Random stuff from a Minneapolis socialist

Published On November 21, 2015 | By Socialist Party (CWI in England and Wales)

Four years into a brutal civil war, Syria is back in the headlines because of the massive refugee crisis that has swept the region and Europe. The U.N. has estimated that half of Syria’s population have left their homes, three million of them fleeing the country.

Besides the U.S., a series of Western and regional imperialist powers are now militarily engaged in Syria – either to support the regime, or fight ISIS, or both – including France, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The intervention of these powers, each pursuing its own interests, has not brought peace any closer but, in fact, has deepened the conflict at every step. The war is now also contributing to the destabilization of neighboring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

But the war in Syria is also part of a much larger regional catastrophe with numerous flash points. This disaster was created first and foremost by U.S. imperialism, which has sought – with decreasing effectiveness due to its declining power – to maintain control of this politically and economically vital area:

In Iraq, the reckless U.S.-led invasion in 2003 led to the purging of Sunnis from the state and the creation of a sectarian and oppressive Shiite regime, also backed by Iran. This opened the road to ISIS and led to the country’s de facto dismemberment.

In Afghanistan, President Obama has recently agreed to maintain 10,000 troops through 2017 due to the advance of Taliban forces and the weakening of the corrupt U.S.-backed Afghan government after 14 years of military intervention.

In Libya, imperialist intervention to oust former dictator Muammar Qaddafi resulted in complete destabilization and the rise of Islamist forces, who are now fighting for control.

In Yemen, upheaval following a popular revolt ousted the 22-years-long dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011, resulting in the Iranian-backed Shia Houthi rebels taking over the capital, Sana’a. Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies, backed by Obama, have launched a brutal bombing campaign in order to restore a president more to their liking, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Meanwhile, the United States’ most trusted ally in the region, the Israeli state, is faced with another wave of popular Palestinian revolt. In a meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary of State Kerry, they decided to try and bring things back to “normality.” Normality means the continuation of the Israeli occupation, land theft, and ongoing attacks on the Palestinian masses.

The Middle East today is perhaps the most dramatic example of the complete dead end facing human society under capitalism. As world and regional imperialist powers vie for control, the mass of ordinary people in the region face impoverishment and endless conflict, while millions are forced to escape the horror.

Imperialism’s long history in the region, from French control of Syria and Lebanon to British control of Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq, through the years of the Cold War and today’s “War on Terrorism,” has always used the tactic of “divide and conquer,” mostly relying on ethnic and religious sentiments. It is no surprise, then, that it has created nothing but sectarian conflicts and rivers of blood.

The burning question is: what is the way out of this endless horror?

Below is an edited article by The Socialist, the paper of the Socialist Party of England and Wales, with which Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity through the Committee for a Workers International.

After four and a half long, bloody years of civil war in Syria – with over a quarter of a million dead and eleven million displaced – there is still no end in sight. On the contrary, the entire region faces being drawn into a sectarian civil war.

While there is a widespread desire among ordinary people to see something done to bring peace to Syria and to defeat the reactionary thugs of ISIS, there is also a deep-rooted scepticism over what further military intervention will achieve.

No wonder, after the disastrous invasion of Iraq by the U.S., which laid the basis for the current quagmire, and then the 2012 onslaught on Libya, which has led directly to the anarchy which now exists there.

Syrian refugees entering Iraqi Kurdish regions. Photo:UNHCR/G. Gubaev

As Patrick Cockburn put it in the BritishIndependent: “The U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS has not worked. The Islamic militants have not collapsed under the weight of airstrikes, but, across the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish regions, either hold the same ground or are expanding” (10/03/2015).

After just over a year of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, at a cost of more than $2.7 billion and the killing of many civilians, ISIS still controls at least half of Syria and a third of Iraq. In May of this year, for example, the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to ISIS. The U.S. Air Force carried out 165 strikes against ISIS positions in the month before it fell, but they did not alter the outcome. At the time of writing, five months on, ISIS still holds Ramadi despite a prolonged attempt by the Iraqi government to retake it.

In desperation to retake the city, the predominantly Shia Iraqi government has deployed the Shia militias. Given that Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, both predominantly Sunni, this will do nothing to undermine support for ISIS among the Sunni population, who fear mass reprisals against all Sunnis if Ramadi falls.

These fears are not without foundation; earlier in the year, the Shia militia were central to the campaign to retake Tikrit from ISIS. After the city’s recapture, mass executions of Sunnis – all wrongly written off as ISIS supporters – forced thousands to flee.

Ramadi is an example of imperialism’s utter failure – not just because of the events of the last year, but because of everything that has happened since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

Confirmation

The events in Syria confirm the analysis The Socialist made at the start of the conflict. At the time, there were widespread predictions that President Assad would rapidly be defeated.

We argued that, unlike in Libya, this would not be the case. Assad had greater reserves of support from ethnic and religious minorities within the country, with the increasingly sectarian character of the rebels driving them toward the regime.

At the start the uprising was part of the Arab Spring – a genuine popular revolt against the Assad dictatorship. But this changed with the outside intervention of reactionary forces opposed to revolution in the region – in particular, the brutal dictatorial regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar – backed up by imperialist forces. The result has been the unleashing of a dangerous battle between the Sunnis and the Shias on a regional scale. ISIS is the horrendous consequence of this process.

U.S. imperialism – initially, at least – turned a blind eye to the growth of ISIS while attempting to create and fund a pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA) to fight Assad.

Senator John McCain was even photographed posing – supposedly with the FSA, but in reality with ISIS commanders! U.S. weaponry sent into Syria ended up in the hands of ISIS.

However, ISIS’s aggressive and accelerating role in tearing apart Iraq and Syria, as well as its contempt toward the world powers has forced the U.S. to act against it.

Imperialism

In reality, U.S. imperialism has no forces it can rely on in Syria. As Robert Fisk explained,  “Washington admitted their [the FSA’a] disappearance, bemoaned their fate, concluded that new ‘moderates’ were required, persuaded the CIA to arm and train 70 fighters, and this summer packed them off across the Turkish border to fight – whereupon all but ten were captured by Nusrah [the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria] and at least two of them were executed by their captors” (Independent, 10/04/2015).

In reality, there are 20 or more opposition groups fighting Assad, funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE – all with a sectarian Sunni Islamist character.

The United States remains the most powerful imperialist country on the planet, but it is a declining world power. Its complete inability to “police the world” as it did in the past is graphically demonstrated in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin feeling confident to launch airstrikes in support of Assad is only one indication of this.

It is also shown in how U.S. imperialism has been left as “piggy in the middle” between the Sunni regimes funding the fighters against Assad and Shia Iran, which has sent 15,000 troops to back the Assad regime.

Kurdish YPG fighters. Photo: www.flickr.com/photos/kurdishstruggle

That is not to suggest that ISIS cannot be defeated. On the contrary, its underlying weakness has been shown by the military successes won by the predominantly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), who have established a territorial base in Northern Syria.

Within limits, it has shown that, when anti-ISIS fighters link their military struggles to appeals for national liberation and social change, it is possible to win victories.

However, these successes rely on the heroic action of guerrilla units rather than on the democratic, mass, multi-ethnic mobilization of the people themselves.

There is a danger that this can lead to the driving out of non-Kurds, in some cases, as has been reported to have taken place by Amnesty International and Patrick Cockburn, although this has been denied by the YPG.

Even if these incidents are rare and not widely endorsed, they are a potentially very dangerous development. In addition, the political leadership of the YPG/YPJ still express hopes that Western imperialism will act in their interests. However, imperialism has shown again and again that it has no interest in the genuine aspirations for self-determination for any national or ethnic grouping.

However, it has repeatedly leaned on one group to try and defeat another, creating the sectarian nightmare that now exists.

Working-Class Alternative

The working class and poor farmers of Iraq and Syria and the Kurdish people can only rely on their own self-organization to put an end to this nightmare.

United nonsectarian self-defence of threatened communities and minorities is vital and can be an important lever through which a grassroots movement fighting for socialist change can be rebuilt.

By standing uncompromisingly against all imperialist forces, local reactionary regimes, and sectarian death squads, and supporting the rights of self-determination for all communities, such a movement could find mass support among the regional and international working class.

In turn, workers’ organizations internationally need to spearhead movements against imperialist intervention in the Middle East.

In order to seek a real end to sectarianism and bloodbath, ordinary workers and farmers must demand a complete end to imperialist intervention, as well as open and free elections, to elect a government of representatives of workers and the poor. We call for the building of united, nonsectarian defense committees to defend workers and the poor. This can be the basis of a movement to fight for independent trade unions and mass workers’ parties with a program of land to the masses and factories to the workers, implemented through a program for a socialist democratically planned economy.

The Syrian workers must fight in solidarity with the Kurds for the recognition of the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination – including, if they so wish, full autonomous democratic rights within the state they live in or the establishment of a common state of the Kurds themselves.

But the movement has to go beyond that and link their struggle with those of all oppressed workers and famers in the region. Imperialism and capitalism have devastated the Middle East. There’s no solution under capitalism, but only under a democratic socialist confederation of the Middle East and North Africa.

Published On November 23, 2015 | By Elan Axelbank 

On Thursday, November 12, over 10,000 students walked out of their classes to fight back against the worsening student debt crisis. Demanding tuition-free public college, a cancellation of all student debt and a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers, the #MillionStudentMarch was the first national day of action against student debt. Students at 115 campuses took to the streets to say, “Enough is enough.” With over 40 million Americans saddled with student debt totaling more than $1.3 trillion, and a government that has done nothing to stop it, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the only way we’re going to see an end to this crisis is by bringing back the U.S. student movement in full force, united under clear political demands.

The idea for the day of action was inspired by a call made by Bernie Sanders during an interview back in June for a million students to march on Washington to demand tuition-free public college. Fresh off the successful $15 minimum wage referendum campaign on Northeastern University, Socialist Alternative put out the call for a national day of action and received a tremendous response from students all across the country interested in participating in #MillionStudentMarch.

Unite and Fight

#MillionStudentMarch marching alongside Mizzou solidarity protestors

Two days before the day of action, Black students at the University of Missouri (also known as Mizzou), waging a campaign against the chronic racism they faced on campus, called for a national day of solidarity actions on the same day as #MillionStudentMarch. #MSM immediately took up their call for solidarity and made every action a joint #MSM and Mizzou solidarity action to show the links between racial and economic justice.

The same corporate minded administration at Mizzou that ignored a series of racist incidents also cut the health care of graduate students and revoked Planned Parenthood’s admitting privileges at the university hospital. All of these attacks contributed to the scale of the revolt and show that the fight against racism, sexism and the corporate domination of education, which is leading to debt bondage for millions, must be brought together into a national mass movement.

The three core demands of #MillionStudentMarch were chosen to create the broadest based movement possible, and it achieved just that. The first demand of tuition-free public college brought out current and future students, who in the face of rapidly rising tuition need free college. The second demand to cancel all student debt brought out current and past students who, graduating with record high levels of debt, need this weight taken off their shoulders in order to start their post-college lives. Finally, the third demand for a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers facilitated the student-worker solidarity necessary to take the fight for free college to the next level.

The corporate assault on education has been facilitated by both Republicans and Democrats, although Obama and some Democrats now give verbal support for free tuition, at least for two year community college programs. Hillary Clinton has, however, dismissed the idea of free public college for all. Achieving the demands of #MSM will require mass struggle, which the Democrats will oppose, and this struggle therefore also points to the need for a new independent political force for the 99%.

Next Steps

The student movement, in alliance with the workers on our campuses and workers in broader society, is capable of achieving big things. The University of California system showed up in full force with a big protest on nearly every UC campus. UC Santa Barbara had the biggest action of the day with a rally and march of over 1,500 people, including students, campus workers, and workers from five different unions. National Nurses United, the first and largest union to endorse Bernie Sanders, endorsed #MillionStudentMarch and had a big impact by showing up to actions all over the country and helping to make clear the necessity for the student movement to link up with the labor movement.

#MillionStudentMarch was an incredible and promising beginning, but we can’t let up. What we have to do now is stay organized, continue to build the base of our movement locally by agitating for our demands. The potential exists for an even bigger day of action in the new year. We must link up and form stronger connections with the Black Lives Matter movement and the broader Fight for $15. The energy among students right now to fight back against the corporate system of higher education is undeniable. Now is the time to stand up and defend the right to higher education for all.

Published On November 24, 2015 | By Eljeer Hawkins

“…Missouri [is] the most racist state in the country.” –  John Gaskin III, a spokesman for the St. Louis County NAACP, (Bloomberg Business Week; 8/25/2014)

On November 7, black members of the Missouri (Mizzou) Tigers football team, supported by their white teammates and coaches, announced that they would not participate in football related activities as long as  the university president remained in office. The immediate resignation of University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe and the chancellor of the Columbia campus, R. Bowen Loftin, sent shockwaves around the country. They serve as a warning to all university, college, and education officials that racial, sexual, and economic injustice on our campuses and in our schools will not be tolerated. We are in the midst of the emergence of a new powerful student movement in the United States.

Far from an isolated incident, Mizzou football players took their action in the context of increased activism at Mizzou, in the state of Missouri, and on college campuses nation-wide. Missouri was rocked by the events in Ferguson following the death of Michael Brown. In the fall of 2015, graduate students responded to having their health care cut, by demonstrating and eventually starting a union drive. At the same time, Chancellor Loftin provoked outrage by revoking Planned Parenthood’s admitting privileges at the University of Missouri Hospital, dealing a blow to abortion access in the whole state. (See this excellent timeline of Mizzou activism this fall). In addition, this is the football program from which Michael Sam made history as the first openly gay man drafted by an NFL team. This is a team deeply affected and concerned with their community and campus.

One Year after Mike Brown

It has been one year since the death of Michael Brown at the hands of law enforcement officer Darren Wilson. Mike Brown’s death ushered in a new phase in the long black freedom movement as the youth of Ferguson rebelled against militarized law enforcement and a corrupt city and state administration in Missouri. The banner of Black Lives Matter was raised as a life affirming act of defiance against structural racism, poverty, and oppression under capitalism.

The Ferguson uprising inspired the creation of the Mizzou student group “Concerned Students 1950” referencing the first year black students were admitted to the university. Several extreme incidents of racism coupled with the everyday harassment that black students face at Mizzou, where they are only eight percent of the student body, pushed students to speak out as part of the Black Lives Matter movement to fight for a safe university environment. They were severely let down by the university administration.

Only 110 miles from Ferguson, the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus has a history of racial strife and blatant racism. The death of Mike Brown and daily occurrences of racism spoke to the consciousness of the black student body and they organized groups around the issue such as @MU4Mike Brown, Racism Lives Here, and Concerned Students 1950 to challenge the racist history of the University and current conditions.

The Tipping Point

There were numerous incidents on campus like the blatant use of the N-word towards black students, outright racist vandalism, and a swastika drawn in human excrement and charcoal in two separate incidents in a matter of months. The denial and negligence of a University administration to the racism on campus spoke volumes to the black student body, the wider student body, and the faculty and community.

Mizzou players. Photo: TWITTER/Coach Gary Finkel

Jonathan Butler, a graduate student decided he had enough and went on a hunger strike until President Wolfe resigned. Days later, 30 black players on the Mizzou Tigers football team, inspired by the student organizing and protest, decided to stand in solidarity and decry the injustice on campus. They were joined by their white teammates, head coach Gary Pinkel, and assistant coaches in an act of unity and brotherhood as the black players announced they would withhold their labor; no practices and/or games until President Wolfe resigned as well. Despite blacks being a numeric minority in the University, they make up 69 percent of the football players. The power was clearly on the side of the students and football players which tipped the scales in the direction of justice and forced both Wolfe and Loftin to resign.

All Labor Has Dignity

The protest and self-sacrifice of the broader student body, particularly the black students, must not be lost in this struggle at the University of Missouri as so much press and praise has been heaped upon the football players and rightly so. But the daily organizing and agitation of the student activists and organizations was critical to forcing the resignation of Wolfe and Loftin.

President Wolfe had no experience in education when he was hired to run Mizzou in 2010. Wolfe sought to turn the university into a Fortune 500 tech corporation: he slashed and burned the academic publisher associated with the university; cut graduate student health care; and cut tuition waivers for graduate students who taught courses. In addition, the “image” of the university was held paramount: instead of addressing systematic racism on campus, the administration instead treated each incident as a matter to investigate separately. A premium was placed on income-generating parts of the university – particularly the football program. These attacks are part of a trend that is no less than a national plan to slowly privatize and erode public education and services for students, campus workers, and the community with the goal of maximizing the profits and profile of the universities and corporations.

This protest by Mizzou players builds on the powerful example of the Northwestern football team’s efforts to unionize over a year ago and represents further progress in collegiate athletes being seen as workers/employees. The announced labor strike by the Mizzou football team, and, significantly, its black players, would have cost the university $1 million in forfeiture fees per game. The biggest blow would be to Mizzou’s reputation, and the donor confidence in the leadership. We must remember that this team was in the hunt for a NCAA national championship just two years ago.

The act of solidarity and strike threat exhibited the potential power of the athlete in contemporary capitalism that has turned sports into a corporate-controlled mass consumption commodity and mindless entertainment. The Mizzou players realized their strength and the threat of withholding their labor forced the hand of the board of trustees and President.

“We Are United”

Ithaca College students protest in solidarity with the Mizzou students. Photo: New York Daily News

The protests in Mizzou, Yale, Berkeley High School, and Ithaca against racism, environmental destruction, corporate dominance over education, tuition hikes, and student debt are all part of a revitalization of the student movement.

The anti-immigrant, racist and misogynist rhetoric of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and others in the GOP is encouraging the expression of reactionary views by a minority in our society and this is having a reflection on campuses. As if to stress this point, Trump and Carson have called the demonstrations “disgusting” and “infantile.” The Democratic Party establishment, on the other hand, expresses sympathy with the demonstrators’ aims; but from “ending welfare as we know it” to the policies that created mass incarceration, it is fully implicated in the structural racism that creates the breeding ground for the type of attacks we have witnessed at Mizzou.

There have been threats against the activists and movement at Mizzou following the resignation and backlash from the corporate media on how reporters were handled during the protest on campus. We must defend the right to organize and protest without reprisals from racist vigilante forces or even by the state, while at the same time being watchful of the corporate media and their reporting of events which is meant to cast a dark cloud over the activists and movements as they did following Mike Brown’s death. The movement must come up with a plan to deal with genuine reporting of events instead of alienating potential press that could help expand and spread the message of fighting back against racism at Mizzou.

What Mizzou has taught us is that the old labor movement mantra of “An injury to one is an injury to all” is relevant and powerful as a counterweight to racism, xenophobia and capitalist oppression. Student activism is a powerful tool, but the strike of football players showed that students must focus on demands, strategy, and tactics that reaches out to, and involves the university staff and employees. They are the ones who truly have the power to stop the running of the institution.

Black Lives Matter has bolstered student activism nationally; last week there were solidarity demonstrations with Mizzou on campuses around the country, some of them linking up the Million Student March for free education and to cancel student debt. On campuses, students should join these movements and use this inspiration to build further fights against cuts to education. Activists should work to create lasting coalitions that fight on issues from racism on campus to fighting for a campus-wide $15 minimum wage. Socialist Alternative is involved with the Million Student March and various students for Bernie clubs.

Working people can take inspiration from the heroic activism of the students at Mizzou and the brave stand taken by the football team. Only a united and cohesive working class mass movement rooted in our commonalities and not our artificial “differences” can challenge and uproot the edifice of oppression at home and abroad.

Published On December 2, 2015 | By Ty Moore

“Everybody that stood with Mayor Hodges is not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem.” – NAACP President, Nekima Levy-Pounds

Solidarity statement from Socialist Alternative Minnesota

Providing political cover for police repression, Mayor Betsy Hodges held a major press conference Monday, demanding protesters end their occupation of the Police Department’s 4th Precinct. Flanked by an array of establishment leaders, including Rep. Keith Ellison and City Council President Barb Johnson, Mayor Hodges blamed the peaceful protest for threatening public safety.

Photo: Star Tribune

Echoing the right-wing media and racist Police Federation President Bob Kroll, Hodges cynically blamed the occupation for “near-daily threats to burn the precinct, kill our officers…” The Mayor’s incendiary statements are designed to justify police repression, and are especially irresponsible coming just one week after the racist terror attack on protesters.

In reality, the only real violence over the previous two weeks came from the Mayor’s racist police who killed Jamar Clark and violently attacked peaceful demonstrators, and the racist vigilantes who shot five protesters.

Labor/Community Mass Action Needed

If we allow threats of racist terror and police repression to push back the protests demanding #Justice4Jamar, it will only encourage more repression and racist attacks, and set back the struggle for racial equity. We cannot allow the Mayor and political establishment to isolate the courageous young people leading the #4thPrecinctShutDown.

We are urging all progressive forces, all labor leaders, all who want #Justice4Jamar, to publicly call on the Mayor and police to stand down.

The big labor and community organizations backing the ongoing campaigns for racial equity and workers’ rights in Minneapolis – a struggle the Mayor also recently betrayed – should urgently pull together a broad labor/community defense coalition to physically defend and support ongoing protests including the 4th Precinct occupation.

As a first step, calling a mass unity march on City Hall could draw ten thousand or more if the big labor and community organizations spent just one week throwing their full weight into the mobilization. Such a mass demonstration organized by a broad coalition would be a powerful response to the Mayor’s call to demobilize, showing the widespread support for police accountability. We could facilitate the active participation of thousands more in the struggle to defend free speech and demand racial equity.

No Grand Jury – Prosecute the Police!

Less than 2% of grand jury trials of police killings result in criminal charges. The system is so obviously corrupted that California recently banned their use in cases of police killings. We join the call of Miski Noor, a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter Minneapolis:

“If Mayor Hodges is so concerned about safety, she should join us and call for the appointment of special prosecutor to investigate Jamar Clark’s murder to avoid using a broken grand jury system. Instead, she’s using her political capital to attack peaceful protesters braving white supremacist attacks and freezing temperatures to demand justice for Jamar Clark.”

Community Control of Police

The attempted cover-up of the police murder of LaQuan McDonald in Chicago, almost certainly orchestrated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is a powerful warning that we can place no trust in the political establishment to root out racist police, much less address the deep structural racism of the criminal justice system.

Minneapolis City Hall’s continued failure to root out racist police and end the entrenched racial bias in law enforcement shows the urgent need for a fully independent, elected community control board with full powers over the Minneapolis Police Department, including hiring, firing, and budget priorities.

Build a Political Alternative

The #Justice4Jamar movement is again exposing the corporate character of the entire Minneapolis political establishment. Mayor Hodges was elected pledging to prioritize racial equity, but in two years she failed to fight for any substantial reforms. Alongside Barb Johnson’s majority on City Council, Mayor Hodges has opposed calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, backed away from support for fair scheduling, and offered no leadership for paid sick days or preventing wage theft.

As long as power in our city remains in the hands of business-backed politicians, of the business-backed Democratic Party establishment, there will be no meaningful change. There will be more racist police harassment, brutality, and killings. There will be more lives destroyed by mass incarceration, more poverty, unemployment, housing insecurity, cuts to education and social services, all impacting communities of color hardest.

But we can built a political alternative. Socialist Alternative has twice elected Kshama Sawant to City Council in Seattle, despite the all-out efforts by big business to defeat us. Kshama Sawant and SA built an energized mass base of support by taking an uncompromising approach to workers’ rights and racial equity. We led the fight to win a $15/hour minimum wage among other demands, and with only one working class fighter in office we have built struggles to completely transform Seattle city politics.

Our movement can achieve this in Minneapolis too, and Socialist Alternative is excited to participate in the ongoing discussions about how to take the struggle for racial and economic justice forward.

Let’s make this powerful movement against police racism a line in the sand in Minneapolis. Let’s use this moment to begin forging the grassroots coalitions needed to build a new, fully independent political force in this city to remove the corporate-backed Democratic Party establishment from power.

“They don’t care what happens to the poor and vulnerable… they have blood on their hands.”

– Nekima Levy-Pounds, Minneapolis NAACP President, speaking in a personal capacity to demonstrators outside the 4th Precinct Monday

Photo: KARE 11

Published On November 18, 2015 | By Tom Barnard

On October 15, President Obama approved a new $15-billion-a-year plan under which the U.S. will maintain its current force of 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through most of 2016, then drawing down to 5,500 in early 2017 to remain at bases in Kabul, Bagram, Jalalabad, and Kandahar. The president had originally planned to maintain only a small embassy-based force of 1,000, but in Obama’s own words, “in key areas of the country, the security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there is risk of deterioration. Afghan forces are still not as strong as they need to be.”

That all-too-obvious assessment comes on the heels of the fall of Kunduz to the Taliban, its largest strategic victory in years. The victory was accomplished in a matter of hours, as 500-700 insurgent fighters sent 7,000 government troops fleeing. Only after 15 days was a combined force of Afghan army and U.S. Special Forces, supposedly only used in Afghanistan for training and counterterrorism missions, able to retake the city, with massive air support.

U.S. War Crime

But not before the U.S. used that air support to commit a war crime, bombing a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the only facility of its kind in northeastern Afghanistan. Many staff members and patients were killed and wounded, and the facility was destroyed, as the hospital was hit by precise aerial raids for over an hour, destroying the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and the physiotherapy ward, while frantic calls to Coalition forces went unanswered.

This despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the hospital to Coalition and Afghan forces as recently as September 29. After several attempts in as many days to point the blame elsewhere, the U.S. finally admitted that U.S. Special Forces on the ground called in the strike.

The fall of Kunduz, one of the centers of the American troop surge five years ago, exposes the bogus assurances about progress in the War in Afghanistan often given by American and Afghan officials. U.S. claims notwithstanding, recent data compiled by the United Nations show that the Taliban insurgency has spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001. Amid a corresponding sharp rise in Afghan military casualties, local officials describe a pattern of worsening morale and reluctance by troops and policemen to leave their posts. In February, the Afghan intelligence service said it was investigating dozens of police officers in Kunduz for cooperating with the Taliban, sometimes even selling their ammunition. Even in districts that are nominally under government control, government forces hold only the government buildings in the district center and are under constant attack by insurgents.

Regime Cannot Defeat the Taliban

Afghan Local Police installed by the American Special Forces extort protection money from farmers, while Afghan commanders use soldiers’ pay for their own sordid purposes, including the widespread practice of raping local boys. And Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani is widely regarded as unable to rein in the corrupt warlords who hold key posts in his regime.

Socialist Alternative opposed this war from the beginning because we knew that the U.S. invasion had nothing to do with bringing democracy and alleviating poverty in Afghanistan. It was based on U.S. imperialism reasserting itself after 9/11 and controlling energy resources in the region through an alliance with compliant feudal allies.

Though we are completely opposed to the brutal and reactionary Taliban, we are also clear on the nature of the gangster warlords who are the force behind the current regime, and Karzai’s before it. The only way forward is the independent mobilization of the workers and peasants of Afghanistan in their own interests, allied to workers and peasants across the region.

Published On November 19, 2015 | By Kshama Sawant 

Sanders spoke today, November 19, at Georgetown University about democratic socialism. Kshama Sawant, Seattle´s Socialist Alternative City Councilmember, responds to his message in this video (see transcript below).

Sisters and Brothers,

Socialism is rising.

Just a few minutes ago, Bernie Sanders addressed working people in the United States to speak about democratic socialism. Hundreds of thousands will watch it. Such an audience for socialist ideas has been unprecedented in the U.S. in several generations.

Bernie Sanders is giving voice to the enormous desire for change after a decade of economic crisis where millions lost their jobs and homes and the “recovery” has overwhelmingly benefited the 1%. There is deep anger because the political process has been completely dominated by big corporate interests; structural racism and sexism remain entrenched; and because no decisive measures are being taken to address global warming.

Underlying all of this is a diseased and decaying social system – the failed system of capitalism.

Poll after poll show that people under 30 now support “socialism” and “capitalism” in roughly equal numbers. And we also see that support for socialism leads over capitalism by 12 percentage points within Democratic Party supporters nationally.

But what is socialism?

Socialism is a democratic society based on human need not corporate greed. A society of social, gender and racial justice. A world where black and brown lives matter. A world that will have addressed the crisis of climate change.

How can such a society be achieved?

Take the huge challenge of climate change: 90 companies have caused almost two thirds of all carbon emissions in human history. All for amassing limitless profits. Capitalism is destroying the planet.

We need to take these companies into democratic, public ownership in order to move fully towards renewable energy, and to keep fossil fuels where they belong – under the ground.

Socialism is about working-class democracy, where the 99% make the key decisions, instead of Wall Street and their global capitalist casino.

The 500 largest corporations and giant banks that dominate our economy, control our political system and degrade our environment should be taken into democratic public ownership. This way, the resources of society could be used to benefit society as a whole.

The great German socialist, Rosa Luxemburg, posed the alternatives facing humanity long ago – she said that the future will either be one of socialism or barbarism.

We see barbarism globally today in many forms. We see it in the development of the Islamic State and the horrific attacks in Paris and Beirut last week. We saw it in the barbarous invasion of Iraq by a US government on behalf of a tiny cartel of rapacious oil companies.

The devastating consequences of the Iraq invasion, as well as the preceding decades of imperialist policies, are tearing apart the very fabric of society in the Middle East, fueling the rise of ISIS, and creating the biggest refugee crisis in world history.

We see the shadow of that barbarism here in the US, with huge poverty next to exorbitant wealth, and the rise of anti-immigrant, racist policies emanating from the Republican Party.

We have an alternative to this barbarism. A socialist world.

Bernie said that he supports a coalition of countries to fight ISIS. However all those governments represent the interests of their local capitalist ruling classes. As a socialist, I believe we need a movement of working people, of all nationalities, of all religions or no religion. A movement in the common interests of working people in the Middle East and internationally, to challenge both ISIS and Western imperialism, to create an alternative to the deep humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.

Bernie Sanders spoke today of FDR, the New Deal, and Social Security.

It is no accident that the victories on Social Security in the 1930s and Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s took place during times of great, historic movements of the working class and youth.

In 1935, when Social Security was passed, workers across America were on strike for a better life. They fought to unionize through sit down strikes. They took over and occupied their factories, and refused to give them back until their unions were won and their demands met.

It was these American workers, this radical labor movement, that won Social Security. Contrary to the popular myth, it was not handed to them by the benevolence of the ruling elite headed by FDR. In fact, Roosevelt had run for office in 1932 on a promise of fiscal conservatism – of shrinking social programs, not expanding them.

The workers movement that won the New Deal was led by socialists.

Similarly, Medicare and Medicaid were won in the context of the radicalized 1960s Civil Rights movement. The battle against segregation, lynchings, against the grotesque brutality of Jim Crow racism. They were won under the pressure of the black activists and also of the developing movement against the war in Vietnam.

Social struggle needs to be combined with building a new political force for the 99%. Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which raised $28 million in the past three months and has refused corporate donations, shows the potential for independent working class politics to fight against corporate politics.

Bernie is absolutely correct to call for a federal 15 dollar minimum wage, single payer health care, free college education, and defeating the power of the billionaire class to defend democracy.

That’s why I want Bernie Sanders to win the presidency and defeat the agenda of the Billionaire class.

But in order to win, Bernie Sanders needs to take on Wall Street and all those corporations who dominate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party machine.

To win, Bernie Sanders needs a mass movement from below and an organization, independent of corporate cash. He needs a mass party of and for working people.

Let’s come together to build such a movement and such a party, against the Republican right wing and independent of big business, Clintonite Democrats.

This race is not a race between two progressive candidates. Hillary Clinton served on the Wal Mart board of directors, while Sanders supports the fight for $15. Hillary Clinton is a hawkish supporter of military intervention and voted for the Iraq war. Clinton is the candidate of Wall Street and the Billionaire class.

Clinton does not deserve the support of working people and progressives and can not be supported by socialists.

Win or lose, Bernie Sanders’ inspiring campaign offers a unique opportunity to spread socialist ideas to a new generation, to build an independent mass party of working people, to build a new movement capable of defeating the stranglehold of Wall Street over our society.

We can organize the fight back against the billionaire class. Join me in this struggle, join Socialist Alternative.

Published On November 20, 2015 | By Eljeer Hawkins

The grand jury in Cleveland, Ohio, is currently deliberating over evidence in the police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by then-rookie Officer Timothy Loehmann on November 22, 2014. Tamir Rice was playing with an airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal pellets outside of a recreational center when a police car pulled up. Within seconds of arriving on the scene, Officer Loehmann fatally shot Tamir.

This brutal incident, captured on security camera footage, quickly became national news. Tamir’s tragic death joined the multitude of black and brown victims of police violence in the United States in 2014.

Not one law enforcement officer in Cleveland has been convicted of killing an unarmed citizen. Why? The political and judicial relationship between the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement: the cops collect the evidence for the state’s attorney that is used during trial to secure a conviction. This is the same Cleveland Police Department that was cited by the Department of Justice with numerous cases of police violence that violated citizens’ human and civil rights.

The Rice family and supporters are calling for a special prosecutor to oversee the case. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty has received justified criticism for delays in presenting the evidence to the grand jury, as well as lack of communication between his office and the Rice family.

Can we rightly have confidence in a system to police itself?

As we await the decision of the grand jury, we must continue to agitate, organize, and protest outside the courtroom and build a sustained protest movement to demand justice for Tamir and all victims of police terror, linking it to the broader struggle against institutional racism, poverty, and capitalism.