by Christine Riddiough, DSA National Political Committee The following notes are from Christine Riddiough’s presentation for a webinar on the role of socialists in the 2018 elections, hosted by the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. I want to cover three points related to DSA, our electoral strategy, and our recent growth: The […]
Fighting Trump and Building the Left, from the Left Inside/Outside Project We’re still less than halfway through this thing. Twenty-one months in, we can survey the damage done by the Trump administration. The GOP congress has been plagued by internal division, giving the resistance some breathing room. But the White House has worked efficiently to […]
by Stephanie Luce Donald Trump voiced the real concerns of many Americans when he spoke of the need to bring jobs to communities and to end unfair trade deals. By blocking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, pushing a re-negotiation of NAFTA, and increasing tariffs on a range of imports, Trump has appeared to finally take seriously […]
by Ellen David Friedman The flowering of progressive electoral challenges – sparked by Sanders ebullience, by Trump aversion, by intolerable inequalities, by collapse of functional democratic institutions, by exhaustion of consumer distractions – invites a sense of momentum and possibility. The throng of enraged and insurgent teachers flowing into primary races in red […]
by Luke Elliott-Negri Millennials who enthusiastically engaged in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 run to be the Democratic nominee for President had a one-of-a-kind experience. But for those radicalized in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernie was round two. In 1984 and then 1988, leftists and progressives of all stripes joined the Reverend Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition as […]
by Warren Mar There was no disagreement within the new left during the 1980s about whether we should work on the Jesse Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988. Nor should it be a point of debate today about whether we participate in electoral politics. It was right for us to work on the Jesse […]
By Rishi Awatramani Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air reads like a riveting horror movie, the kind where the lonely protagonist hears a noise in the woods. You find yourself screaming at the character to defy their well-worn path to certain death when, instead of walking away, they walk towards the unidentified noise, never […]
By Bill Fletcher, Jr. Nearly 35 years ago, large numbers of revolutionaries and progressives threw themselves into Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and the Rainbow Coalition, which played an anchor role in that period’s resistance to the Ronal Reagan-led turn to neo-liberalism, military aggression and intensified racism. The Rainbow also had potential to be a vehicle that could turn resistance into an eventual […]
By Rafael Diaz Less than three weeks after Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, over 350 people gathered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a mass meeting that would evolve into Lancaster Stands Up. We would go on to challenge the frameworks promoted by many Democratic strategists, showing that it is actually possible to use […]
Two recently published landscape assessments provide a lot to useful information and provocative analysis that can spur deeper strategic thinking on the left. The first – Mapping the Resistance: Insurgence and Polarization between 2016 and 2020 by Ethan Young – offers both a “political anatomy” of the large and diverse array of anti-Trump organizations […]