Last Tuesday’s election changed the terrain and set the stage for the intense political warfare that lies ahead. The resistance to the Trump/GOP racist hate crusade didn’t win everything we wanted to, but we did win what we absolutely had to. Denying the GOP control of both Houses of Congress for the next two […]
by Will Tanzman For more than 15 years, Jerry Davis-El went back and forth between Cook County Jail, where he would be locked up while waiting for trail because he could not afford to post bail, and prison, where he would serve time after being pressured into plea deals. Davis-El was one […]
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 […]