Bernie Sanders and the Hope for Democratic Socialism

Forum.  July 24, 2015.    7 PM.
The Sol Collective. Sacramento 2574 21st. Street. Sacramento
Sponsored by Sacramento DSA, the Sacramento Progressive Alliance  and more.

Join DSA at the March on Washington

“You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth . . . and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, 1966

                                                              Why We March

DSA is an official partner organization sponsoring the August 24, 2013 March on Washington 50 years after activists, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., marched on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  That march, and the years of organizing which preceded it, built public pressure and helped lead to landmark civil rights legislation and later the expansion and protection of voting rights.

    Democratic socialists Bayard Rustin, Walter Reuther and A. Philip Randolph (above)

helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago.

   They knew that ending legal segregation and winning political rights for African Americans were essential, but not sufficient, to ensure justice and freedom for all. Without access to good education, to health care and above all to decent jobs that paid living wages, the vote was not enough.

Jose La Luz - The Current Crisis

Jose LaLuz Concluding Speech 2011 DSA Convention from Frank Llewellyn on Vimeo.

Jose La Luz. Concluding speech. DSA Convention. Nov. 13, 2011,

Beyond the Washington Consensus on the economy

Democratic Socialists Hold Convention in Washington-

Responding to the Economic Crisis: Beyond the Washington Consensus.

  

“Occupy Wall Street and the Struggle for a Democratic Society-“

A plenary session at 1:30 PM  on Friday  will kick off the national convention of DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America to be held from  Nov. 11 through Nov. 13 at the Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner located at 8661 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, VA.

DSA, the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, is the largest socialist political organization in the country with more than  7000 members and active locals in more 40 U.S. cities and college campuses. DSA members reside in all 50 states. 

A public outreach event “Equality and Jobs for the 99%: Economic Justice for All” featuring speakers including labor leader and immigration reform activist Eliseo Medina, author John Nichols, Josyln Williams of the AFL-CIO,  Maria Svart and additional progressive activists,  occurs at 7 p.m. on Nov. 11 at the St. Stephen and Incarnation Church at 1525 Newton St. NW, Washington, D.C.

Who are you calling a socialist?

Who You Calling Socialist?

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A15

"We are all socialists now," proclaims Newsweek. We are creating "socialist republics" in the United States, says Mike Huckabee, adding, on reflection, that "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." We are witnessing the Obama-era phenomenon of "European socialism transplanted to Washington," says Newt Gingrich.

Well! Even as we all turn red, I've still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation's capital: Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. Bernie is quite capable of speaking for himself, so what follows is a report on the state of actual existing socialism from the other half of the D.C. Senators and Columnists Soviet.

First, as we survey the political landscape, what's striking is the absence of advocates of socialism, at least as the term was understood by those who carried that banner during the capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Then, socialists and communists both spoke of nationalizing all major industries and abolishing private markets and the wage system. Today, it's impossible to find a left-leaning party anywhere that has such demands or entertains such fantasies. (Not even Hugo Chávez -- more an authoritarian populist than any kind of socialist -- says such things.)

Within the confines of socialist history, this means that the perspective of Eduard Bernstein -- the fin de siecle German socialist who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless -- has definitively prevailed. Within the confines of American history, this means that when New York's garment unions left the Socialist Party to endorse Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, they were charting the paradigmatic course for American socialists: into the Democratic Party to support not the abolition of capitalism but its regulation and democratization, and the creation of some areas of public life where the market does not rule.

But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they've wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world's highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations -- but at least (phew!) we don't have socialized medicine.

Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports -- the other three possible engines of growth -- are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.

If Obama realizes his agenda, what emerges will be a more social, sustainable, competitive capitalism. His more intellectually honest and sentient conservative critics don't accuse him of Leninism but of making our form of capitalism more like Europe's. In fact, over the past quarter-century, Europe's capitalism became less regulated and more like ours, one reason Europe is tanking along with everyone else.

Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn't that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.

Judging by the failures of the great Wall Street investment houses and the worldwide crisis of commercial banks; the collapse of East Asian, German and American exports; the death rattle of the U.S. auto industry; the plunge of stock markets everywhere; the sickening rise in global joblessness; and the growing shakiness of governments in fledgling democracies that opened themselves to the world market -- judging by all these, a more social capitalism is on the horizon because the deregulated capitalism of the past 30 years has blown itself up, taking much of the known world with it.

So, for conservatives searching for the culprits behind this transformation of capitalism: Despite our best efforts, it wasn't Bernie and it wasn't me. It was your own damn system.

meyersonh@washpost.com


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303207.html

What is democratic socialism? DSA

for more go to: http://www.dsausa.org

Socialist International meeting on Migration

The Migration Committee of the Socialist International met in Los Angeles, California June 2-3, 2008, Chaired by Alicia Garcia Medína , Governor of the Mexican State of Zacatexas and representative of the P.R.D.

The meeting was called to develop a position paper on Migration for the 23rd Congress of the Socialist International meeting June 30-July 2, 2008 in Athens, Greece. I was one of three delegates from DSA at the meeting. DSA is the only U.S. organization holding membership in the Socialist International.
Migration is a global issue. In the neo-liberal economy capital has been freed to cross borders. Socialists need to develop strategies to support and to protect migrants and working people in this new globalized era.
The final declaration of the Los Angeles preparatory meeting focused on the fact that migration was fundamentally a result of the unjust distribution of wealth between rich countries and the poor countries of the world.
California Senator Gil Cedillo testified to the important roles that immigrants play in the California economy and the concern raised by the growing right wing hysteria.
Participants discussed the importance of getting the U.S. presidential candidates to return to considering legislation proposed for a just and a comprehensive immigration reform bill to legalize the almost 11 million undocumented workers presently in the U.S.- and to oppose the building of a wall along the U.S. – Mexican border. The Committee urged adoption of immigration reform and the respect for the rights of all workers- including immigrants.
Concern was expressed about the effects of the U.S. recession and the slowing world economy, noting that in time of a weak economy xenophobic attacks on immigrants increase. Dra. Margarita Zapata Choiseul, representing the Socialist Women’s delegation, asserted that the death last week of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jiminez, a 17 year old working in the grape fields of N. California, along with hundreds of other deaths, was both the responsibility of the California labor department for not enforcing existing laws and also the responsibility of the home country- in this case Mexico- for permitting the corruption and poverty which forces young people to migrate in search of a decent life.
Delegates to the meeting heard from academics, elected officials, and leaders of local grassroots organizations, notably Nativo Lopez of Hermandad Mexicano on the necessity of a just immigration reform.
Delegates and observers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the Dominican Republic testified to the many ways that immigration distorts their own economies.
The final draft statement, to be ready soon, supported the position of focusing on the rights of working people in all countries – native workers and migrants. The S.I draft should place a Human Face on the issue of migration.
Deputies from Morocco argued that the U.N Convention on the Rights of Migrants and their families – which the U.S. has not signed- provided a good framework for immigration policy for the S.I.
Representatives of NGOs urged inclusion in the SI statement of a concern for the feminization of immigration and particularly the problems of sexual exploitation, exploitation of children, and sex slavery.
A final report of the event will be posted on the Socialist International site when it is completed.