Election 2024: First Response
Solidarity National Committee
Posted November 11, 2024
“IT SHOULD COME as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.” — Bernie Sanders
The November U.S. election has produced a sweeping victory, not just in the United States but internationally as well, for the far right. It has sent shock waves through not only the Democratic Party establishment but progressive forces and the movements for racial, Indigenous and gender justice.
To be sure, Trump’s decisive victory preempted the fears of post-election chaos and constitutional crisis — and all those concocted rightwing accusations of “massive voter fraud” evaporated like the morning dew. We can also draw a concluding line under Joe Biden’s lasting presidential legacy: enabling the Gaza genocide, clinging to his sagging reelection campaign well past its best-by date, and returning Trump to power.
The results may be every bit as calamitous as many commentators are predicting. That’s certainly true for the Palestinian people under Israel’s state-and-U.S.-supplied genocide, quite possibly for Ukraine’s struggle to defend itself from Russia’s invasion, undoubtedly for immigrant communities in the United States facing a new reign of terror, and for pro-Palestinian activist students and faculty confronting repression on campuses, as well as looming threats to anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ and transgender rights movements. It will also accelerate — we don’t know by how much — the global climate-change apocalypse.
There’s much to say about all this, and we can only touch on some of it in this initial response. But we must begin with a dilemma that the Trump/MAGA victory presents far beyond the defeat of a stagnant Biden presidency: For those of us in the socialist movement, working class struggle and activism are the critical element to winning serious and lasting gains. Yet today’s reality is that a substantial minority of workers in the United States — largely but not only among white workers — have been won over to voting for a deeply reactionary agenda. By some accounts, half the union members in Michigan supported Trump…
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Webzine
The Antisemitism Scare: Guide for the Perplexed
Alan Wald
Posted November 12, 2024
INTRODUCTION: As we enter a new political landscape following the election of Donald Trump, resistance to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and its bellicose military actions in the region takes on a greater urgency than ever before–even as political repression on US campuses intensifies….
Conference in Honor of Boris Kagarlitsky: Imperialism(s) Panel
Robert Brenner, Ilya Matveev & Hanna Perekhoda
Posted November 9, 2024
Free Boris Kagarlitsky and all anti-war political prisoners in the Russian Federation!
A message from Boris Kagarlitsky, November 14, 2024
Suzi Weissman: Welcome to Jacobin Radio. I’m your host, Suzi Weissman. On October 8th, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign held an online conference on “Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left.” Although Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, he has just published a book called The…
Solidarity and the 2024 Election
Posted November 1, 2024
IN THE 2024 U.S. election, Solidarity is not adopting a formal position on the presidential contest. There are various viewpoints in our organization, as there are throughout the socialist and progressive U.S. left. AGAINST THE CURRENT published several opinion articles covering a range of positions:
* WHY SOCIALISTS SHOULD DEFEAT TRUMP, BY DAN LA BOTZ
Why Socialists Must Defeat Trump – Against the Current ( https://againstthecurrent.org/atc232/why-socialists-must-defeat-trump/ )
* SOCIALIST SUPPORT…
The Path to Victory & the Tasks of the Ukrainian Left
Sotsialnyi Rukh
Posted October 31, 2024
ONE OF THE key decisions of the Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) conference, which took place in Kyiv on October 5-6, 2024, was the adoption of the resolution, “The path to victory and the tasks of the Ukrainian left.” Below is the text of the resolution:…
Authoritarianism Grows in El Salvador
Dianne Feeley
Posted October 27, 2024
Although the Constitution of El Salvador prohibits consecutive presidential terms, Nayib Bukele was inaugurated for a second term on June 1, 2024.
Given the opposition that has emerged to challenge his second term, police arrested leaders of the National Alliance for a Peaceful El Salvador on May 30 and 31. The Alliance is a broad coalition that emerged to defend democracy in the face of Bukele’s consolidation of power. Of the eight arrested, two were historic FMLN leaders – the coordinator of…
Boeing Workers Settle Seven-week Strike
Malik Miah
Posted October 26, 2024
UPDATE: LEADERS OF THE International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) District 751 in Seattle said 59% of members who cast ballots November 4 agreed to approve the fourth formal offer (and the third put to a vote). It ended a seven-week strike. The October 31 deal was backed by the union leadership.
“It’s time for us to come together. This is a victory,” IAM District 751 President Jon Holden told members….
Remarks at the Boris Kagarlitsky Conference, October 8, 2024
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Posted October 19, 2024
Free Boris Kagarlitsky and all anti-war political prisoners in the Russian Federation!
A message from Boris Kagarlitsky, November 14, 2024
GREETINGS AND MY profound thanks for the honor of participating in and addressing today’s conference, celebrating the work of comrade Boris Kagarlitsky and acting in solidarity with the comrade in his fight for freedom. A fight, I should say, not only for his own freedom, but a fight for freedom against the forces of authoritarianism and 21st century fascism….
Justice Not Evictions
John Zettner
Posted October 15, 2024
We Live Here
Detroit Eviction Defense and the Battle for Housing Justice
by Jeffrey Wilson and Bambi Kramer
Seven Stories Press, 2024, 238 pages, $16.95 paperback; ebook $10.
WILSON AND KRAMER’s graphic story highlights the victorious struggles of several homeowners, providing a glimpse into the economic crisis in Detroit and its resistance by the community. The tsunami came to the city earler than the country’s 2008 meltdown and stayed longer.
The group of activists…
A Letter from the Editors: Election and Widening War
The Editors
Posted October 10, 2024
WITH WAR AND genocide spreading from Palestine to Lebanon and Iran, with southern states inundated by the biggest climate-change flood disaster in U.S. history, and people’s general insecurity about their own and the country’s future, the United States lurches toward what’s called “the most consequential election in our lifetime” that may in the end resolve little or nothing….
Harris, Trump, or Neither? Arab & Muslim Voters’ Anger Grows
Malik Miah
Posted October 10, 2024
AMONG THE MOST significant political developments in the 2024 presidential election is that Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities are rejecting the party of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their support of genocide in Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon….
All Webzine articles
Events
Reading group: Race, gender, and the fight against fascism
September 26 to December 19, 2024
Against the Current
- Election and Widening War—The Editors
- A Century of Surrealism—Alexander Billet
- Arab & Muslim Voters’ Anger Grows—Malik Miah
- The 2024 British Elections—Kim Moody
- The UAW & Southern Organizing—Joseph van der Naald & Michael Goldfield
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THE “SOCIALISM-FROM- BELOW” tradition views the working class as the central agent of overthrowing a system based on the market and the exploitation, alienation and unequal society it perpetuates.
