unincorporated territory that lacked sovereignty and full rights afforded to US citizens, despite the fact that residents of Puerto Rico were granted citizenship in 1917.

Since then, the island’s politics have revolved around three political parties whose platforms are focused on its political status: the pro-Commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PDP), the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), and the pro-sovereign Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). Beginning in the 1930s, a series of uprisings by nationalist forces have been met with repression by US agencies (notably the FBI, which maintained extensive files of suspected “subversives”), minimizing the voter base for the Independence Party and creating a two-party duopoly consisting of the PDP and PNP.
In the 2010s, the combination of Congress’s imposition of a Fiscal Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) to restructure Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt and the devastating natural disaster of Hurricane Maria had the effect of shaking the island’s residents’ faith in the two-party duopoly.

The FOMB made it clear that the local government was not in charge of the island’s finances, neutering the Commonwealth’s illusory autonomy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) poor response to Maria made Puerto Ricans doubt the pro-statehood party. As a result, a new, possibly game-changing element will be a feature of the elections in Puerto Rico this November. The newly created Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC) and the PIP will form a coalition (called La Alianza) to pool their growing constituency in an attempt to further erode, if not destroy, the existing two-party system comprised of the PNP and PDP.

Earlier this year, I visited Puerto Rico and sat down with the MVC’s Rafael Bernabe, who was elected as senator at-large in 2020, engaging in a dialogue with him about the new alliance. The following is an edited version of our conversation.
Forming the Alliance

Ed Morales

The deterioration of Puerto Rico’s economy and the US Congress’s imposition of the FOMB to manage the $72 billion debt crisis has led to Puerto Rico’s people losing faith in its traditional electoral politics. What are the conditions that lead to the emergence of the alliance between the MVC and the PIP?

Rafael Bernabe

When you look at what has happened in the past fifteen years in Puerto Rico, it’s not too hard to see the reason La Alianza came about. The economy of Puerto Rico went into a very deep depression in 2005. If you look at the numbers, the economy of Puerto Rico has been in a depression. We have had fifteen years of economic stagnation, no growth whatsoever. About two hundred thousand jobs have vanished; thousands of people have had to leave the island because they can’t find them. They can’t live here. And at the same time, you have all of these terrible corruption cases in the government. The result of that crisis (which people feel very deeply), the fact that the two major parties have not been able to offer any alternative to that crisis, and that they are increasingly corrupt machines has meant that the support for these two political parties is decreasing sharply.

These parties combined used to get around 97 percent of the votes between them. The PIP got 3 percent, and they got the rest. And now that’s down to like 64 percent: the PNP gets 33 percent; the PPD got 31 percent. These political parties have basically collapsed over the past ten years. In 2016, [ousted former governor] Ricky Rosselló won the governorship with 42 percent of the vote, which was already low enough, and then he was not even able to complete his term because the people got so fed up with his government that they mobilized and they overthrew him. It’s the closest thing we’ve had to a revolution in Puerto Rico. People were in the street mobilizing for twenty days nonstop and forced the governor to resign. In the election in 2017, the PIP jumped from 3 percent to 14 percent. And the MVC, which was participating for the first time, gets 14 percent, which is an indication that people are very much open to new alternatives. So the rise of the vote for the MVC and for the people is very much part of the same process, because many of the people who were on the streets trying to get rid of him were seeking new alternatives. Now that we are in an alliance, we have come together in one single force.

Ed Morales

Has there been any inspiration from these types of alliances that have happened in multiparty democracies in Europe and Latin America?

Rafael Bernabe

In Uruguay, there’s the Frente Amplio, which includes many parties of the Left that governed Uruguay for a long time. Some of us may not necessarily agree with exactly the policies or the lines adopted by the Frente Amplio, but the notion of an alliance of the Left parties, yeah, that’s an inspiration. And we know that alliances of parties of the Left are rather common, have been experienced and tried out in many places around the world.

Ed Morales

The last time we talked, about a year ago, you talked about legal strategies to formalize an official alliance. Have you exhausted those legal strategies?

Rafael Bernabe

Well, the situation is as follows: up until 2011, this type of political alliance in general elections in Puerto Rico was legal. It was not uncommon in the past for that to happen in New York, for example, where you could have the same candidate in the column of different political parties. Going back to the 1930s, there was an alliance between the Socialist Party and the Republican Party, and it was called a coalition. Alliances or coalitions like these were eliminated in 2011 when they rewrote the electoral law in Puerto Rico. Back then, they prohibited having the same candidate in several columns. After the 2020 elections, the PIP and the MVC became interested in forming a coalition or an alliance. So we knew we had to deal with that prohibition.

The first angle of attack was to enact legislation to reform the law so that it would go back to the way it was before this prohibition. But the PNP and PDP majority are not interested in facilitating us having an alliance, so they blocked that, and there was no chance that they would approve the legal reestablishment of the possibility of having an alliance.

The second angle of attack was to challenge this prohibition in the courts. We argued that this prohibition is a violation of the right of association and the right of free expression, and that there’s no reason why the state should prohibit two parties from forming an alliance in the electoral process. And the courts ruled against us. It’s really an absurd ruling, holding that even though we do have a right to associate, the state has the right to limit such rights if there’s enough reason for doing so. And they decided that there was enough reason because allowing for a candidate to appear in the column of more than one party would generate confusion in the electorate and would lend itself to some sort of manipulation of the voter. So they’re basically saying that people are too dumb in Puerto Rico to understand something that is done everywhere else. We appealed to the appellate court, which ruled similarly. So we were left with the other option, which is to work around the law.

Ed Morales

In [MVC leader and former Puerto Rico representative] Manuel Natal Albelo’s explanatory address at the MVC Assembly in December he referred to a “no competition” arrangement, and a fraternal competition. Could you describe those?

Rafael Bernabe

We cannot establish officially an alliance between the two parties, but we can come to an agreement, which would make it a de facto alliance. A very clear example is in the race for the mayor of San Juan. In cases such as this, we run a candidate, in this case Manuel Natal, and the PIP doesn’t run a candidate. We call on our people and the PIP people and everybody else to vote for the candidate of the MVC. The same thing happens, for example, in Caguas, the other way around — we don’t have a candidate for mayor of Caguas. The PIP has one, and then over there we vote for the candidate of the PIP.

It’s a little bit more problematic regarding the national posts, the governor and the resident commissioner, because in the case of the governor, the electoral law forces all parties to have a candidate in order to participate in the elections. So in that case, the MVC agreed that the gubernatorial candidate of the alliance is going to be Juan Dalmau, who is the candidate for the PIP. We are calling on everybody to vote for Juan Dalmau, but the law forces us to have a candidate of the MVC. We have a candidate for governor, Javier Cordova, and he’s officially the candidate for governor of the MVC. But he’s telling people, don’t vote for me, vote for Dalmau, who is the candidate of the alliance.

There are other cases in which, for whatever reason, we were not able to come to an agreement. There are towns in which the people are going to have a candidate for mayor and we are going to have a candidate for mayor; they’re going to compete. And the idea is that we are not going to compete in a negative way. It’s a fraternal competition. We basically allow people to vote for whoever they want to vote for.

Ed Morales

I see in the local press there is this derogatory term, “candidatos de agua” (“water candidates”), that refer to candidates who are not asking for votes. What does that mean?

Rafael Bernabe

That’s a term that you use traditionally for candidates who are placed on the ballot because they want a placeholder. But in this case, it’s not really a candidato de agua, because Cordova is fulfilling a role. We prefer to call it a spokesperson candidate or canidato portavoz, a candidate who is carrying the message of La Alianza. We have several people who are aspiring to the post of resident commissioner, but it’s almost sure it’s going to be Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, my fellow senator. The PIP has somebody who is their candidate for resident commissioner, but that candidate is supporting the vote for Ana.

The other element of the alliance is that Puerto Rico has eight senatorial districts. Each one of them elects two senators. So you have sixteen senators elected from all over the island and in each senatorial district, and a voter can vote for two candidates. If you live in Arecibo, you can vote for two candidates to the Senate and so on. In each one of those eight districts, the PIP and the MVC are each presenting one candidate, so it’s split halfway. If you live in San Juan, you can vote for the candidate of the PIP and the candidate of the MVC. Instead of having two candidates for the PIP and two candidates for the MVC, we have one and one. So the people vote for one of the MVC and one of the PIP. And that’s basically how it’s organized.

Ed Morales

But it’s still a victory for you if one of the two candidates wins.

Rafael Bernabe

Yeah, absolutely. We think we have a good chance of winning in some municipalities. And there are other municipalities in which both parties are relatively weak. So we both have candidates and most probably neither of them is going to win. The fact that we have two candidates is not really preventing us from winning in a municipality that we would otherwise win. And in the most significant contests, we have agreed to support either candidate, one candidate of the PIP or the MVC.
Possible Victory

Ed Morales

So the goal is to continue to raise awareness that the prevailing two-party duopoly is not working, and more and more people are feeling dissatisfied with it.

Rafael Bernabe

You could clearly see that with Natal — if you go by the official results, he lost the election for mayor of San Juan by around two thousand votes. He almost won. And many of us think that he won. It was just stolen.

Ed Morales

What is the basis for saying that it was stolen?

Rafael Bernabe

Because there were a lot of irregularities, particularly regarding the absentee ballots and mail-in ballots There were a lot of problems with that, and we denounced it at the time, and it was a matter of much discussion afterward. But regardless, let’s assume that he lost by three thousand votes. If he had gotten the votes that the PIP candidate got, he would’ve won. So he stands a very good chance of winning the majority of San Juan in the capital city, and that would be a major thing.

In the 2020 elections, the MVC candidate for governor got 14 percent of the vote. Dalmau, the PIP candidate, got 14 percent of the vote. Those two added to 28 percent of the vote. [Current governor] Pedro Pierluisi won the governor’s race with 33 percent of the vote. So again, it’s within reach. If Dalmau were to get an increase in votes greater than these two parties combined receiving the last elections, which he could very well do, he could become the next governor.

It’s not easy. I cannot say it’s even probable, but it’s quite possible. There are also district candidates for the legislature that have a very good chance of getting elected. Eva Prados was a candidate of ours in the last elections, and she lost by a very slim margin and is now running as a candidate of the alliance. She has a very good chance of getting elected. Rosa Segui, who worked with me here, was a candidate for the Senate. She did very well, and now she’s running as part of the alliance and also has a very good chance of getting elected. So it’s going to be a very close, interesting race. It’s not like in the past, when the Left and the progressive forces just ran to bring a message and educate people on certain ideas and raise awareness. There’s a real chance that we are going to win many important races this time.

Ed Morales

And so how would it work in the legislature? The last time we talked, you described some elements of La Alianza were already working in the legislature, right?

Rafael Bernabe

Through the last three years of legislative work here in the capital, we have been collaborating: the PIP, us, and an independent senator, Vargas Vidot. So the PIP, Vargas Vidot, and us most of the time agree on just about everything, all the issues, and we work together. We vote in the same way and so on. So we are practicing the alliance already in terms of what we do here in the capital. Now we’re trying to do it more widely.

Ed Morales

What is your take on the PIP? It’s not just focusing on the status issue; it has been focused on a left progressive position, and I guess the idea that independence would bring an opportunity for more leftism and progressivism.

Rafael Bernabe

The independence movement for the longest time is not a movement that’s limited to the goal of making Puerto Rico independent. It’s very much involved in all sorts of social struggles: the labor movement, the environmental movement, the student movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement, and so on. So most of the independence movement is very much active in all of these struggles. The MVC has the particularity that there are many independentistas in it, but not everybody is an independentista. We include people who are not independentista, but most of the people who are in the MVC are also active in all sorts of other social struggles. The agenda of both movements includes the colonial question and the status question, and the need to determine how we are going to define or redefine the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, but includes all sorts of issues as well, like the fight against privatization and the defense of the environment.

One indication of how significant this possibility of the alliance is, is the fact that you have this very strong effort organized by the business class. Last March, many important members of the Puerto Rican business sector organized a super PAC called Democracia es Prosperidad (Democracy Is Prosperity) to gather funds and intervene in the elections. The official reason for this super PAC is to combat what they think is the threat of forces that want to limit free enterprise in Puerto Rico. They’re very afraid of La Alianza because they know that we have presented legislation to increase the minimum wage, eliminate the subminimum wage of the people who receive tips in Puerto Rico, and reestablish many labor rights that were eliminated back in 2017 when they approved this labor reform law.

If La Alianza wins or gets a lot of votes, important social and labor legislation is going to be approved, and they want to avoid that. Until recently, these business sectors were happy to rely on the PDP and the PNP to defend their interests. They have this whole campaign against La Alianza, saying that this is a socialist alliance. There has been a Left in Puerto Rico for the longest time, and they didn’t feel that threatened, but now they do.
Building a Platform

Ed Morales

In terms the messaging, this idea of attacking corruption seems to be the main messaging I hear in the media. But are you using that a lot to just get people’s attention so you can also talk about things like decolonization?

Rafael Bernabe

The alliance as a whole and the MVC in particular have varied interests. Depending who you talk to, you will see a different emphasis. You need to fight corruption, and you need to have people who are honest occupying government posts. But if you talk with Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, that’s not her main issue. She talks a lot about women’s rights, about reproductive rights, about the fight against racism, the fight against transphobia and homophobia and so on and so forth. I tend to emphasize more labor issues, labor rights and trade-union rights and so on and so forth. And Mariana Nogales, who’s a representative in the House, emphasizes environmental questions. The MVC and PIP have supported measures protecting the University of Puerto Rico and defending public education from the projects of privatization. I would say that corruption is an issue, but by no means is our campaign reduced to the question of corruption.

Ed Morales

Sometimes much of the anti-corruption narrative comes from the Feds and the FBI, who carry out these investigations.

Rafael Bernabe

I guess there is an element that they don’t want their money stolen. The United States sends millions of dollars to Puerto Rico. So there’s a problem there. I understand that if they are going to send some money, it’s supposed to be used for certain things. There’s a problem if you tolerate violation of the law, and it’s also true that a lot of people see them in a positive light, given the fact that the Puerto Rico government agencies have not been up to what they should be doing regarding these things. Many of the investigations carried out by federal agencies could have been carried out by Puerto Rican agencies, but they weren’t.

Ed Morales

You’ve said that the degree of leftism and progressivism between the two parties is very similar. That is to say one party is not necessarily more about socialism or workers’ rights than the other?

Rafael Bernabe

I would say neither party is a socialist party. They are both prolabor, pro–women’s rights, and pro–LGBTQ rights. They both defend that public services should be essential, that services should be publicly owned, and the guarantee that includes electricity, water, education, and health. Both parties support the creation of public health system. These are by any account left-wing parties, progressive parties, whichever term you want to use.

In the MVC, there are people who are socialists, myself included, and everybody knows that we are socialists and it’s no secret, but there are many people who are not socialists. And we agree to struggle for certain immediate reforms and things that working people need to defend the environment, that we need to defend women’s rights and so on and so forth. As a socialist, when I have the opportunity and the occasion, I explain why I am against capitalism. I think in the end we have to abolish capitalism in order to solve our fundamental problems. But I always make it clear that I’m speaking for myself. The MVC as such is not a socialist movement. It includes people who are and people who aren’t socialists. If you look at the program of these two parties, they’re very similar.

Ed Morales

So are you going to have two different party platforms, or are you going to put out one platform?

Rafael Bernabe

The idea is that both parties will retain their individual programs. That’s fine. And then we are going to have sort of a basic program of La Alianza, and the way it’s envisioned right now is a relatively short document that has ten, fifteen basic points. I’m sure it is going to include the creation of a single-payer type health insurance system and eliminate this system that we have now. I’m sure it will include some sort of mechanism to try and solve the status question. It’s going to include the defense of the autonomy and the finances of the University of Puerto Rico, the defense of labor rights and restoration of labor rights as well. The PIP program is two hundred pages long, and the MVC’s is like 150 pages long. We’re going to have a much shorter document that consolidates, underlines, or emphasizes those issues that we think should be in the center of the campaign of the alliance.

Ed Morales

There’s a theoretical question that I wonder if you could talk about that is in the US right now. There’s a lot of discussion about this conflict between people who favor class politics and people who are involved in identity politics. There’s an idea that supporting class struggle is somehow mutually exclusive from identity politics, which many believe has been co-opted by neoliberalism. Does this sort of conflict exist in Puerto Rico?

Rafael Bernabe

No, not really. No, no. I mean not at all.

Ed Morales

You said that you were interested in class issues and are anti-capitalist: Do you think you are among the furthest to the left in the MVC?

Rafael Bernabe

I’m the most leftist, okay? There’s nobody to the left of me. [Laughs] There’s a big abyss. There’s nothing. If you go to the left of me, you’re dead. But I cannot think of anybody that sees these different topics as contradictory or antagonistic. You could find people who would say, “I’m interested in the LGBTQ struggle,” but it’s not like LGBTQ activists are against labor struggles. I would say most people on the Puerto Rican left see these struggles as complimentary. And most of the people I know on the Left would go to a march defending the environment and another day will go to a gay pride parade, and the next day they will go to some labor mobilization. I would say there are people who emphasize one thing more than another. That’s inevitable, I guess. But no, I would say there’s not such a sharp debate between the different approaches. Most people mix these things.

Ed Morales

In the United States, discourse on “decolonization” can get trapped in a theoretical framework, but here you’re literally living in a colony, and decolonization is an immediate, tangible issue. How does that affect the political dynamic on the Left?

Rafael Bernabe

Here, the Left is made up mostly of people who are active in different struggles. There’s an element of that, but it’s not an academic left, let’s say. And I don’t say academic in a bad way. I’m an academic, I work at the university, but the people who are active in the Left are active in movements. There are people in the university theorizing things, but they’re really not part of the Left. Not long ago, there was a march here in support of Palestine and denouncing the genocide. There must have been like a thousand people or something. But most of the people who were there in that march were basically the same people from the labor mobilizations or the environmental mobilizations or the women’s rights mobilizations.

Ed Morales

I covered a little bit about the University of Puerto Rico protests in 2010, and saw that they had assemblies and this notion of horizontalism. The assemblies that the MVC functions through seem to echo this kind of organizing and party process.

Rafael Bernabe

The MVC has a very strong element of promoting participation and promoting debate and discussion and openness. If you look at our assemblies, not only are they open to everybody — anybody can speak, everything is put to a vote. All of it is transmitted over social media, so there’s no secret decision-making and so on. We decided in an open assembly where we discussed the two candidates for Puerto Rican senators at-large, and we just finished the process of people registering who want to aspire to be a candidate. I am one of the candidates. So whoever’s going to be the candidate is not decided by the leadership of the movement. It is going to be decided by many people. There’s very much that culture of participation and debate and discussion.

Rafael Bernabe

Yeah, yeah, from below, absolutely.

Ed Morales

I saw that in Claridad that the Hostosian National Independence Movement (MINH), which has roots in the old Puerto Rican Socialist Party, had expressed a desire to cooperate with La Alianza. Are there more parties like that?

Rafael Bernabe

Yeah, the MINH officially approved supporting the alliance. And there are some members of the MINH who are running as candidates for the MVC within the list of the MVC. They are running as candidates. And there are other left-wing groups that are also either already supporting or will probably endorse voting for the alliance; I wouldn’t be surprised.

Ed Morales

How about the unions?

Rafael Bernabe

In the case of the MVC, we’ve had a lot of support. One of the founding organizations of the MVC is the Sindicato Puertorriqueño de Trabajadores (SPT), which is the Puerto Rico local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). And the SPT had a long process of internal discussion and debate in which it officially, through several assemblies, determined that it didn’t want to support candidates in the old traditional parties anymore, and that it wants to engage in the construction of a new political party that would be capable of defending the interests of the labor movement. But we’ve also had established links with labor leaders and labor activists in many other unions, and many of them are very sympathetic to La Alianza.

Ed Morales

One more question. You’re going to have the constitutional convention as part of your platform. I think I saw somewhere a quote of you saying, “We can’t keep waiting for Washington to push that through.” How much of a priority is the constitutional convention?

Rafael Bernabe

Normally, in Puerto Rican politics, people are taught and people are told that we have to wait for the United States and for Congress to take action to solve this status question. As I argued, many times, they want us to be spectators to the process of determining what it’s going to be our future. We just watch to see what Congress is doing, what it’s not doing, whether such certain congressperson is willing to support something or not support something, whether a committee acts or doesn’t act.

But the process of self-determination is not going to come that way; it should start with us. We should take action so that we begin the process of self-determination, and we sort of serve notice to the US Congress that we, the Puerto Rican people, have organized ourselves to solve this problem as urgently as possible. The way to do that is to call an Asamblea Constitucional de Estatus, which means that people vote, they elect delegates to this assembly. These delegates will be elected on the basis of what status they represent. There will be some who support statehood. There will be some who support independence. There will be some who support free association. People will vote for whoever they want; if people choose a statehood majority, that’s it. Independence majority, whatever. And that assembly then, as a representative of the will of the Puerto Rican people, will have the task of reaching out to the US Congress and telling them, well here we are.

We have to figure out how we are going to decolonize Puerto Rico. The bill that was presented by Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez several years ago was probably the best, because that bill said that the US Congress recognized that Puerto Rico is in a colonial status. The bill was good, but it died. So our position is that we have to take action as soon as possible in the direction of solving this issue. And the first action we could take is electing this assembly as a representative of the Puerto Rican people in order to start the ball rolling.

Striking While the Iron’s Hot: Unprecedented Strikes in the North of Ireland But Can They Lead to Something More?

By Bridget Meehan

March 16, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





Throughout 2023 and into 2024, the North of Ireland [1] has witnessed the largest and most sustained public sector strikes in all of its jaundiced, gerrymandered 100-year history.

The strikes are about pay for public sector workers. For several years now, public sector pay in the North has not kept pace with inflation. Real pay, adjusted for inflation, fell by 4% between 2021 and 2022, and fell a further 7% between 2022 and 2023. Public sector workers finally reached breaking point and decided their only recourse was to strike.

The most significant day of action took place on 18th January when 16 public sector unions decided to go on a 24-hour strike to demand pay increases. Around 150,000 public sector workers went on strike that day. That’s a whopping 66% of all public sector workers in the North, and included nurses, doctors and other health and social care workers; teachers; further education lecturers; cleaners; refuse collectors; police; public transport workers; civil servants; and forestry and road service workers. Schools were shut and buses and trains were canceled. A skeleton health service operated with scheduled appointments postponed and emergency-only cases treated. Icy roads went ungritted, courts and tribunals offered limited services. The level of solidarity on 18th January among public sector unions and workers was unparalleled. Many of these workers were striking for the first time ever in their careers; many of these professions such as junior doctors were striking for the first time ever in their existence in the North. And though many didn’t want to strike, they felt they’d been left with no choice.

Political backdrop

While these strikes have been going on, a bit of political theatre has been playing. The North is governed by Stormont, an administration devolved from the British parliament in Westminster. Stormont has no fiscal or any other decision-making powers of any importance. It can raise very limited revenue and depends predominately on a block grant from Westminster for pretty much all of its public funding. Stormont went into suspension in February 2022. I won’t bore you with the details of why other than to say that the Democratic Unionist Party, a conservative and British party, threw their dummy out of the pram because they didn’t like how the Brexit trade protocol was shaping up. The power-sharing feature of Stormont meant that their withdrawal brought the administration down.

No amount of cajoling or seducing on the part of the Tory government in Westminster could coax them to return to Stormont. So, the Tories did what the Tories do best: they fought dirty. They decided to use public sector pay as a political bargaining chip, or more accurately as a form of blackmail, by claiming they were powerless to increase pay and that only Stormont could make such a decision. That, of course, is one huge pile of horse manure and even the dogs on the street know it. All the money in Stormont comes from Westminster. With the stroke of a pen, the Tories could’ve increased wages. But they stubbornly refused any such move. Instead, they offered £600m for the wage increases as part of a bigger financial package, if and only if Stormont was restored. The legalities of such action, that of denying workers their rights in order to play political games, are dubious to say the least.

Again, I won’t bore you with the tedious details of how the DUP eventually capitulated but suffice to say that the Stormont Assembly resumed in February 2024.

Despite that, there is yet no resolution to the public sector pay problem. Since coming into post, the new finance minister has offered pay deals to civil servants and health staff and to public transport workers. The new education minister has made an offer to teachers. The transport workers have rejected the offer and will continue to strike. The civil servants and health staff are still considering their offer, as are the teachers.

Social costs

The strikes have strong support from the public. Most people recognise why the workers are striking, they see it as only right that these workers get fair pay, and they accept that the workers don’t want to strike but see no other way. The strikes are causing disruption to public services and to the local economy. The media of course have focused less on the plight of the workers and more on the negative impacts, such as the suspension of cancer treatment during the strikes and the impact on trade for the retail and hospitality sectors. Certainly, the negatives are real. I, myself, talked to an employee in the hospitality sector who said she supported the strikers but with there being no buses it meant she struggled to get to work, and either had to pay for taxis or miss her shifts altogether. The fact is the whole point of striking is to create disruption and to raise the social costs. The irony is that it’s the most vulnerable in society or just average people who feel those costs most, and that can create animosity instead of solidarity, especially the longer the strikes go on.

I can’t help thinking about Yemen’s Ansarallah and their current blockade of maritime traffic connected to Israel that is traveling through the Red Sea. While the ideal would be the existence of no such campaign, of no genocide in Gaza, of no war anywhere, we are far from the ideal and Ansarallah are operating within the sad realities of our corrupted world. The Ansarallah goal is to force Israel to stop the genocide in Gaza. Their blockade targets Israeli economic interests, not human life; the blockade goes after ships associated with Israel, no other ships; the blockade doesn’t sink or seize ships, but diverts them from their course. Ansarallah’s blockade is about raising the social costs to those in power, hitting them where it hurts most. And while they haven’t yet achieved their goal of ending the genocide, they’re certainly causing damage to the Israeli economy, costing it billions of dollars and disrupting supply chains.

I wonder if we can learn from Ansarallah and pinpoint ways of raising the social costs to those with power as we travel the road of radical change. It’s a thought and I’m not advocating that we buy helicopters and start commandeering ships. I’m using the Ansarallah campaign as an example of an intelligent and efficient use of resources to achieve an end goal.

But back to the North of Ireland and to the strikes here. What action can be taken by those seeking social change to minimises the social costs to the average person who’s just trying to make a living, while maximising the social costs to those who have the power to implement the change sought? And now that there are hundreds of thousands of people here energised and taking action, what can be done to maximise and prolong the potential of that activism?

Solidarity, vision and strategy

To my mind, this is where solidarity, vision and strategy enter the fray. Widespread solidarity and overarching vision and strategy are often missing from this kind of brave activism. Yet greater solidarity and greater unity in a common vision and strategy would go a long way to resolving the problem of who suffers most from raising the social costs.

Let’s first look at solidarity. The public sector workers in the North have essentially formed a powerful workers’ movement. The North already has several movements, some large and vibrant, others more muted and embryonic. There’s the grassroots movement to promote and protect the Irish language, An Dream Dearg (Red Dream). In the summer of 2022, they held a rally in Belfast that was attended by nearly 17,000 people who filled the streets around City Hall. There’s also a large pro-Palestinian / anti-war movement. This has become increasingly active since October 2023 and Israel’s most recent onslaught on Palestine, and people have been turning out in their thousands, week after week, to protest. There’s a Black Lives Matter movement here, brought into existence in 2020 following the callous murder of George Floyd. The Pride movement has also grown in popularity over recent years and energetic, carnival-style rallies take place every summer in major urban areas across the North.

These movements have members in common. An Dream Dearg have declared support for Palestine. Several of the trade unions involved in the public sector strikes openly support Palestine. Their members and leaders have joined the pro-Palestinian protests and spoken out against the genocide. There’s even a Trade Union Friends of Palestine group. Many of those involved in the pro-Palestinian / anti-war movement are also involved in the public sector strikes and An Dream Dearg. It’s stating the obvious that public sector workers can be gay, black, support Palestine or want to protect the Irish language. And on and on go the many permutations of interrelationships between them all.

What they have in common is their desire for social change of one sort or another, although some struggle to get enough support to achieve the social change they want. They could reach greater success if they were in solidarity with the other movements. In fact, they would all benefit by having the support of each other. The other movements could, right now, join the public sector workers and support them in their efforts to win pay increases. Such solidarity would bolster the striking workers but would also send a loud message to politicians and decision-makers that better pay for public sectors workers is important to more than just the workers, it’s important to wider society too.

It’s worth considering what happens when a movement makes progress towards achieving its goals. If, for instance, the striking public sector workers win their pay increases, will they disband? Say the teachers take a pay deal but the health workers don’t – will the teachers abandon the strikes and go meekly back into their trenches, leaving the others to continue alone? If they all take pay deals and end their strikes, where will that energy and momentum go? Will it disappear like smoke on the wind?

Which brings us to vision and strategy. Given the commonalities among these movements, would there be any possibility they could unite to create and then work towards a common vision and strategy? Could the energy and momentum be harnessed and prolonged to achieve not just a one-off reform but multiple non-reformist reforms? The public sector workers are striking for a single demand to meet their own needs. But what if that demand was one goal within a broader strategy to achieve a widely accepted vision for radical transformation?

What if the striking workers didn’t stop at achieving their pay rise? Because wages across society are way short of equitable, what if the strikes were seen as just one tactic along the way for fairer wages? What if instead the public sector workers continued campaigning, this time for a living wage for all workers in the North, where we understand a living wage to be a fair wage that increases based on the cost of living. What if they were joined by the other movements in doing so? And joined too by the hundreds of thousands of non-public sector workers living on poverty wages, who are denied wage increases, who were hardest hit by the bus and train strikes?

What if, in continuing this sustained and augmented strike action, all of these movements took measures to minimise the social costs to the regular people who are normally hit hardest by strikes? So, a strike by health workers would keep enough staff in place to treat emergency cases and provide critical care (I should point out that during the current strikes, health workers did take such measures). A strike by teachers would provide alternative day care for the children of those who stand to lose income if they miss work because of a strike. A public transport strike would offer a skeleton service to get people to and from work. Since all of these movements are united, a mega-strike could be organised to occur simultaneously across sectors so everybody is on strike rather than having to be at their place of work.

Putting such mitigating measures in place is certainly a challenge and they’re rare applied. But going the extra mile to reduce the social costs to the people you don’t want to hurt would serve to create greater solidarity. And having a movement of movements in itself would give strikers access to additional resources which in turn would make implementing the mitigating measure more plausible.

While all of that holds true, there’s more at stake than a battle for wages. What if this movement of movements in the North decided that wages were merely the beginning and that once better wages were won, the next step was to achieve better working conditions such as secure jobs, a 4-day work week, subsidised childcare, participatory workplaces, or worker ownership altogether?

What if the united vision and strategy didn’t limit itself to workers’ pay and conditions? What if it was expanded to reach so much more? What if it included participatory budgeting where the people would have a say in how public budgets were to be spent; a universal basic income; meaningful rights and equality for minority groups; mutual banking to retain local wealth and use it for the benefit of people and planet rather than the benefit of the global finance system; tax justice and progressive taxation; social and co-operative housing; a properly funded health service and education system; community- and publically-owned renewable energy to create energy independence and move away from fossil fuels; sustainable farming and food production; a demand for fiscal control or even better, independence from Britain and a return to the EU; the implementation of a local Green New Deal and a genuine and just transition to a post-capitalist society? What if the post-capitalist society in this united vision and strategy was to be a participatory society, free from racism, sexism, patriarchy, classism and authoritarianism and where there would be an alternative to the inadequate democratic system and existing family and cultural institutions? And what if this united vision and strategy was joined with international movements, forging alliances that could bring about radical transformation beyond Ireland?

What if indeed?

END NOTE

[1] Ireland was an English/British colony for over 800 years before it won partial independence in 1921, at which time it was partitioned into two jurisdictions: 1) the North or “Northern Ireland”, made up of 6 counties with a majority Protestant population that remained under British rule (and remains so today); and 2) the South or “Republic of Ireland”, made up of 26 counties and with a majority Catholic population that gained freedom from Britain. The North is governed by the British government at Westminster and has a devolved administration called Stormont. The 6 counties of the North were cherry-picked to ensure it would have a majority pro-British population, i.e. majority Protestant. Through gerrymandering and other policies e.g. denying civil rights to the largely Catholic Irish-identifying population, forcing them to emigrate for work, the North maintained its Protestant hegemony. That has changed in recent years, however, and today the Catholic and Protestant populations are almost equal in size.