Month: May 2021

Originally published on 10/5/2019 (Excerpted from longer piece published in LA Progressive on August 28, 2019) By Jim Lafferty The debate within the Democratic Party, and among Americans opposing the re-election of Donald Trump, over whether the party should nominate a candidate from the “moderate wing” or the “liberal wing” of the party, misses the much more critical debate that

Originally published on 10/5/2019 (Speech delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 22, 2017. Phillips is a member of the Editorial Board of The Organizer) It’s an honor to represent Labor Fightback Network this evening. And it’s wonderful to see so many people here. What a strange time we are living in. On one hand is a blatantly open and direct

Originally published on 10/5/2019 By Mya Shone, member, Editorial Board, The Organizer More than a dozen abortion cases are winding their way through federal courts, including some that could threaten Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that characterized a woman’s right to choose abortion as “fundamental.” The anticipated trigger is expected to be “heartbeat” bills passed by states to ban

Originally published on 10/5/2019 Labor’s Resurgence and the Fight for Independent Working-Class Politics Today [Note: Following are brief excerpts from an interview published by Tribune des Travailleurs, the weekly newspaper of the Democratic Independent Workers Party of France (POID), with Alan Benjamin, member of the Editorial Board of The Organizer newspaper.] Question: There has been considerable talk in recent months

Originally published on 10/5/2019 [Note: Following is a dialogue between Don Bechler, chair of Single Payer Now, a California-wide organization that is affiliated with Health Care Now on a national level, and Alan Benjamin, editorial board member of The Organizer newspaper. It took place in San Francisco on May 30, 2018.] Alan Benjamin: Don, Single Payer Now organized a public

Originally published on 10/5/2019 By Alan Benjamin (editorial board member, The Organizer) Working people have every reason to be outraged by Donald Trump’s fueling of the white-supremacist massacres that killed three people in Gilroy, California; nine people in Dayton, Ohio; and 22 people in El Paso, Texas, including children. Since he took office, Trump has been railing constantly against the

Originally published on 10/5/2019 (Following are excerpts from a much longer contribution by Saladin Muhammad, founder of Black Workers For Justice and co-coordinator of the Southern Workers Assembly. The full text can be accessed at http://www.socialistorganizer.com.) While recognizing that the election of Trump/Pence is a symptom of the capitalist crisis and the obvious failure of the Democratic Party to provide

Originally published on 10/5/2019 [Note: The following article by Paul Street is reprinted in an abridged form from TruthDig.] Let’s be brutally honest and unsentimental: There are few, if any, serious prospects for attaining the transformative change we need through the current United States elections and party system. But that’s no reason to give up on progressive change. Over time,

Originally published on 10/5/2019 [Note: Following are excerpts from a presentation by Millie Phillips in Sacramento, Calif., in September 2018. Phillips is a member of the Editorial Board of The Organizer Newspaper.] Twenty years ago, I was one of the local activists leading the movement for a labor party, which, in the moment, felt like the culmination of an almost

Originally published on 10/5/2019 [Note: Jim Lafferty, executive director emeritus of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, is an endorser of the Labor-Community Campaign for an Independent Party and a long-time advocate of an independent labor-based political party. The following is an abridged version of an article he submitted to the LA Progressive under the title, “Socialism