Season 3 opens with an exercise in socialist imagination with organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. A few days after Biden’s inauguration, we held our own counter-inauguration laying out our alternative‘100 Days’ program. This is not purely a speculative exercise—the extent to which Biden’s presidency goes beyond a “return to normal” will depend crucially on the left’s ability to mobilize around some of the demands and aspirations you’ll hear in this episode. Part 1: DSA’s National Political Education Committee, the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) and the Socialist Feminist working group.
Even after Trump, the Republican Party will remain a powerful institutional base for the far right in the U.S. We cannot take on the far right without taking on the Republican Party. How we do this without compromising our independence as socialists will be a defining challenge over the next few years. ...
Should socialists in the U.S. be involved in electoral politics, and how? This episode looks at left and socialist involvement in the electoral politics of Rhode Island with Mie Inouye, PhD candidate at Yale University in Political Theory, and co-founder and Membership Coordinator of Reclaim Rhode Island. Mie is also co-chair of the Rhode Island chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color caucus. Reclaim RI offers a concrete example of socialists engaging with state budgets and elections to win specific campaigns and also communicate with people who would otherwise have little contact with left politics. ...
Auto manufacturers in Detroit in the 1960s were among the largest private employers of Black workers. In 1969, black auto workers created the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In this episode, Jerome Scott, a founding member of the LRBW, tells us about its motivations and accomplishments, why it was Black workers who began these revolutionary union movements, and how highly they valued political education and analysis. Jerome Scott is a member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and a founding director of Project South Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. He is a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Further reading: https://daily.jstor.org/league-revolutionary-black-workers/ https://daily.jstor.org/the-detroit-rebellion/ https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying ...
