SOCIALIST
ALTERNATIVE ISSUE #108 | NOVEMBER 2024
TAYADORA VILLALOBOS, PHILADELPHIA I am a queer, non-binary Mexican who grew up in central Missouri. Ever since I can remember, my life has been politicized. Getting politically involved is something that has
been important to me for years, but until I moved to Philadelphia for college and joined the Socialist Alternative branch here, I had never really had that opportunity. Sure, I debated with homophobes in the halls of my high school, and was proudly out about my queerness, but I had never had the chance to actually participate in protests or organize with likeminded people. I was a part of the DSA in my area, but it wasn’t that active, either. SA has given me the opportunity and community that I’ve been looking for all this time. While I have always believed in LGBTQ rights and antiracism and anti-capitalism, that outlet to organize and fight for these ideas has only come to me now. Discussions feel like a conversation and a guide to action, instead of drowning in jargon and theory. I’ve never had the feeling that I’ve been talked down to or condescended because being a member
broad program for reproductive health. Resist all right-wing attempts to criminalize abortions. • Take to the streets! We need big, organized • No trust in the Democrats, who campaign on abortion during elections but don’t make protests and walkouts for Inauguration Day to meaningful change when in power. fight Trump’s reactionary policies. • No to both corporate parties. We need to • Fight back against Trump’s anti-trans legislation and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ build a new party that fights unapologetically people. Full legal rights for all queer people. for working-class and oppressed people, in Build a movement to fight for good jobs, affordwhich elected officials only take the median able housing, universal childcare, and genderwage of the workers they represent. affirming Medicare for All. • Solidarity is the most important tool to fight the boss. An effective resistance to Trump and • The labor movement needs to take a clear stand against these divide-and-rule tactics. his billionaire friends like Elon Musk can only Unionized workers like teachers should unite be built by fighting all forms of racism, sexism, with students to organize mass non-compliscapegoating immigrants, and fear-mongering ance, strikes, and walkouts. about trans people. An injury to one is an injury to all!
Fight Trump & The Far Right
Stop Xenophobic Attacks & Deportations
No To Imperialist Wars
means genuinely wanting to fight for a better world. SA has given me more tools to articulate my struggles not only as a queer person, but as a worker who wants to fight for more protections for workers like me, as a college student who wants to fight for affordable college, as the grandchild of an immigrant who wants to make sure her grandparents are protected against far-right rhetoric and threats of deportation. Trump being elected is very scary, and it’s understandable that people are terrified for a second Trump term. However, I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t believe it, so trust me when I say: SA is something that every working-class person should consider joining. Organizing around the ideas needed to change the world is how we fight back against the right and our oppressors. SA is a way to fight!J
Corporations caused the fentanyl crisis, and untreated mental health is a massive problem. • Take Big Pharma into public ownership. • Bring back the COVID-era child tax credit and make it permanent. No cuts to food stamps.
End Climate Catastrophe & Create Green, Union Jobs
Fight for green, union jobs. We reject big business pitting the climate movement against the labor movement—we need a unionized jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure including a massive expansion of free, highquality, and fast public transit. • We need fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from everincreasing storms, floods, and fires. Tax the rich to reimburse working people for their destroyed homes and livelihoods. • Take real steps to address climate change. Both parties fund the US military, one of the biggest polluters in the world. Addressing climate change means ending war and cutting military budgets. • Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable future—ban new oil and gas drilling and take the top 100 polluting companies into demoRebuild Fighting Unions cratic public ownership, while implementing a democratically planned, just transition to • Inflation, unaffordable healthcare, sky-high 100% green energy. rents, and a lack of basic respect on the job are pushing hundreds of thousands of workers to go on strike. We need effective strikes that The Whole System Is Guilty hit the bosses where it hurts most—their wallets—to win lasting victories against inflation • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental destruclike Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). tion, and war. We need an international strug• Unionize every worker. Earlier this year, autogle against this failed system. workers launched a massive campaign to organize the South, a huge step toward building • Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. Working-class a united resistance to corporations and their people know how to manage their schools, political allies in both parties who profit most workplaces, and communities better than outfrom keeping us divided. of-touch executives and Wall Street investors. • Demand union leaders stop rubbing elbows with corporate politicians and start laying the • For a socialist world. This means a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the ground for a new independent worker’s party. common interests of working people and youth Union leaders should accept the average wage everywhere. of workers in their industry. These leaders should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class. • Unions need to fight all manifestations of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of oppression as part of the struggle to rebuild a fighting labor movement.
• Build a massive anti-war, anti-imperialist movement demanding a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East; an end to US military aid to • No to Trump’s plans for immigrant detentions Israel; and an end to the occupation and siege and deportations! No border wall expansion! of all Palestinian territories. Immediate citizenship rights for all undocu• No support for reactionary capitalist regimes mented immigrants. like the Israeli state, Hamas, the Iranian state, • Build a movement that unites immigrants and and Hezbollah. For an international, indepen- • Fight inflation with significant wage increases. US-born workers against the billionaire class to dent, working-class movement to end imperialBillionaires keep getting richer while inflation fight for good union jobs, social housing, and ist war in the Middle East. eats more and more out of every paycheck free high-quality education for all. working people receive. • Refuse to cooperate with Trump’s agenda—get • End the war in Ukraine. No imperialist military aid to Ukraine, no support for Russian imperi- • Universal healthcare now. Take for-profit organized to fight for real sanctuary cities and alism. Defend the right to self-determination hospital chains out of the hands of greedy build emergency deportation defense commitfor Ukraine and for national minorities in the investors and incompetent managers, and tees in workplaces, unions, and neighborhoods. Donbas and Crimean peninsula. run them under democratic workers’ control • Unions should begin now to organize emerfor the safety of staff and patients. gency deportation defense networks to shut • No to military build-up between US and Chinese imperialism, which threatens working • Housing is a human right. Pass strong rent condown workplace raids by ICE and urgently people everywhere. Rebuild an international, trol. End economic evictions. Fund high-quality, respond to community raids. anti-war movement opposing all militarism. permanently affordable, socially-owned hous• Build a movement against the destructive poliing where renters are legally protected from cies of US imperialism around the world that discrimination. drive working class people to flee their home End Racist Policing • Fully fund public education. End school privacountries. We need an international struggle tization. Give educators an immediate 25% for socialism to fight for a world that works for • Arrest and convict killer cops. End the militarization of police; ban the use of crowd control raise and increase staffing. Stop right-wing us, not the ruling elite. weapons and disarm police on patrol. attacks on curriculum and ban standardized Defend Abortion & Stop Attacks • Put policing under the control of democrat- tests. Cancel all student debt and make public ically-elected civilian boards with the power college tuition-free. On Women & Trans People to hire, fire, subpoena, and review budget • Fully fund addiction and mental health services priorities. and job programs. Big Pharma profits off of the • Free, safe, legal abortion now. All contracepsuffering and misery of working-class people. tion should be provided at no cost as part of a
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Tax The Rich & Invest In Our Basic Needs
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US ELECTIONS
SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE STATEMENT ON 2024 ELECTION Trump’s shocking blowout victory is an enormous and upsetting setback for the working class, the poor, and marginalized people, not just in the US but the world over. Trump has not only decisively won the Electoral College, but also won the popular vote—the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. Republicans swept the House and Senate, and still control the Supreme Court. Trump’s right-wing, dystopian agenda will have few obstacles in the halls of political power. We are now faced with the threat of mass deportations and the authoritarian aspirations of Project 2025. Trump’s more dangerous regime will efficiently set about carrying out attacks on the most vulnerable people. He will give full-throated support to the Israeli state’s genocidal war on Gaza, and will continue to escalate imperialist conflict with China, edging us ever closer to wider military conflict. Trump was aided by an unprecedented number of ads from wealthy donors like Elon Musk. The fact that Musk, the richest man in the world, will likely be part of Trump’s government shows who Trump’s government will represent: not the ordinary Americans, as they claim, but the billionaires. Musk will eagerly help Trump to slash billions from already meager government programs that poor families rely on, and go after the “trans woke mind virus” as a way of distracting from the real source of our problems: the unequal and exploitative system of capitalism. Contrary to what the Democrats said at the time, the right wing was not defeated when Trump lost in 2020. In fact, it grew under Biden. This is exactly what socialists warned would happen. The Democrats can’t stop the right, but mass protests and working-class action can.
NOVEMBER 2024
How Did We Get Here? Abortion rights were more popular than Kamala Harris in every state that voted on them. Had the Democrats done more than just talk about abortion, they could have won the votes of millions of working-class people, especially women, who want to see real action to defend reproductive rights. Missouri went to Trump, but voters there also passed a $15 minimum wage increase and codified abortion rights into the state constitution. Florida went for Trump but a majority voted for abortion and to legalize marijuana—something “law and order” Republicans have staunchly opposed for decades. While both referendums failed because of the anti-democratic law requiring 60% to pass, the ballot question to enshrine abortion rights into Florida’s constitution got 57%—1.4 million more votes than for Harris.
many of whom are financially worse off now than they were four years ago at the end of Trump’s first presidency. Trump posed—completely falsely— as an anti-establishment figure at a time when the majority of people are understandably and correctly disgusted with the establishment. Meanwhile, the Democrats and Kamala Harris clung to their establishment reputation as tightly as ever. In the final month of her campaign, Harris de-emphasized her more popular economic policies under pressure from big business. Harris presented herself as a reliable administrator of US capitalism, which is failing millions of people. As always, establishment pundits will try to blame uneducated workers who don’t know what’s good for them, but this is misleading and condescending. Workers across industries are going on strike against massive corporations, yet many didn’t see Harris as an avenue to improve their lives. After decades of voting for Democrats as the “lesser evil” to stop the Republicans, we are now
The Fightback Starts Now We need mass, organized protests to show that Trump’s pro-corporate agenda is in reality deeply unpopular. Tens of thousands of people showed up to protests called by Socialist Alternative right after Trump’s election in 2016. Mere days later, large parts of the economy were threatened by airport occupations and striking New York City taxi drivers stopped his racist “Muslim Ban.” In 2019, the threat of mass strikes among airport workers ended his anti-immigrant government shutdown. In his first administration, Trump only backed down when the profits of corporations and billionaires were threatened. Trump is a liar. He must be exposed as a pro-corporate hack, and many of his attacks will be deeply unpopular. Polls showing historic support for unions, including recent strikes, and access to abortion highlight the space that exists for a genuinely workingclass political force that can beat back Trump’s attacks, and Trumpism, once and for all. Building this means once and for all breaking with the Democratic Party, whose billionaire backers will be just as threatened by working-class unity as Trump is.
Trump Is A Symptom, Capitalism Is The Disease
Complete Failure For The Democrats After four disastrous years under Biden and Harris, people didn’t trust the Democrats to fight for their interests. Democrats are bankrolling and politically supporting the massacre in Gaza and endless war in Ukraine, and inflation is eating into workers’ wallets. Biden blocked a potential rail strike, failed to fight for a $15 minimum wage or the PRO Act on labor rights, didn’t codify Roe v. Wade, walked back pledges for police reform, continued Trump’s border policies, and abandoned promises to take serious action on climate change. This was while Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first two years of Biden’s term. Trump took advantage of the very real economic anxieties of millions of Americans,
promising to build “the most lethal military in the world,” and emphatically pledging to support fracking.
seeing signs of the opposite phenomenon: millions of ordinary people “holding their nose” to vote for Trump out of a greater dislike for the corporate, out-of-touch Democrats. Biden blamed Trump supporters for his unpopularity, calling them “garbage” days before the election, and Harris completely failed to distance herself in any meaningful way from this condescending narrative. What started with a wave of enthusiasm and unprecedented small-donor fundraising numbers turned into campaigning with imperialists like Dick and Liz Cheney, boasting of being “tougher on immigration” than Trump,
What’s needed is an international, working-class movement that can actually solve the crises caused by the sick capitalist system. As the inter-imperialist rivalry between US and Chinese capitalism increasingly shapes world events, rightwing nationalists are gaining momentum. Mass protests are the best way to show that Trump has no mandate to move forward with his reactionary agenda. These need to be linked with the threat to shut down business as usual for Trump and the billionaire class. We need to protest, occupy, organize, and strike. To defeat Trumpism and the far right for good, we need to take on the system as a whole. We need revolutionary change to fight for a socialist society, organized democratically based on the needs of working people and the planet, not the billionaires.J
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