Politics in a Time of Crisis - Podemos

Reading Politics in a Time of Crisis – A view from the Left.

By Duane Campbell

As we know, the economic crisis of 2008-2012 disrupted the U.S. economy.  The crisis was much worse in some of the peripheral countries of Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy among others), and even more destructive in under-developed regions of African and Asia. 

Spanish political leader Pablo Iglesias Turrión has written Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the Future of European Democracy, published in an English translation by Verso Books. Iglesias provides a critical summary of the crisis that began in the U.S., and spread to much of the world causing political upheavals and leaving misery, starvation, and massive migration in its wake. 

We can learn much from reading Iglesias about this crisis in Spain and  other countries and economies, including how the crisis led  several social democratic political parties in Spain, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe to collaborate with right-wing movements to impose austerity on the people.  This collaboration led to the collapse of  many social democratic political parties, the rise of  authoritarian right-wing parties,  and now the rise of a new left.  A similar process led to the collapse of social democratic parties in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.  Currently in Mexico the formerly left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) is working with the right-wing National Action (PAN) party while a new left –the National Regeneration Movement (“MORENA”) may well win this summer’s presidential elections.

DSA Honorary Chair Dolores Huerta Celebrates Birthday

 By  Duane E. Campbell

Dolores Huerta will  celebrate her 80^th. birthday with activism.

         Dolores, along with Cesar Chavez, Philip Vera Cruz and others created the United Farm Workers union, the first successful union of farm workers in U.S. history.

            Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Huerta and Chavez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor. 

Dolores was long the Vice President of the UFW and the chief negotiator of contracts as well as the primary advocate for farm worker rights in the legislature. The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S. Dolores was recruited into DSOC ( predecessor of DSA) by Michael Harrington.

             Today Mexican, Mexican American and Puerto Rican union leadership is common  in our major cities and in several  industries. Hundreds of activists in labor, community organizing and politics  owe their skills to UFW training and experience.    Training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.