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Democratic Socialists of America

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May 2009

Agenda for May 2nd DSA General Membership Meeting

Join us on May 2nd for our next DSA general membership meeting. Our speaker is Sister Mary Ellen Howard, Director of the Cabrini Clinic, a free clinic in downtown Detroit. Sister Mary Ellen gained national attention last month when she interrupted Governor Granholm at the Obama Health Care Task Force town hall meeting in Dearborn to demand assistance for an uninsured woman with ovarian cancer. She will discuss this incident, as well as the impact of the recession on the uninsured in Michigan, at the meeting.

1. Treasury Report

2. Report on Jobs with Justice—Support for Rally on Immigration Reform

3. Report on MichUHCAN—Support for “Health Care Heroes” Dinner

4. Report on Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare

5. Report on Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network

6. MSU YDS Update—Proposal for Taking a Summer Intern from YDS

7. Report on Education Committee—next DSA Forum

8. Old Business—Pontiac Living Wage, Renegotiate NAFTA, new DSA Banner

9. Op-Ed Piece—What Socialists Really Think

10. Report on Meeting with Gary Peters’ Staff

11. Michigan Policy Summit on Saturday, May 16th 0A

12. Speaker: Sister Mary Ellen Howard on “The Impact of the Recession on the Uninsured in Michigan”

“Innovation Broker” Developing Detroit as Green Manufacturing Center”

Deborah Groban Olson

For over 100 years, Detroit successfully organized its life around the needs of several major global companies. The future of these companies, at least as local employers, is in grave doubt. Over those 100 years the world has changed. Today, in order for a local community to thrive in the global economy, it needs a clear strategy aimed at protecting the needs of local residents and locally rooted businesses, especially when those diverge from the needs of global companies.

Companies (particularly employee-owned ones) whose primary focus is on keeping local people employed are quick to change products or business strategies and slow to lay off employees. For example, from 2000 – 2008, Ohio lost 29% of its manufacturing jobs, yet the 24 manufacturing companies that were members of the Ohio Employee Owned Network, over the same period, lost only 1% of their jobs. (Ohio ESOP Survey – Kent State University).

Detroit needs to reinvent itself from its strengths: Detroit/southeast Michigan is the manufacturing technology capital of the world. We have 230 R&D centers for the auto manuf acturers and suppliers, which is the highest concentration of manufacturing technology knowledge anywhere. (J. Cleveland for MEDC, 2005) Even companies that manufacture overseas have technology design centers in southeast Michigan.

We have all become accustomed to the concept that today’s economy is a knowledge economy. Yet we do not eat, drink or wear knowledge; we are physical creatures surrounded by a built environment of things.

The new green economy needs a myriad of products that are highly engineered. As William McDonough & Braungart say in Cradle to Cradle, the future of green manufacturing is making things the way nature does, engineering them so that all parts can be recycled or reused, supporting instead of destroying the natural world. Doing this requires diverse knowledge, capacity, teamwork and imagination.

Ford and GM, together, hold approximately one-third of all green technology patents and related value. (Malackowski, Detroit News, 12-2-09). There is a huge amount of unused intellectual property in the auto industry. Historically, the auto industry has not licensed out technology that it invented but did not use. So long as gas was cheap in the US, there were not sufficient economic incentives for the auto companies to develop their green technology. Many valuable technologies they could not affo rd to put in cars languish on shelves in southeast Michigan.

Over the past 5 -10 years, hundreds of thousands of highly skilled manufacturing technology workers, including engineers, scientists, technicians and managers have been laid off or taken buyouts. There has been some brain drain from the region, but many of these people remain. They have—our region has—the knowledge and skill needed to invent, produce and market the new green products which the growing real and political climate change will demand.

The non-profit Center for Community Based Enterprise (C2BE) is focused on reorganizing our local smarts and skills for the benefit of local residents, locally rooted businesses and communities. We are organizing entrepreneurial resources that can be easily shared by the large numbers of skilled people here who know how to make complex things efficiently, but may lack some entrepreneurship skills or knowledge.

It is neither realistic nor efficient to push every talented engineer or craftsman through “entrepreneurship training”. Rather, such people should have an opportunity to participate in new or refocused businesses where they share their skills, take some entrepreneurial risk, and get the benefit of other people’s managerial, marketing, purchasing, intellectual property licensing, information technology, product design or other skills. C2BE is currently organizing a mission-driven sister company, Ingenuity US (IUS), as an Innovation Broker that will create and operate this new business model.

C2BE is an information and education resource that supports and connects entrepreneurs, community and resources to grow “community-based enterprises” (CBEs), which we define as companies that are: sustainable; locally rooted; intentionally structured to provide community benefit; and committed to paying living wages. C2BE is a membership organization that welcomes members and contributors; learn more at our website or contact Debbie Sullivan at dsullivan@c2be.org or (313) 331-7821.

Ingenuity US’ goal is to build a group of locally rooted, sustainable businesses, based on abundant underutilized resources of Detroit and southeast Michigan. It will create profit-making, sustainable, community-based or employee-owned enterprises by finding and developing business opportunities and initiating businesses with the region’s working people and inventors. Ingenuity US will foster cooperation between these businesses and existing local businesses, where possible and mutually beneficial. It will focus on proprietary products or on service businesses that inherently require and benefit local workers.

IUS will accomplish this by creating a capital structure unique to the United States, but practiced successfully in Europe (see, for example, Mondragon). This structure will retain at least half of the company’s profits in the company for reinvestment or to capitalize other community-based enterprises, which will follow the same model. This will create a pool of “patient capital” that is committed to using profit and reinvesting it to benefit local communities—unlike capital that is beholden to outside shareholders, venture capitalists or other non-productive stakeholders.

C2BE and IUS are actively looking for existing businesses interested in product diversification, skilled people interested in helping develop community-based businesses and investors who agree with our rooted capital structure. For more information, please contact Deborah Olson at dgolson@c2be.org or (313) 331-7821.

YDS members are currently brainstorming ideas for community service. Despite being the capitol of our state, many people in the city of Lansing struggle to get by in even the best of economic times, not to mention during the current economic crisis. The government that is so close has failed to provide its constituency with=2 0even their most basic needs. MSU YDS is therefore brainstorming ideas for community service, which would create a positive reputation for YDS, thereby promoting socialism and working to change the stigma associated with it, which has been such a hamper to finding a way out of the current economic crisis.

An American Socialist’s Impressions of Cuba

David Green
 
My wife, Teena, and I visited Cuba from February 2nd through February 9th. We were allowed to travel to Cuba as part of a religious mission from our synagogue donating medication to various clinics on the island.

As a democratic socialist, I approach Cuba with a certain set of biases. On the one hand, I am enormously impressed with the Cubans’ success in reducing inequality on the island over the last 50 years. On the other hand, I refuse to become a propagandist for an authoritarian regime (notwithstanding Cuba’s legitimate critique of bourgeois democracy). Cuba is not a socialist paradise. However, the Cubans have made significant advances in social welfare over the previous regime—and with little resources.

One of the most impressive features of Cuban society is its health care system. The Cuban system demonstrates what can be accomplished when health care is viewed as a human right rather than a commodity. In Cuba, there is one primary care doctor for every 150 citizens. Each primary care doctor is responsible for all routine preventive care measures (e.g., pap smears, mammograms, prostate screening, rectal exams) for the population under his or her c are. No one “falls through the cracks” in the Cuban health care system. If a woman does not show for her annual pap smear, the nurse from the community clinic will go to her home to remind her. Above the level of the community clinics are the polyclinics where patients in need of specialists or higher tech diagnostic testing are referred. Patients in need of invasive diagnostic testing or around-the-clock acute nursing care are referred to the hospital.

Among the health care facilities we visited was a clinic for high risk pregnancy in the city of Trinidad (population 60,000). This clinic was staffed by two family practice physicians, six nurses, and a social worker. In addition, the patients were examined weekly by an obstetrician from the nearby polyclinic. Patients with concomitant medical problems were seen by the appropriate specialist from the nearby polyclinic on an as needed basis. In the last few weeks of their pregnancy, high risk pregnant women (defined as diabetic, over age 40, under age 16, or multiple gestation) throughout the province surrounding Trinidad would come to stay at the clinic until they delivered—thus facilitating closer monitoring and safe delivery. During their stay, the women receive education on the care of their newborns, including breast feeding, vaccinations, and child development. The cost of all of this care is assumed by the health care system. There are no out-of-pocket expenses for the patients. I asked one of the physicians directing the clinic about their infant mortality statistics. She told me there were two deaths per thousand births in their patient population. This compares with an infant mortality rate of six deaths per thousand births in the United States in the general (not high risk) obstetric population.

Another positive feature of the Cuban health care system is that medical education in Cuba is free. In fact, medical students receive a stipend from the government to cover living expenses while they are in school. The catch: upon completion of medical school, each Cuban physician owes the government three years of service and may be assigned anywhere the government deems necessary. In fact, Cuba sends thousands of physicians abroad (mainly to other Latin American countries and to Africa) to provide free medical care to indigent populations as a form of foreign aid.

Despite the relative poverty in Cuba, the government is actually expanding health care services. In its most recent five year economic plan, Cuba has committed itself to providing universal dental care in addition to universal medical care.

Along with their health care system, the Cubans are justifiably proud of their system of free universal public education. This system covers primary, secondary, and even university education. Since the Revolution, the literacy rate in Cuba has jumped from around 30% to over 90%. In fact, Cuba’s literacy rate exceeds that of the United States (CIA-Book of Facts).

We visited the University of Havana during our trip and were impressed with the campus. The classrooms were modern. There was an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity. We saw posters advertising guest lecturers from around the world—including Noam Chomsky.

In addition to education, the Cuban government also subsidizes culture. We attended a performance of the National Ballet of Cuba and found it to be on a par with the best professional ballet companies in the United States. Cuba has also nurtured a domestic film industry whose movies have won prizes at film festivals around the world.

Now for the negatives—The command economy in Cuba (as has previously been experienced in the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea) has failed to raise living standards on the island nor does it produce the variety or quality of goods that consumers demand. This, along with the abrupt withdrawal of subsidies from the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the economic20strangulation associated with the American embargo, has led to the development of a dual economy in Cuba. Simply put, there are two kinds of stores in Cuba: peso stores in which certain staples such as rice, chicken, beans, and clothing can be purchased with a ration card and pesos which the average Cuban earns in wages and dollar stores in which anything can be purchased but only with hard currency (i.e., foreign currency exchanged for what are called convertible pesos, or cucs). Prices in the peso stores are cheap (heavily subsidized by the government), but the selection is poor, the quality is shoddy, and lines are long. The dollar stores, by comparison, are luxurious. They are well-stocked with a wide selection of high quality products. These stores are generally air-conditioned (The peso stores are not.), service is excellent, and there are no lines. The problem is that most Cubans do not have access to hard currency and are therefore excluded from the dollar stores.

The presence of a dual economy in Cuba has had perverse consequences for the population. For example, our tour guide was a former university professor who left his job at the Medical College of the University of Havana in order to have access to the hard currency which tourists give to their guides as tips. We frequently encountered Cubans begging outside our hotel—not for food, but for soap, toothpaste, and shampoo—items which they were unable to purchase in adequate quantities at the peso stores.

Alongside the economy, the other great problem in Cuba is the government’s poor record on human rights (though not nearly as poor as the American press would have us believe). Freedom of speech is restricted in Cuba. Dissidents are jailed. We encountered state security police at each of the hotels in which we stayed. There are no free elections in Cuba. One must be a Communist Party member in order to run for the Parliament in Cuba, and only members of Parliament are eligible for leadership positions in the government. There is no freedom of the press in Cuba. I read English translations of Granma (the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party) filled with simplistic, self-serving propaganda.

On the other hand, freedom of religion is respected in Cuba. In fact, we visited the Patrinado (the largest Ashkenazic synagogue in Havana) and saw pictures of Castro celebrating Hanukah with the congregation in 1998. Apparently, he was intrigued by the story of a small Jewish guerilla army defeating the powerful Selucid Greeks in 168 B.C.E. to gain national independence.

To a much larger extent than the American press recognizes, there is freedom of movement in Cuba. For example, we learned that the Cuban Jewish population had shrunk considerably since its peak in the 1950s—due to the fact that over half of this population chose to emigrate to Israel, Canada, or the United States.

Cubans have also made significant progress in confronting racism. Prior to the Revolution, racial discrimination in Cuba was every bit as bad as in the United States. In fact, slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. After fifty years of affirmative action programs instituted by the Castro regime, the Parliament is fully integrated. Cubans of African descent are represented in the leadership. Mixed couples are common. The head of the internationally respected Cuban biotechnology institute (a product of the Cuban educational system) is Black.

What should be the goal of American socialists with respect to our foreign policy toward Cuba? Three words: Lift the embargo. The Obama Administration has already changed the Bush policy regarding remittances to the island and travel restrictions on Cuban Americans visiting family in Cuba. Our embargo has crippled the Cuban economy and has had no effect on human rights abuses in Cuba. Were we to lift the embargo, the Castro regime would have no further excuses for the failure of its economy or its human rights record. It would experience considerable internal pressure to change.


Progressive Hero Aldo Vagnozzi Dies at Age 83

Detroit DSA lost a good friend on Sunday, March 22nd when former State Representative Aldo Vagnozzi died of pancreatic cancer. He was 83.

Vagnozzi was born in Rosetto, Italy in 1925. His family emmigrated to the United States when Aldo was 8. He was drafted out of college in 1943 and served as an interpreter with Italian prisoners of war. After discharge from the army, Aldo attended Wayne State University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He went on to edit both the Michigan State AFL-CIO News and the Detroit Labor News.

Vagnozzi served on the Farmington School Board from 1969 to 1973. He was elected to the Farmington Hills City Council in 1987 and served as Mayor from 1995 to 1999. He ran unsuccessfully for the Michigan State House in 2000, losing narrowly to the House Majority Leader Andrew Raczkowski. He ran again in 2002, and won. He was re-elected in 2004 and 2006. Detroit DSA supported Aldo in each of his State House races, though he hardly needed our help in 2006, when he won by a 62%-38% margin.

Throughout his years in the legislature, Aldo was a consistent voice for working people. He sponsored a resolution in the House calling on the Governor to enact universal health care for the people of Michigan. He pushed for a20ballot initiative to raise the state minimum wage. When the Bush Administration attempted to privatize Social Security, Aldo held town hall meetings in his district to educate constituents on the pernicious consequences of this policy.

During a time when red-baiting was still an effective political weapon, Aldo never backed away from his association with DSA. “The socialists are my friends,” he said.” They are as free as anyone else to express their political views. I welcome their support.” We will miss him.

Save these Dates!

Calendar of Events

MAY

Friday, May 1st—May Day March with immigrant workers—Marchers will gather at Patton Park (corner of W, Vernor and Woodmere) at 1 PM and will march to Clark Park on Vernor where a rally will be held at 3 PM.

Saturday, May 2nd—DSA general membership meeting from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak

Saturday, May 2nd—Michigan Peace Team is presenting an evening with Michael Moore at the Democratic Club of Michigan. Call Kim Redigan at (313) 563-8323 for more details.

Thursday, May 14th—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights presents Wayne State University Professor Osumaka Likaka on “Congo: Greed and Human Rights Violations in Central Africa” at Barth Hall, St. Paul’s Cathedral at 7 PM.

Saturday, May 16th—Michigan Policy Summit at Cobo Hall in Detroit—Register on line at www.mipolicysummit.org

JUNE

Sunday, June 14th—DSA Executive Board meeting from 10 AM until noon at the home of Helen Samberg (30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23, Farmington Hills)

Friday, June 19th—Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network’s Fourth Annual “Health Care Heroes” Dinner at 6 PM at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church—For more information, visit the MichUHCAN website at www.michuhcan.org or contact Val Pryzwara at 734-812-0664.

JULY

Saturday, July 11th—DSA general membership meeting from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak

NOVEMBER

Friday, November 13th-Sunday, November 15th—DSA National Convention at the Best Western University Plaza in Evanston, Illinois adjacent to Northwestern University

March 2009

Agenda for March 7th DSA General Membership Meeting

Join us on March 7th for our next DSA general membership meeting. We have two speakers. Deborah Olson, DSA member and Executive Director of the Center for Community-Based Enterprise, will discuss means of fostering partnerships between local government and private business to create new jobs paying a living wage in areas of chronic unemployment. Among the topics she will address are workers cooperatives,
urban agriculture, and stimulating employment in so-called “green technologies.”

 Our other speaker is State Representative Vickie Barnett (Farmington-Farmington Hills) who will give an update on the state legislature.

1. Treasury Report
2. Report on Jobs with Justice—U.S. Social Forum
3. Report on Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network (MichUHCAN)
4. Report on Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare
5. Report on Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network
6. Support for Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) Annual Dinner
7. Education Committee Report—next DSA Forum
8. Report on Renegotiate NAFTA Campaign
9. Op-Ed Campaign: What Socialists Really Think
10. Speaker: Deborah Olson on Public-Private Partnerships to Stimulate Employment in Areas of Chronic Unemployment
11. Speaker: State Representative Vickie Barnett—State Legislative Update

Workers Victory Tour

 On February 9th, hundreds of people, including many DSA members, gathered at the IBEW Local
58 Hall in Detroit to celebrate the victory won by the employees of Republic Windows & Doors in
Chicago. The workers had been told without notice that their factory was closing and that they would
not receive any sort of severance pay or any of the other benefits to which they were legally entitled. The workers responded by occupying the factory in a sit down strike and eventually forced the company to meet their demands after receiving support from around the country.

 The night began with music from the Detroit Federation of Musicians, Local 5 as everyone enjoyed the food that was generously provided by the IWW Wobbly Kitchen. The sit down strikers from Chicago showed a video about their victory and took questions from the audience. They spoke about how they prepared for the occupation of the factory and how they all banded together to stand up for their rights. They then presented plaques to two veterans of the 1937 Flint Sit Down. The night ended with an energetic performance by Motown legend Martha Reeves, who had many folks dancing in the aisles. It seemed fitting that the Workers Victory Tour was at an IBEW hall since the mood that night was truly electric.

The Only Road Out of the Financial Crisis: Nationalize the Insolvent Banks

Joseph M. Schwartz

 The Obama administration’s bank rescue plan fails to break with the logic of the prior Bush-Paulson plan: throwing taxpayer funds at de facto insolvent banks in order to put off their inevitable nationalization. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner’s vague proposals call for another massive infusion of federal equity into “healthy” banks and a massive government insurance program to underwrite a “private market” for financial institutions’ toxic assets. This plan is the same “lemon socialism”— the massive socialization of
the losses of private financial institutions — that the Bush Administration put in place.

 Major financial institutions, such as Bank of America and Citigroup, have already been de facto nationalized by the infusion of taxpayer equity whose value swamps that of these firms’ aggregate stock market equity value. Rather than demanding equity shares in these banks and, thus, majority management control, the Obama administration plans to continue the Bush administration’s policy of receiving only bond-like “warrants” in the banks rathe r than a direct ownership share. These insolvent “zombie banks,” as Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls them, are only “living” as private entities because of the endless infusion of government funds – funds that will inevitably fail to offset the declining value of the banks’ toxic assets.

 The banks gladly take the government equity and use it to shore-up their deteriorating balance sheets rather than to engage in renewed lending. Healthier banks reward their managers and their stockholders (and bought up other smaller banks), while refusing to lend because they fear a further deterioration of the toxic assets on their balance sheets. Despite prior massive federal aid to financial institutions failing to unlock the frozen credit markets, the Obama plan proposes to waste a trillion dollars more in equity infusions and insurance guarantees in order to avoid de jure nationalization—even though such expenditure is unlikely to result in any new bank lending!

 The new plan proposes that the federal government create a private market for the toxic assets where none exists now. Geithner knows that there is no private market for these worthless assets presently; hence why his plan is so vague. He is afraid to announce what is about to come – the government will spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize private purchasers of the assets (as private offerings on their own will not meet banks’ higher asking prices). Or the Federal Reserve and TARP will write “insurance” that would guarantee a high- floor price to private investors who buy the toxic assets. So the federal government will create a “free market” for the toxic assets by guaranteeing private investors against any sharp decline in the value of the assets they purchase. So much for the natural working of a capitalist market that rewards successful risk and penalizes failed risk!

 But why are so many of our financial institutions de facto insolvent? Massive losses in the value of exotic financial instruments and other assets carried on balance sheets have left banks and shadow financial institutions, such as hedge funds and private mortgage lenders, owing their depositors more than they are presently worth. The claim that “high-risk” mortgage-backed securities could be securely bundled with “safe” ones depended upon esoteric econometric models that  assumed that housing prices were very unlikely to fall in value. (These hare-brained speculative assets give new meaning to the adage that a model is only as good as its assumptions!) The financial institutions became overleveraged with these “collateralized debt obligations,” now transformed by the burst housing bubble i nto non-marketable, value-less assets. As the economy declined, fear of these securitized debt instruments spread to other forms of collaterized debt obligations, including bundled auto loans and credit card debt. As these bank assets
declined in value, the banks drew back in their capacity and willingness to make new loans. Hence, the Geithner proposal also calls for a massive expansion of the Federal Reserve’s earlier proposal for a $200 billion Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to a trillion dollar facility ( aimed at creating a private market for student, credit-card and auto loans).

 The only rational means to restore some long-term value to the toxic assets is to provide immediate federal
relief to homeowners facing foreclosure and to homeowners struggling to pay mortgages for homes whose market value is today far less than the value of the mortgage. As in the Great Depression, relief will only come to the housing market, if the federal government creates a Home Loan Corporation that would have the power to renegotiate the terms of distressed mortgages – both by lowering the value of the mortgage
(with the federal authority splitting the loss in equity with the banks and mortgage companies) and refinancing the adjusted loan at an affordable market rate. While the Obama plan calls for devoting $50 billion to a “mortgage readjustment” program, the power and scope of the federal authority remains unspecified and the amount of capital is far below the $200 billion that most economists believe would be necessary to calm the distressed home mortgage market.

 Normally, the negative balance sheets of major financial institutions would lead the Federal Deposit Insurance Company to take them over in order to “unwind” their balance sheets of the valueless assets (whose deteriorating value precludes the banks from lending, as they do not have enough assets to securely meet their obligations to their depositors). Thus, as with the Savings and Loan crisis of the early 1980s (when toxic commercial mortgages choked off the home mortgage market), the FDIC should take over the insolvent banks and other financial institutions, seize their presently valueless assets and place them into a Resolution Trust Company, and then restructure the bank so that a healthier asset sheet would support renewed lending.

 Once the sickly financial firm had regained its health, the FDIC could either re-sell it to private investors or the government could choose to run the bank itself. (There is no reason to believe that civil servants and publicly-hired managers could make any worse credit allocation decisions than did our vaunted private financial wizards!) When and if the housing market recovered, so would the value of the toxic assets. Then the Resolution Trust Company could sell the toxic assets to private investors without the expensive guarantees, with the proceeds repaying a portion of the large present infusion of government funds into the banking system.

 As the Swedish experience of the early 1990s proves (as does the disastrous Japanese delay in eventually nationalizing much of their insolvent financial sector in the late 1990s), the only way to work a financial system out of a disastrous period of speculative hyper-leveraging is to rework the banks’ balance sheets by a careful public process of “unwinding.” That is, rather than continually paying inflated prices for “toxic assets” that cannot be sold on a truly private market, the government should simply take those assets off the books of distressed financial institutions, so that their balance sheets can be restored to health.

 Rather than re-selling all the restructured nationalized banks to private investors, the federal government should maintain full ownership of at least one major bank. Such a bank could serve as a benchmark institution, setting standards for investment in community housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure that other private banks would have to match.

 The disastrous experience of financial deregulation demonstrates that absent public regulatory restraint, finance capital will engage in irresponsible acts of speculative swindling during financial booms and resort to excessively conservative lending practices during financial busts. The deregulation of the financial industry has been a 30-year joint project of Republican monetarists and Democratic neoliberals. This “free market” project began with the Carter administration’s deregulation of the Savings and Loans; accelerated under
Reagan’s gutting of the entire government regulatory apparatus; and culminated in the Clinton administration’s abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act’s separation of commercial banks from investment firms (so that now the very banks that create risky financial instruments also market these instruments to their own clients!). After all, it was Lawrence Summers who convinced President Clinton not to allow the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation to create and regulate an open, transparent market for credit-default swaps (insurance against bond defaults). The unraveling of this unregulated, non-transparent $60 trillion market still might bring the global financial system to total collapse.

 Thus, if the federal government is to restore a sane credit system – a must for any productive economy – it should not only engage in the fiscally prudent step of nationalizing and restructuring insolvent financial institutions (the least costly path for the public treasury). The Obama administration must also recreate a vibrant and effective regulatory system for domestic financial institutions and cooperate with other states,
both in the advanced industrial and developing world, to build a global financial regulatory system that prioritizes investment in productive enterprise over the speculative effort to make money on money.

 The race-to-the-bottom of global neoliberal capitalism is the other half of the story behind our current economic crisis. Productive workers across the globe are no longer paid wages sufficient to purchase the aggregate goods and services they produce. The result: the Western working class went heavily into debt, particularly by borrowing massively against inflated home equity values, temporarily forestalling this impending global crisis of overproduction and under-consumption. In addition, the exploited working classes of China and Southeast Asia subsidized Western living standards, as their governments “managed” the market so as to run massive trade surpluses – with their governments investing this surplus not in domestic
needs, but in buying United States Treasury bonds and private equity.

 Thus, the restoration of a stable global economic system will necessitate raising the floor on global living standards and working conditions and creating global regulatory institutions that insure that investment and trade benefit the working20people of the world. The era of deregulatory free-market mania is crashing down upon us. Only by reviving the capacity of democratic governments to regulate the economy so that it serves peoples’ needs rather than the speculative desires of corporate elites will we recover from the current
global economic nightmare.

NPC Resolution on the Bombing of Gaza and the Need for a Two-State Solution

 Democratic Socialists of America deplores the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. These acts devastated the people of Gaza; and if indirect negotiations with Hamas had not been abandoned by Israel it is quite likely the cease-fire could have been maintained without the Israeli military escalation. By killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, wounding thousands more, leaving upwards of 50,000 homeless and turning whole sections of Gaza City into what even Israeli observers call “an earthquake zone,” Israel’s three-week military operation was not only an excessive and inhumane response to Hamas’s deplorable rocket launchings into Israeli population centers; It was a failure in that it did nothing to enhance the security of the Israeli people.  In seven years of intermittent rocket launchings from

Gaza, 22 Israelis have been killed and scores wounded. But these numbers, as horrid as they are, pale in comparison to the loss of civilian life among the Gazan population and the squalid conditions in which they must live within borders policed by Israel. The international community must of course consistently condemn unjust attacks on civilians by both sides. But as even conservative Prime Minister Ehud Olmert now admits, Israel can neither gain physical security nor perpetuate its status as majority Jewish state, unless it ends its unjust occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

 Democratic Socialists of American urges the United States government and the international community to insure that the temporary ceasefire in Gaza leads to a sustained diplomatic effort to negotiate a just, two-state solution to the conflict between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. The launching of rockets from Gaza targeting innocent Israeli civilians must be condemned by all who desire a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there can be no military solution, imposed by either side, to what is a political problem. Even if Israel were to re-occupy Gaza, this would in no way enhance the long-term security of the Israeli people.

 DSA recognizes the right of the Israeli state to defend its people, but after more than 60 years of self-defense and 40years of an unjust and illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it should be self-evident that peace and security for Israel cannot be achieved by in justice towards another people.
The common Israeli/ U.S. effort to isolate, both diplomatically and economically, the Hamas regime in Gaza only served to increase Gazan support for Hamas. The withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces from the West Bank and the creation of an economically viable and politically independent Palestinian state would provide the Palestinian people a reason to push aside rejectionist forces within their community  In the short-run, a viable cease-fire in Gaza must involve international supervision of the crossing points between Egypt and Gaza and between Israel and Gaza. The basic needs of the people of Gaza cannot be met absent normal commerce between Gaza and Egypt, Israel and the West Bank. Re-opening the border crossings would also eliminate the Hamas rationale for abandoning the previously successful cease-fire. An internationally guaranteed cease-fire must also preclude the covert importation of arms into Gaza.

 As the preponderant military force in the region, Israel can best reinitiate the peace process. Israel could help restore its tarnished international image by taking up the Arab League’s 2002 initiative as a starting point for comprehensive peace negotiations. In 2002, the Arab League abandoned its long-standing denial of the right of the state of Israel to exist by offering to recognize the state of Israel in return for the creation
of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with its capitol in East Jerusalem.

 DSA recognizes that its primary political responsibility is to change a United States foreign policy that continues to give a blank check to Israeli government policy by prolonging its policy of massive unconditional military aid to Israel. The Bush administration’s unyielding support for Israeli intransigence has harmed the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel itself. Thus, DSA will work, along with other pro-peace forces in the American Jewish, Arab, and broader progressive community to pressure the incoming Obama administration to adopt a balanced Middle-East approach. Such a policy should use carrots-and-sticks to encourage both sides in the conflict to make the hard choices and compromises that must be the foundation of an enduring peace. As activists in the Israeli peace movement have said for generations, the United States cannot contribute to the security of all the peoples in the Middle East if it continues to embrace and solidarize with Israeli governments that block the peace process.
 
Calendar of Events

March

Thursday, March 5th—“Fighting Foreclosures,” a Michigan Coalition for Human Rights program featuring speakers Vanessa Fluker and Jerry Goldberg at 7 PM at Barth Hall (corner of Woodward and Warren) in Detroit

Saturday, March 7th—DSA general membership meeting from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak

Tuesday, March 10th—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights film series—“Health for Sale” at 7 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church (11 Mile/Woodward) in Royal Oak

Tuesday, March 17th—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights film series—“Soldiers of Conscience” at 7 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church (11 Mile/Woodward) in Royal Oak Tuesday, March 24th—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights film series-“Traces of the Trade: A Story of the Deep North” at 7 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church (11 Mile/Woodward) in Royal Oak

Tuesday, March 31st—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights film series—“Made in LA” at 7 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church (11 Mile/Woodward) in Royal Oak

April

Sunday, April 5th—DSA Executive Board meeting from 10 AM until noon at the home of Helen Samberg (30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23, Farmington Hills)

Sunday, April 19th—Michigan Coalition for Human Rights Annual Dinner at 5 PM at Fellowship Chapel (7707 W. Outer Drive) in Detroit - Keynote Speaker: Congresswoman Maxine Waters

May

Saturday, May 2nd—DSA general membership meet ing from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak

November

Friday, November 13th-Sunday, November 15th—DSA National Convention at the Best Western University Plaza in Evanston, Illinois adjacent to Northwestern University

---

<>January 2009

<>Detroit DSAers Celebrate at 10th Annual Douglass-Debs Dinner
David Green

Over 125 DSA members, progressives, and trade unionists gathered to celebrate our recent electoral success at the 10th annual Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner. The dinner was held at historic UAW Local 600 on Saturday, November 8th. Local 600 was the home local of the participants in the Hunger March of 1933 and is adjacent to the Miller Road Overpass (site of the Battle of the Overpass in 1937 at which UAW organizers were savagely beaten by Henry Ford’s security personnel while attempting to distribute literature to workers at the Ford Rouge Complex). The dinner is the sole fundraising event each year for Detroit DSA.

The co-chairs for this year’s Douglass-Debs Dinner were UAW Region 1A Director Rory Gamble and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 547 Business Manager Phillip Schloop. This year’s Douglass-Debs Award winners were David and Judy Bonior and Judge Claudia Morcom. The keynote speaker was In These Times senior editor David Moberg.

David Bonior served in Congress for 26 years rising through the leadership to become the Democratic Caucus Whip. During his tenure in Congress, Bonior fought to raise the minimum wage, protect pensions, support unions, and extend unemployment benefits. He led the fight to oppose NAFTA in 1993. He worked to prevent war in Central America in the 1980s and again to prevent the Iraq War in 2002. After leaving Congress, Bonior co-founded American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy and research organization, which has made passage of the Employee Free Choice Act its major legislative priority. Bonior was recently appointed to the Obama economic team.

Judy Bonior was the campus chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committ ee (SNCC) at the University of Iowa in 1963. She then went to Mississippi to work on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She later became a Congressional staffer working for such progressive legislators as Byron Dorgan and John Brademas before working for, and eventually marrying, David Bonior.
Judge Claudia Morcom was the first African American woman to work in an integrated law firm when she joined the firm of Goodman, Crockett, Eden, Robb, and Philo in the early 1960s. She was the Southern Regional Director of the National Lawyers Guild’s Committee for Legal Assistance from 1964-1965. In 1966, she became the Director of the Wayne County Neighborhood Legal Services Program for the indigent. She became a Wayne County Circuit Court Judge in 1983. She served as a delegate to the United Nations Council on Human Rights.

In their remarks at the dinner, both David Bonior and David Moberg stressed the importance of building social movements to pressure the new Obama administration for bold progressive changes such as single-payer national health insurance, significant public investment in infrastructure and green technology, fair trade, progressive taxation, massive cuts in the military budget, ending the war in Iraq, and passing the Employee Free Choice Act.<>

In These Times Senior editor David Moberg delivered the following keynote address at the 2008 Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner held at UAW Local 600 in Dearborn on November 8, 2008.

Thank you for the introduction, and thanks for inviting me to share in this tribute to the distinguished work of your honorees, Judge Claudia Morcom and David and Judy Bonior. They’re all worthy heirs to the tradition of Eugene V. Debs and Frederick Douglass.

It’s also a pleasure to share in yet another celebration of the victory on Tuesday of Barack Obama. I can’t count the number of times this week that I’ve heard people say, "Did you ever think it would happen?" Progressives have had too few reasons to celebrate breakthrough accomplishments in recent years. So let’s whoop it up as long as possible. At least it helps numb the pain from the competing news of rising unemployment and a collapsing auto industry.

Obama’s election is in its own way part of the Debs and Douglass tradition of American politics--including the labor, civil rights and other progressive movements, even if Obama--contrary to conservative claims--is not a socialist. It also reflects both the achievement of a singularly gifted and political leader and a change in America, underscored by the big margin for Obama among young people.

But like most sober-minded progressives, I can’t let a moment of joy go by without point ing at some dark cloud in the sky over yonder. So I’m going to argue that we need to do two things at once--savor the moment and prepare to make sure it brings lasting fruits.

Because even though Obama won the long fight for the presidency, a new battle is underway to define what his victory means and what his administration will do. The moment is full of opportunity for Obama to be one of this nation’s great presidents, transforming the landscape of people’s lives.

But both Republicans who opposed him and many Democrats have been flooding the president-elect with advice that he must not be too ambitious, that he must govern from the center--whatever that shifting will o’ the wisp might be, that he must embrace Republicans and stand up to the liberals and left in the
Democratic party.

Not surprisingly, I think that such advice is wrong both as a matter of politics and policy. Obama needs to fix a badly broken economic and political system, which nearly 90 percent of Americans see as headed in the wrong direction. And the best solutions require not only bold government action but also democratization of the substance of government action, shifting the balance of power away from corporations and the wealthy to the majority of working people.

Politically, Obama needs not to seek out a center but to redefine the center by moving the nation’s political spectrum towards the pragmatic left, where most people now would be with the kind of leadership Obama can provide. He needs an expanded majority for progressive ideas, not a compromise or watering down of progressive ideas with a failed conservative ideology.

I want to make three points.

First, contemporary conservatism has reached a dead end--on economic policy, foreign policy and politics.

Second, the solution to the crisis of the politics of the right requires a break with their underlying principles and enactment of a new progressive alternative, not just tinkering at the edges.

Third, Obama is not likely to win, or perhaps even push for, such an alternative without active support--and often pressure or even friendly criticism--from a popular movement.

I will just briefly mention foreign policy and politics, before concentrating on the economic failure.
The Iraq war, most Americans now recognize, was a colossal $3 trillion failure of dishonest and neo-conservative foreign policy. Now at least there’s momentum for U.S. withdrawal. Obama needs to accelerate the pace in Iraq, but also to shift gears dramatically in Afghanistan away from military escalation and toward a more political strategy. The world anxiously awaits not only a new face in the White House but also a non-imperial U.S. foreign policy.

The Republican politics of racial division and wedge issues also ran aground this time. The southern strategy isn’t dead; it still seems to work in much of the South, but the votes in states like North Carolina and Virginia are a reminder the South is changing--just as the Co lorado, New Mexico, and Nevada votes remind us of the growing importance of Latinos in consolidating a progressive majority.

Let me start the discussion of the failure of economic policy with a quotation from Alan Greenspan, the long-time Federal Reserve chairman and one of the premier architects of the collapsing economic order.
Greenspan recently admitted to a Congressional committee that he had been wrong all along about his basic premises. "I made a mistake," he said, " in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the system."

More simply, he should have said, "I screwed up royally. I believed that individuals driven by greed and fear would produce the best of all possible economic outcomes, but I now recognize that self-regulation of the market doesn’t work. The government has to regulate markets to make sure they work for the public good."

As NY Times columnist Paul Krugman recently noted, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words from the Great Depression never rang truer: "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," FDR said. "We know now that it is bad economics."

But the problem isn’t just the deregulation of financial markets, in which huge sums of borrowed money were gambled on bets that many of the bettors didn’t even understand. The economic orthodoxy of the past 35 years has argued that government should get out of the way and let markets rule.

The result has been a massive redistribution of income and wealth from working people to the very rich. Over that period average real hourly compensation has remained virtually stagnant, while productivity has grown. The richest Americans have captured nearly all the growth in the nation’s income. From 1989 to 2006 the bottom 90 percent of American families received about 9 percent of national income growth. The top 10 percent captured 91 percent of income growth, which was even more concentrated still: the top one-tenth of one percent collected 36 percent of all new income produced by the ingenuity and hard work of all Americans.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that profits in the years 2005-7 grew so much at the expense of wages, compared to profit rates in the late 1970s, that $206 billion was transferred from labor to capital incomes. As a result, each worker lost $1,500. Joe the Plumber should have been complaining not about taxes but about what Joe the Banker was getting at his expense.

What does this lead to? Growing inequality. Declining opportunity for kids to do better than their parents did. Twice as much financial insecurity for the average family. Huge personal debt increases as most Americans maxed out credit cards and bank loans to try to maintain their living standards. An economy bouncing from one unsustainable asset bubble to the next. And just as in the 1920s, the last time income inequality was as high and financial speculation was as rampant, this weakness of workers’ income--or buying power as consumers--is one of the main obstacles to economic progress. The economy can’t thrive sustainably on growing personal debt or on asset bubbles--stocks, houses, commodities or whatever.

In order to solve these problems--my second point, the new administration needs to break with the ideology of this failed conservative regime. Reagan coined its mantra: government isn’t the solution; it’s the problem. Now, it’s clear, government is the solution to many problems. We need a new New Deal.

But there are two problems. First, these right-wing ideologues have deliberately made government far less competent, as Tom Frank argues in The Wrecking Crew, and they have turned government even more into a tool of the rich and big corporations, creating what economist James Galbraith calls The Predator State. As a result, Americans express little trust in government in the abstract, even though polls show a growing majority of Democrats and independents want government to solve the nation’s problems.

What can government do about the central economic issue of the redistribution upwards of America’s income and wealth? To quote a newly famous political figure, it can spread the wealth around.
As an old populist saying goes, money is like manure; spread it around and crops grow; let it pile up, and it begins to stink. And now we’re smelling the consequences of several decades of free market fundamentalism.

Other industrial countries do quite well economically, especially for their working and middle class citizens, with much less inequality than in the United States. And the economy of the United States actually performed better during the decades after World War II when the country was becoming economically more egalitarian than it has during the time of growing inequality since the early 1970s.

How do you spread the wealth around? First, you need a large short-term stimulus plan that is heavy on public spending--infrastructure, state and municipal government aid, extended unemployment compensation--rather than tax cuts. That way less of the stimulus leaks out to imports and there’s more direct job creation. And the country needs a plan for homeowners and renters threatened by foreclosures to give them an opportunity to remain in their homes, either as renters or with refinanced mortgages.

Then, with a longer-range perspective, here are six steps, just for starters.

First, make it easier to join unions. Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act, but it will still be a tough fight to pass it, and he will have to be encouraged to spend political capital to bring it to his desk.

Second, regulate financial markets--including hedge funds, private equity funds, and others-- to reduce the ways in which they can be used to drain income from what we think of as the real economy. And as we bail out the financial system, let’s do it in a way that puts the public interest first--both in repaying citizens whose money is being used and in exercising the powers of public ownership to prevent excess salaries and unjustified further concentration of ownership and to guarantee that banks make credit available for the real economy.

Third, design universal programs providing health care, university or technical education, early childhood care and education, more generous retirement benefits with both progressive benefits in many cases and certainly funded with more progressive taxation.

Fourth, stimulate new technology through both research and government investment to trigger a long wave of economic growth and creation of high-wage20jobs, certainly in the area of energy efficiency, new transportation, and sustainable alternative technologies. Government financial help for the auto industry is justified, whether as loans or an investment in ownership, but only if it comes with guarantees that the auto industry will really concentrate on highly efficient vehicles and make saving and expanding good jobs in the United States a top priority.

Fifth, create a broader safety net of long-term, higher-benefit unemployment insurance tied to extensive education for all displaced workers. And both raise and enforce higher minimum wages and labor standards.

Sixth, rewrite the rules of the global economy to restore to nations a wider range of policy options, to promote economic and financial stability, and to raise living standards and expand rights, such as the right to organize, for all workers. The global economy as much as our national economy needs its own new New Deal.

There are more options, but that should keep an Obama admi nistration busy for the first 100 days. Ambitious as this list may seem, it’s really little more than what already exists in most industrial countries. And polling over the past two years indicates that by large majorities--larger than the margin of Obama’s victory, Americans say they support such government action. With a deepening crisis, support is likely to grow.

But it will only grow--and this is my third and final point--if there is a popular movement pushing on both Obama and Congress as well as educating and mobilizing the potential support, as the polls seem to indicate, for a large center-left majority for this progressive agenda. Obama’s victory was solid, but not overwhelming. He ran a campaign of inspiring rhetoric and moderately progressive programs. For example, his health care plan falls far short of what’s needed, let alone what most of us want.

It’s the start of a mandate. But he will need to use his leadership skills not simply to get everyone in a room and reach a compromise with people who otherwise oppose everything he says he believes in. He needs to use those skills to build his mandate. And each legislative success can build it more firmly.

But Democrats are going to have to abandon their obsession with balanced budgets. Large deficits in a downturn are good, and borrowing is justified for investments that yield long-term productivity increases, like research, infrastructure and education.

And they’re going to have to break with the conservative obsession with cutting taxes or granting tax credits as the solution to every problem. Certainly we need to make the tax system far more progressive, but if government delivers what people want and need, then they will be more tolerant of the tax price they pay.

It’s not clear where Obama will go. Now people are reading appointments like tea leaves. His appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff tilts somewhat right. But his inclusion of people like David Bonior in his economic policy council is a welcome tilt to the left. Ultimately, I bet dire circumstances will push the administration towards much more progressive, bold policies than we saw with Clinton, clearly, but also bolder than Obama now seems inclined to propose.

We can be cert ain the self-designated mainstream and conservatives will do everything they can to restrain or even obstruct a progressive agenda. That would be a tragedy. Beyond celebrating, we need to remember that Obama needs an energized left as a counterbalance to help him do the right thing, both for his sake and more important, for the sake of the American people.

Detroit DSA Succeeds in 2008 Electoral Effort
David Green

Having been rebuffed in our offers of assistance to progressive Congressional candidates Gary Peters (9th district) and Mark Schauer (7th district)—both of whom were afraid of being red-baited--Detroit DSA focused instead on local and state races. Our strategy was simple: Given our limited resources and manpower, we concentrated on competitive races in which a progressive Democrat was running for an open seat. In such a setting, the efforts of a small, but disciplined, group such as ours might provide the margin of victory for the progressive Democrat. Furthermore, by helping to turn out the progressive vote in these state representative districts, we also helped to turn out the vote for Obama, and to a certain extent, for Gary Peters. After interviewing candidates to make sure their views on labor issues, health care, the environment, living wage, and progressive taxation ran parallel to ours, our membership voted to endorse four candidates for state representative: Sarah Roberts (St. Clair Shores-Harrison Township), Vickie Barnett (Farmington-Farmington Hills), Lisa Brown (West Bloomfield- Commerce Township), and Jon Switalski (Warren-Sterling Heights).

As part of our endorsement, Detroit DSA held a fundraising house party for the four candidates in early September. This was critical because the Obama campaign and the Peters and Schauer Congressional campaigns had largely exhausted the pool of potential progressive donors. Our house party raised $6500 which provided the seed money for the state representative campaigns.

Almost every weekend from late summer through the election, DSA volunteers canvassed, prepared literature, or phone banked on behalf of one of these four state representative candidates. All four candidates won—two by razor thin margins.

Our endorsement became an issue in two of the races. The Detroit Free Press accused Lisa Brown of being largely funded by outside radical organizations such as The Democratic Socialists of America. Vickie Barnett’s opponent commissioned robo calls to undecided voters during the last two weeks of the campaign accusing Vickie of being a socialist. Both candidates won, perhaps putting to rest the McCarthy-era tactic of red-baiting.

Detroit DSA also did statewide mailings and e-mail blasts to our members urging them to vote for lesser known candidates on the ballot: Diane Hathaway for Michigan Supreme Court, Diann Woodard for the Michigan State University Board of Trustees, and Paul Massaron (whose wife is a DSA member) for Wayne State University Board of Governors. All three of these candidates won. Finally, in the last three weeks of the campaign, we were approached by Oakland County Commission candidate Steven Schwartz who needed money for one last mailing to the voters in his district. Steve promised to work on behalf of a countywide living wage ordinance if elected to the commission (Oakland County is the fourth wealthiest county in the U.S. and holds hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts with local businesses.).We did an internet fundraiser for him which collected $500 in the space of one week. He won by a narrow margin.
All in all, not a bad autumn’s work for a local with fewer than 250 members.

Detroit DSA Celebrates Obama Victory
Helen Samberg

Detroit DSA celebrates the election of an African-American President. This election represents real progress in the history of the United States. As DSA Vice-Chair Harold Meyerson wrote in his column in the Washington Post on November 7th, "The victory of Barak Obama…inspires that sense of awe that comes when we realize we are in the presence of a momentous historical transformation."

Human Rights Day Celebrations

International Human Rights Day commemorates the signing of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Americans Eleanore Roosevelt, Ralph Bunche and Mary McLeod Bethune made major contributions to the drafting of this document. Detroit DSA members participated in two activities to mark this special occasion.

Detroit DSA Executive Board member Selma Goode participated in a press conference in Lansing regarding the Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice (IWJ) SweatFree Campaign. This campaign seeks to pressure the State of Michigan to purchase all of its uniforms (e.g., for police, prison guards, prisoners) from non-sweatshop manufacturers. At the press conference, participants presented 800 postcards demanding that the state purchase sweat-free uniforms to a representative from Governor Granholm’s office. The delegation’s spokespeople were State Representative Fred Miller (chair of the House Labor Committee), Father Norman Thomas (chair of the SweatFree Committee for the Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice), and Dia Pierce (Political Director for UNITE-HERE in Michigan). The delegation also met with representatives from the Michigan Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB representatives were interested in the methods by which similar legislation has already been implemented in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The national organizer of the SweatFree Campaign was pleased by the cooperative response from the OMB. DSA collected signatures on the postcards at our recent Douglass-Debs Dinner and is proud to be part of the SweatFree Campaign.

On the evening of December 10th, DSA members Helen Samberg, Earl Mandel, and David Green staffed a table at the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) celebration of Human Rights Day at the Hope United Methodist Church in Southfield. They distributed copies of DSA’s Economic Justice Agenda, Democratic Left (DSA’s quarterly national magazine), and the Detroit DSA newsletter. They also gathered signatures on DSA’s Renegotiate NAFTA petition. This petition demands that President-elect Obama keep his campaign pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to include enforceable labor and environmental provisions. Other peace and justice organizations also rented tables at the Human Rights Day celebration. Reverend Wendell Anthony, President of the Detroit NAACP, delivered the keynote address at this event.

Agenda for January 3rd DSA General Membership Meeting

Join us on January 3, 2009 for our next DSA general membership meeting. Our speaker is Bill Bryce, organizer for Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice. Bill will discuss the prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the next Congress. He will also describe organizing efforts on behalf of EFCA and how DSA may participate.

Event: Detroit DSA General Membership Meeting

Date: Saturday, January 3, 2009, 10 AM until noon

Location: Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue

Directions: Take I-75 to the Fourteen Mile Road exit. Travel west on Fourteen Mile Road to Crooks Road. Turn left (south) onto Crooks Road and drive to Thirteen Mile Road. Turn left (east)=2 0onto Thirteen Mile Road and drive ¼ mile to Marais Avenue. Turn left (north) onto Marais Avenue. The Royal Oak Senior/Community Center will be on your right hand side 1/3 of a mile from this intersection. Bagels and coffee will be provided.

Phone Number for Center: (248) 246-3900

Agenda for Meeting:
Treasury Report
Report on Douglass-Debs Dinner
Report on Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare (MASSM)
Report on the Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network (MichUHCAN)
Report on Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice (JWJ)
Report on Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network (DAPJN)
Strategic Plan for 2009
Speaker: Bill Bryce on the Employee Free Choice Act

Calendar of Events

January

Saturday, January 3rd—DSA general membership meeting from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak
Thursday, January 15th—Jobs with Justice Executive Board Meeting from 1-3 PM at the Communication Workers of America Hall, 17233 West Ten Mile Rd., Southfield

February

Sunday, February 1st—DSA Executive Board meeting from 10 AM until noon at the home of Helen Samberg (30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23, Farmington Hills)
Thursday, February 26th—MichUHCAN Legislative Luncheon from 11:30 AM until 1:30 PM at the Capitol in Lansing

March

Saturday, March 7th—DSA general membership meeting from 10 AM until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak

November

Friday, November 13th-Sunday, November 15th—DSA National Convention at the Best Western University Plaza in Evanston, Illinois (adjacent to Northwestern University)

<>Socialist Perspective on the Financial Crisis

<>David Hecker

Jan. 2008 

Detroit allotted 11 delegates to national DSA convention in Atlanta November 9-11

DSA ‘fax blasts’ hospital honchos

DMC nurses proud to provide quality care

Average income down, war spending up: What to do? ‘Steal more from children’s programs,’ administration says.

DSA backs AFL-CIO’s ‘health care for all’ rally on September 30

We work with Progressives of Ann Arbor on city council election

Ehrenreich scores with biting satire

Remembering Nagasaki

Mitchell addresses DSA

Calendar of Events

DSA endorses DMC nursing organizing drive, backs effort to target Michigan reps on Iraq

DSA hosts Latin American forum

DSA Calendar

FLOC organizer murdered in Mexico

Breyer dissents as court strikes down voluntary school integration

‘The fact is, the rest of the world is jealous of France’

Location:  Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak.

Detroit DSA helps Bernie Sanders become first socialist in U.S. Senate

David Green

Detroit DSA’s 2006 electoral results were mixed.
 

On the national level, we celebrate the victory of Bernie Sanders—the first socialist ever to be elected to the United States Senate.
 

Despite being the target of an expensive and particularly nasty negative campaign sponsored by the Republican Party and various right-wing 527 organizations, Sanders beat his Republican opponent, Rich Tarrent by a two-to-one margin for an open senate seat inVermont. DSA can take pride in our contribution to the Sanders’ campaign.
 

Our locals across the country held fundraisers on his behalf throughout the summer and early fall. We raised over $56,000 for the Sanders’ campaign (or approximately 1% of the campaign’s entire budget) which provided desperately needed resources to allow Bernie to respond to the negative advertising run against him as well as to allow him to disseminate his own positive message. Detroit DSA’s fundraiser at UAW Local 909 on June 26th was the most successful of these events. 140 people attended our event which raised $12,300  for the Sanders’ campaign.

Our local electoral activity was less successful. Detroit DSA focused its resources on two legislative races: Lisa Brown’s race for the state house seat in District 39 (West Bloomfield/Commerce Township) and Andy Levin’s race for the state senate seat in District 13 (Royal Oak/Troy/Birmingham/Bloomfield Hills).
 

DSA volunteers canvassed door-to-door, stuffed envelopes, made phone calls, and mailed friend-to-friend postcards. We also organized a fundraising house party for Lisa Brown which raised over $2300. Despite our best efforts, Lisa lost by 188 votes. We can take consolation in the fact that DSA was one of the main sources of organizational support for Lisa.

We proved that this district can be “flipped” from the Republican column. It would behoove our friends in the Democratic Party hierarchy to pay attention to this district in terms of candidate recruitment and early infusion of resources when planning electoral strategy for 2008.

Andy Levin’s race was even more disappointing. He lost by 788 votes (0.6% of all the ballots cast). What was particularly disturbing was that the Green Party candidate (who did not actively campaign) received more than three times as many votes as the margin of victory for the Republican candidate—John Pappageorge.
 

The lesson to be drawn from this election: Until we achieve Instant Runoff Voting in elections, progressives of every stripe (both socialist and non-socialist) must learn to work cooperatively in order to avoid this kind of result.

Finally, we lost badly in our effort to defeat Proposal 2—the “so-called” Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. This ballot initiative creates an amendment in the Michigan Constitution banning affirmative action in public universities and state and municipal contracts and hiring. Our local worked hard to defeat this racist and sexist measure. We joined and contributed to the anti-Proposal 2 coalition, One United Michigan, early in 2006. We distributed One United Michigan literature during all of our canvassing dates this fall. Along with our colleagues in the Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network, we wrote and published an anti-Proposal 2 ad in the Observer-Eccentric newspapers. We will now have to roll up our sleeves to challenge the implementation of the most draconian aspects of this measure.

While DSA results were mixed, this election has to go down as one of the biggest victories in history. It was exciting to be a part of a Democratic sweep that regained both the Senate and House for the first time since the Radical Right sweep of 1994. It was also satisfying in the extreme to “stick it” to Bush and company.
 

That being said, I wish to sound a note of caution. Many Democrats and members on the Left will look at this result and, with a sigh of relief and satisfaction, conclude the “Mission Accomplished” and leave it to the Democrats to do the right thing. But this is wrong!

All we have really done is make a small shift to the left. Many Democrats still support the current policies of this administration with only minor tweaks to make them more palatable to the electorate.
 

Only by maintaining pressure can we see new policies created in foreign affairs, health care, welfare, and education that more clearly match our socialist vision.

Our victory was great, but without continuing the same intensity we used to achieve it over the next two years, come November 2008, we may look back on this great victory as yet another opportunity lost.

Ovshinskys and Abbott honored at Douglass-Debs dinner

Seventy people attended the eighth annual Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner held at UAW Local 600 inDearborn on Saturday, November 18th. The dinner is the major fundraising event each year for Detroit DSA.
 

At this year’s dinner, we honored inventors Stan and Iris Ovshinsky (the inventors of the nickel hydride battery used in all hybrid vehicles as well as major contributors to the field of solar technology) and MichiganAFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tina Abbott.

The keynote speaker was globalization expert Harley Shaiken who gave a chilling description of the consequences of corporate globalization as well as some suggestions as to how progressive activists can fight this phenomenon.  The dinner raised over $6800 for Detroit DSA.

The following op-ed piece is excerpted from an article written by DSA Vice-Chair Harold Meyerson which appeared in the November 24, 2006 edition of Forward.

The Socialism of Bernie Sanders

At two in the morning on a November night in 1914, on the square that abutted the Forward building in the middle of theLower East Side, a crowd that had been gathering there all evening heard an announcement it had awaited for hours: Tammany had conceded.New York’s 9th Congressional District had a new representative, Socialist Party candidate Meyer London.

London’s victory marked just the second time that an avowed socialist had been elected to Congress. He had been preceded there two years earlier byMilwaukee’s Victor Berger. Debsian socialism was at its height in those years. Roughly 1200 socialists held municipal or state offices across the land.

London served in Congress from 1914 through 1918, and again from 1920 through 1922, when Democrats and Republicans inAlbany agreed to divide up theLower East Side in the decennial reapportionment so thatLondon could not win re-election. Berger served from 1910 to 1912, and again from 1922 through 1928. After that, there were no socialists in Congress for a very long time.

Berger andLondon remain the only Socialist Party members to have served in Congress. In the early 1970’s, Democrat Ron Dellums, the left-wing congressman representingBerkeley andOakland, joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, the group founded by legendary activist Michael Harrington with an explicit strategy of functioning openly as a socialist group within the Democratic Party.

Dellums was a leading civil rights and antiwar activist who played a key role in persuading Congress to place sanctions onSouth Africa’s apartheid regime. His democratic leftism was more distinct than his socialism, which was the case for most socialists of his generation who were active in social movements and electoral politics. Another Democratic congressman who maintained membership in Democratic Socialists of America isBrooklyn’s Rep. Major Owens.

This January, Bernie Sanders will be sworn in asAmerica’s first socialist senator. A congressman fromVermont’s one and only House district since 1990, the Brooklyn-born Sanders has run as an independent since he first was elected mayor ofBurlington in the early 1980s.

The rumpled, professorial Sanders has caucused with the Democrats in the House and will do so in the Senate. (He’s drawn no serious Democratic opposition in any of his recent elections.) Indeed, he’s played a distinct role within the caucus.
 

A few years ago, he formed the House Progressive Caucus as a counterweight to the conservative Blue Dogs and the centrist New Dogs. He was the first member of Congress to lead bus trips toCanada so seniors could buy more affordable medications, and he is an advocate of single-payer health insurance.

In the Senate, he is likely to join Sherrod Brown at the head of an incoming class that is opposed to free trade deals.  His antipathy to free market capitalism may run deeper than that of his peers, but it manifests itself in his campaign for a global mixed economy rather than, say, nationalizing this or that industry, which hasn’t been part of socialist doctrine for many decades now.

What does it mean to be a socialist inAmerica these days? Even inEurope—where socialist, social democratic or Labor parties either govern now or have recently governed in virtually every nation, and where the welfare state remains far stronger than it is here—socialism as a coherent ideology is hard to find. Parties of the center-left grope for ways to preserve the social compact at a time when globalization is eroding it everywhere.

On the Hill and on the stump, Sanders’ calls for a sturdier compact are more impassioned and systemic than those of his progressive colleagues. His attacks on corporations and his defense of the working class—and his sense of the inherent antagonism between the two—are more explicit than those of all but the most militant left-liberals.  But Sanders’ role in founding the Progressive Caucus displays the more important half of his political identity.
 

Like Michael Harrington, Bernie Sanders is the kind of socialist who can build a larger, preponderantly non-socialist, left alliance—of which he can then constitute the socialist wing. InAmerica, that’s as good as it gets for a socialist who lives in, and tries to better, the real world.

Calendar of events

January 2007

Saturday, January  6,  DSA  general membership meeting—10 a.m. until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue, Royal Oak.

Friday  January 12, Celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.,  7:30 p.m.  Spencer Barefield in concert. Call: 248-548-3920 for site.

Saturday January 13, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.  Read-in. Share your favoriteMLK writing. Call: 248-548-3920 for site.

Thursday January 18, “Civil Rights in Michigan: Where are we now?” – a panel co-hosted by the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights and Wayne State University Law School on  from 5:30-7:30 p.m.at the Wayne State University Law School Auditorium.

Monday, January  29,  Congressional Education Day. Visit your representative’s office inWashington.

Wednesday January 31 at 7 p.m. “The New Patriots,” a video of five military veterans who speak out about terrorism, patriotism, and their transformation. They also describe the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) located inFt. Benning,GA. The program will include an update on legislative steps to close the SOA and a discussion of plans for 2007. At theRoyal Oak Public Library,222 E. Eleven Mile Rd.

February 2007

Sunday, February 4,  DSA steering committee meeting—10 a.m. until noon at Helen Samberg’s home, 30785 Hunters Drive,  Apartment 23, Farmington Hills.

March 2007

Saturday, March 3, DSA general membership meeting— 10 a.m. until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue in Royal Oak.

Jobs with Justice Dinner—Details to be announced.

Sunday, March  25 at 7 p.m. Linda Gunter from the Nuclear Information and Research Center will speak on “Beyond Nuclear—Shattering the Myth of the Peaceful Atom”  at the Pleasant Ridge Community Center, 4 Ridge Rd., Pleasant Ridge.

DSA General Membership Meeting Saturday, January 6

Event: Detroit DSA general membership meeting

Date:  Saturday, January 6, 2007,10 a.m.-noon

Location: Royal Oak Senior/Community Center,3500 Marais Avenue

Directions:  Take I-75 to theFourteen Mile Road exit. Travel west onFourteen Mile Road toCrooks Road. Turn left (south) ontoCooks Road and drive toThirteen Mile Road. Turn left (east) ontoThirteen Mile Road and drive ¼ mile toMarais Avenue. Turn left (north) ontoMarais Avenue. The Royal Oak Senior/Community Center will be on your right hand side 1/3 of a mile from this intersection.

Bagels and coffee will be provided.

Phone (for center): (248) 246-3900

Agenda

1) Treasury report

2) Committee reports

—Education Committee—Ron Aronson, David Elsila, Dick Olson,Selma Goode

—Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network—Selma Goode

—Jobs with Justice—David Elsila, Adam Sokol

—Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare—Mo Geary

—Detroit Area Peace with Justice Network—Helen Samberg

 3) Report onPontiac living wage—David Green

 4) Project to repeal Michigan Civil Rights Initiative—

Mo Geary

 5) Strategic planning for 2007

 —Critique of Douglass-Debs Dinner

 —How do we reproduce ourselves? Growing the organization/Attracting young  people

—How do we make our electoral work more effective?

—Potential projects for 2007

            a. Strengthening the state minimum wage

            b. Ballot initiative on health care for 2008

            c. Big box ordinance forWayne County

            d. Living wage ordinance inOakland County

            e. Organizing around Employee Free Choice 

Harley Shaiken to keynote Douglass-Debs dinner

Harley Shaiken, an expert on labor and globalization, will be the keynote speaker  at the 2006 Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner.

The Douglass-Debs dinner, an annual project of theDetroit chapter of DSA,  will be held at UAW Local 600 inDearborn on Saturday, November 18 from6-9 p.m.

Shaiken, who teaches at the University of California-Berkeley, is a regular commentator on National Public Radio.

The honorees this year are inventors Stan and Iris Ovshinsky (inventors of the battery used in all hybrid vehicles as well as patent holders of many inventions relating to solar technology which have made solar panels economically competitive as a means of generating electricity) and Tina Abbott, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan AFL-CIO.

The co-chairs for this year’s event are UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn and Father John Nowlan, chair of the Interfaith Committee on Workers Issues.

Detroit DSA meeting Nov. 4

Benson to discuss voter protection

Jocelyn Benson, a law professor atWayne State University and a board member of the Michigan ACLU, will discuss election fraud in light of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections at the nextDetroit general membership meeting November 4 at10 a.m. at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center,3500 Marais Avenue

Her topic is “Voter Protection: Making Sure Every Vote Counts.”

Benson worked for the Democratic National Committee as the National Field Director for Election Protection during the 2004 presidential election, organizing and developing a program that trained and placed over 17,000 volunteer lawyers in precincts throughout the nation.

She has also worked as a summer associate for voting rights and election law for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, as a legal assistant to Nina Totenberg at National Public Radio, and as an investigative journalist for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL.

Our strategy is to choose races in which the focused efforts of a small, but determined, group such as ours can play a decisive role in electing a progressive candidate.

We have endorsed two candidates in this election cycle: Andy Levin who is running for the state senate seat in District 13 (Royal Oak/Troy/Birmingham/Clawson/Bloomfield Hills) and Lisa Brown who is running for the state house seat in District 39 (West Bloomfield/Commerce Township).

    DSA members Adam Sokol, Catherine Hoffman, Brandon Moss, Lon Herman, Earl Mandel, Helen Samberg, Bob Frumkin, David Green, Frank Goeddeke, David Ivers, Gary Benjamin, Al Benchich, Eric Ebel, David Elsila, Bill Hellwig, Paul and Garie Bass, Selma Goode, and Mo Geary have come out for several campaign dates in September and October. Our volunteers canvass door-to-door, make phone calls, and stuff envelopes with campaign literature for our endorsed candidates.

    Our last campaign date is on Saturday, November 4 (immediately following our general membership meeting) when we will be canvassing and phone banking for Andy Levin.

We will meet at his campaign headquarters (located at25 W. Fourteen Mile Rd.—near the intersection of Fourteen Mile andMain Street inClawson) at12:45 p.m. and will work from1-3 p.m. To volunteer for this activity, call David Green at (248) 761-4203.

    We are also looking for volunteers to work on getting out the vote in Lisa Brown’s district on election day (Tuesday, November 7). Volunteers will be collecting names of voters as they register at the polling places, matching them against a list of Lisa Brown supporters, and calling those supporters who have not yet voted to urge them to do so.

To volunteer for the get out the vote effort, call David Green (248-761-4203).

Fundraiser for Lisa Brown a success

Lisa Brown is a progressive Democrat running for the state representative seat in West Bloomfield/Commerce Township. She received Detroit DSA’s endorsement at our July general membership meeting.

As part of our endorsement, our members voted to hold a fundraising reception for Lisa.

That reception took place on Friday, October 13  at the home of David and Teena Green inFarmington Hills. We collected $2070 from twenty-six individual donors (with more checks reportedly in the mail). Folksinger Julie Beutel provided entertainment.

State Senator Gilda Jacobs was the guest of honor. State Representative Aldo Vagnozzi (D—Farmington/Farmington Hills) also attended and contributed to Lisa’s campaign.

It was a fun, and successful fundraiser.

DSA membership meeting Saturday November 4

Directions: Take I-75 to theFourteen Mile Road exit. Travel west onFourteen Mile Road toCrooks Road. Turn left (south) ontoCrooks Road and drive toThirteen Mile Road. Turn left (east) ontoThirteen Mile Road and drive 1/4 mile toMarais Avenue. Turn left (north) ontoMarais Avenue. The Royal Oak Senior/Community Center will be on your right hand side 1/3 of a mile from this intersection.

Phone (for center):  (248) 246-3900

    1) Treasury  report

    2) Report onMichigan Universal Health Care Access Network—Selma Goode

    3) Report on Jobs with Justice Coalition—Adam Sokol, David Elsila

    4) Report onAlliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare—Mo Geary

    5) Education Committee report—David Elsila, Ron Aronson, Dick Olson, Selma Goode

    6) Report onDetroit Area Peace with Justice Network—Helen Samberg

    7) Reports on projects for 2006

          —Pontiac living wage

          — Opposing theMichigan Civil Rights Initiative

     8) Electoral projects

          —Lisa Brown campaign

          —Andy Levin campaign

     9) Jocelyn Benson on “Voter Protection: Making Sure Every Vote Counts”

    10) Canvassing for Andy Levin from1-3 p.m. (We will meet at Andy’s campaign headquarters located at25 W. Fourteen Mile Road—near the intersection ofMain and Fourteen Mile—inClawson)

‘A  total rollback of everything this country has stood for’

Leahy blasts Congressional approval of detainee bill

The following article comes from the Democracy Now! Website from Friday, September 29, 2006

On Capitol Hill, the Senate has agreed to give President Bush extraordinary power to detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on terror.

The editors of the New York Times described the law as tyrannical. They said its passage marks a low point in American democracy and that it is our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The legislation strips detainees of the right to file habeas corpus petitions to challenge their own detention or treatment. 

It gives the president the power to detain indefinitely anyone he deems to have provided material support to anti-U.S hostilities. Secret and coerced evidence could be used to try detainees held inU.S. military prisons.

The bill also immunizesU.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees whom the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year.

The Senate passed the measure sixty-five to thirty-four. Twelve Democrats joined the Republican majority (including Senator Debbie Stabenow ofMichigan though  of these all but Nelson of Nebraska  had voted for unsuccessful amendments against curtailing  habeas corpus and for the Levin subsitute). The House passed virtually the same legislation on Wednesday, September 27. Legal groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, are already preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the law in court.

DSA general membership meeting—Saturday, November 4, 2005 from 10 a.m. until noon at the Royal Oak Senior/Community Center, 3500 Marais Avenue in Royal Oak

Canvassing and phone banking for state senate candidate Andy Levin—Saturday, November 4, 2006 from1-3 p.m.. We will meet at Levin campaign headquarters located at25 W. Fourteen Mile Road (near the intersection of Fourteen Mile andMain Street inClawson) at12:45 p.m.].

Progressive historian and author Howard Zinn will speak on “History as a Guide to Action” inDetroit onNovember 5, 2006 at the annual peace lecture and award ceremony of the Cranbrook Peace Foundation. Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, is a life-long activist in the peace and civil rights movements. As a shipyard worker inNew York, he began organizing workers at 18. During World War II, he was a bombardier for theU.S. armed forces inEurope. His work as chair of the history department atSpellman College led him into civil rights work. During the Vietnam War, he was an outspoken critic ofU.S. policy while teaching atBoston University. You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train is both the title of a recent book and of a new film, narrated by actor Matt Damon, about his life. Zinn’sDetroit talk will start at7 p.m. at the Riverfront Ballroom in Cobo Hall. Tickets are $15 and are available from the Cranbrook Peace Foundation, 248-345-3475 or at www.cranbrookpeace.org. Tickets are also available for a reception with Mr. Zinn preceding the lecture.

n Get Out the Vote and Working the Polls for state representative candidate Lisa Brown—Tuesday, November 7, 2006. Volunteers will be assigned to various precincts and polling places throughout the day. Call David Green (248-761-4203) to volunteer.

n Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner—Saturday, November 18, 2006 from 6-9 p.m. at UAW Local 600, 10550 Dix Avenue in Dearborn. This year’s honorees are Michigan AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tina Abbott and inventors Stan and Iris Ovshinsky. The keynote speaker is noted labor and globalization expert Harley Shaiken.

July 2006

Date:          Saturday, July 8, 2006

                   10 AM- Noon

Location:    Royal Oak Senior/Community Center,

                    3500 Marais Avenue

Directions: Take I-75 to the Fourteen Mile Road exit. Travel west on Fourteen Mile Road to Crooks Road. Turn left (south) onto Crooks Road and drive to Thirteen Mile Road. Turn left (east) onto Thirteen Mile Road and drive 1/4 mile to Marais Avenue. Turn left (north) onto Marais Avenue. The Royal Oak Senior/Community Center will be on your right hand side 1/3 of a mile from this intersection.

Bagels and coffee will be provided.

Phone (for Center):  (248) 246-3900

Agenda for July 8, 2006 DSA Meeting

    1) Treasury Report

    2) Report on Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network--Selma Goode

    3) Report on Jobs with Justice Coalition--Adam Sokol, David Elsila

    4) Report on Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare--Mo Geary

    5) Education Committee Report—David Elsila, Ron Aronson, Dick Olson, Selma Goode

    6) Report on Detroit Peace with Justice Network--Helen Samberg

    7) Reports on Projects for 2006

          --Pontiac Living Wage

          --Fundraiser for Representative Bernie Sanders (the only openly socialist member of Congress who is running for an open Senate seat in Vermont)

          -- Opposing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

     8) Presentation of candidates seeking DSA endorsement: Lisa Brown (running for state representative in West Bloomfield/Commerce Township) and Daymon Dorkins (running for Oakland County Commission)

     9) Ed Bruley on “Lay of the Land in Michigan Politics”

    The following resolution was written by DSA National Political Committee (NPC) member Joe Schwartz and was approved by the NPC early in June.

On the Rights of Undocumented Immigrants

Joe Schwartz

Democratic Socialists of America favors granting immediate permanent resident status to all undocumented workers and establishing an expeditious and non-punitive road to citizenship for these workers and their families. We oppose guest worker programs that would help exploit these workers and undercut all workers’ rights to organize and to secure humane wages and working conditions, especially low-wage workers, many of whom are relegated to the bottom rung of the economy by institutional racism. The burgeoning immigrant rights movement represents a crucial movement for social justice and brings to the forefront of public debate issues central to a democratic and just society.

Legalizing the status of all immigrant workers and their families, as well as providing for a transparent and expeditious road to citizenship, embodies basic democratic socialist principles. First, those who are governed by the laws of a thorough-going democratic society would have a say in making such laws.

Second, all those who contribute meaningful labor to a democratic society, who care for our elderly, our children, and our disabled, deserve full membership in our society.

Third, without full legal status, political rights, and a road to citizenship, immigrant workers cannot fight for rights on the job and can be ruthlessly exploited by employers. Threats of deportation for undocumented workers, as well as second-class status in guest worker programs, also restrict the capacity of workers to organize. These policies create a new form of indentured servitude and dependence.

As socialists, we know that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Thus, the vulnerability of undocumented and guest workers leads not only to the exploitation of their labor, but to the proliferation of low-wage, unsafe, and insecure jobs for all. Employers can more easily discriminate against African-Americans, particularly young men, when there is vulnerable immigrant labor to exploit. Only strong enforcement of anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws, combined with the ability of all workers to unionize and fight for decent wages and working conditions, can yield a full employment economy. The nativist arguments of the Minutemen and others displace anxiety about declining economic opportunities onto the very low-wage workers whose rights in the workplace must be secured if all working people are to improve their livelihoods. Therefore, Democratic Socialists of America militantly opposes HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner bill already passed in the House of Representatives. The proposed legislation, if adopted by Congress, would criminalize all undocumented workers and all who help them. It would lead to mass repression and a likely futile effort to deport 12 million undocumented workers and their families. Such an effort could only be conducted through massive violations of the civil liberties of citizens and legal residents, as well as the undocumented.

Democratic Socialists of America also opposes devoting additional resources to militarizing our border. Since the passage of the restrictive 1994 Immigration Reform Act, the federal government has spent more than $30 billion on border enforcement. This has not deterred unauthorized border crossings. It has lined the pockets of “coyotes,” who serve the needs of exploitative employers searching for cheap labor. It has led to the cruel, painful deaths of some 4000 people in the deserts of the Southwest and in the holds of ships.

We also endorse the expansion of opportunities for legal immigration and family unification, and the rapid processing of the backlog of pending visa applications. While some bills before the Senate offer a path to citizenship for considerable numbers of undocumented workers, their provisions for guest worker programs and increased militarization of our borders violate the principles outlined above.

Further, as socialists, we recognize that massive migration of exploited workers, refugees, and asylum-seekers result from an unjust global political and economic system that works for the benefit of transnational corporations and at the expense of the world’s people. Immigration to the United States does not only result from the “pull” of greater economic opportunity. It is also caused by the “push” of growing economic inequality and exploitation in developing countries. The economic destiny of these countries is severely constrained by the power of transnational corporations and international institutions that regulate the global economy in their interest. Much of the mass migration of the past decade from Mexico and Central America is due to NAFTA and other unjust “free trade” agreements. Such agreements have enabled subsidized American agri-business to flood these societies with cheap produce, thus destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers. The export-oriented, often capital-intensive form of manufacturing imposed by the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO on these nations also limits the number of good jobs in the urban economy of these developing nations. The same story can be told about African migration to the nations of the European Union.

In their inexorable search for cheap, exploitable wage labor, predominantly United States-owned transnational corporations have eliminated hundreds of thousands of maquiladora jobs in Mexico and moved them to Vietnam and China, where even more repressive states make labor cheaper and more vulnerable still. Thus, the neo-liberal model of corporate globalization, which strives to maximize profitability through ruthless cost-cutting, succeeds in impoverishing labor around the world. It is that impoverishment that drives workers in developing nations to seek marginally better life opportunities in advanced industrial nations. Third world impoverishment, and not the influx of its workers, is the problem.

The “push” for mass immigration from the developing world can only be stemmed if these economies are allowed to develop in equitable and internally integrated ways. Such development would require the national and international regulation of corporate power by free trade unions and democratic governments, as well as the democratization of international economic regulatory institutions. Only if the global economy is democratically controlled and structured in the interests of all the world’s people can we achieve full rights for working people in all societies.

Judging it by its goals, the immigrant rights movement is the civil rights movement of our generation. Its demand for labor rights for all points to the reality that social justice for working people around the globe can only be achieved through the extension of democratic and labor rights both at home and abroad. Only by building a truly internationalist labor and democratic political movement can we transition from a global capitalist world toward one that promotes economic and social justice.