Opinion What a conference for the left just revealed about November
“CHICAGO — What should the left’s relationship be with the Democratic Party, in the midst of the fighting in Gaza and the presidential election? It’s complicated, as two recent conferences here showed.
At the Democratic National Convention, self-described democratic socialistsRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had major speaking slots, as did other prominent left-wing voices, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers. They praised the progressive policies that President Joe Biden has enacted, urged the election of his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, and warned of the dangers of a second term for former president Donald Trump.
Those DNC addresses were in many ways the culmination of the surprising alliance that has developed over the past four years between the left and a party led by the more centrist Biden.
Less than two weeks later, over Labor Day weekend, there was another political conference in the Windy City. And at Socialism 2024, this year’s edition of the annual gathering of socialists and other leftists that is always held in Chicago, there was considerably less enthusiasm for the Democratic Party. The 2,000-person conference was marked by fury over continued U.S. support of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, disagreement over the role leftists should play in the contest between Harris and Trump, and an emphasis on not being too reliant on Democrats (and politicians in general) to address major issues.
Following Perry Bacon Jr.
Democratic convention organizers did not give a major speaking slot to a Palestinian, angering progressives and Arab American Democrats in particular. In contrast, on the opening night of the Socialism conference, the dais included several Palestinian speakers. The word “genocide” was used repeatedly.
“We are here, nearly a year after this total evisceration, destruction, genocide that is unfolding in Gaza by the Israeli state. …. Our government has the power to stop this. And they aren’t,” Palestinian writer Sumaya Awad said, as many in the crowd of several hundred shouted “Shame.”
Brant Rosen, a Chicago-based rabbi and strong critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, said, “I want to say to the organizers of the socialism conference, ‘Thank you.’ I have to say, after the sacrilege that was the DNC in this city, socialism is coming at the right time, to offer a different vision of what could be.”
Even if the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and resulting Israeli invasion in Gaza had not happened, the socialism conference would still likely have included a lot of angst about Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party. Socialists are an awkward fit in a party that is generally supportive of capitalism. And man of the organizers and activists here are leery of electoral politics and the two-party system. Dealing with politicians and elections, in their view, is a sometimes-necessary evil.
“Presidential elections, the Democrats specifically, have a way of sucking all life out of any movement,” said Kristen Godfrey of a leftist group called the Tempest Collective. She noted that Harris quickly raised hundreds of millions of dollars for her campaign while many leftist groups struggle to survive.
Kelly Hayes, an author and organizer, said it’s important to “step outside of the noise of the electoral circus and focus on the work we’ve done, the work we’re doing and what we need to build together for the sake of collective survival and collective liberation.”
Many of the activists and organizers here view labor unions, social movements, community organizing and other approaches as more likely to result in lasting change than electoral politics. At the Democratic convention, speakers who had their student debt forgiven credited Biden and Harris. At the socialism conference, organizers described years of developing a grassroots collective of people with debt that grew so powerful that Biden was essentially forced during his 2020 campaign to promise cancellation. The president then needed to follow through on that promise to keep younger voters in the Democratic fold. In my view, the socialists’ narrative is more accurate than the Biden-centric one.
Because they are not solely focused on electoral politics, speakers here openly discussed very left-wing, controversial ideas that were verboten at the Democratic convention, such as eventually abolishing police departments and prisons.
But it’s an election year, and the possibility of another Trump presidency created an uneasy tension at the socialism conference — amplified by Harris’s ascension. When Biden was the Democratic candidate and down in the polls, people on the left could easily connect their political and policy views by arguing that the president’s support of Israel was not only morally wrong but hurting him electorally.
Now, Harris is polling much better than Biden, even though she has taken the same pro-Israel stances. Surveys suggest a big bloc of younger and more progressive voters who were lukewarm about Biden just wanted a different (younger) candidate. It’s not clear that Harris has to support an arms embargo of Israel, which leftists favor, to win swing voters in key states.
So, although there was a lot of agreement on policy issues at the socialism conference, attendees diverged in terms of what to do in November. Some emphasized that Harris would be much better than Trump on most issues. Others rejected what they called “lesser evilism,” arguing that backing Democrats in major elections without demanding changes in policies does more long-term harm than good. Still others voters urged a focus on down-ballot races.
There were also backers of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and independent Cornel West for president. Both have been much more critical of Israel than Biden, Harris or Trump. But neither was particularly beloved here either.
“We’re in a process of struggle, unity, struggle with centrist Democrats. Let’s unite in November and the day after the election, let’s start struggling again,” Bennett Carpenter of the group Liberation Road told the attendees, many of whom applauded that sentiment. (That’s my view too.)
These tensions for activists are nothing new. As author Jemar Tisby wrote recently, Frederick Douglass was a stalwart Republican, even as he at times sharply criticized the party’s leaders. A century later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. worked with President Lyndon B. Johnson on civil rights legislation but rebuked his handling of the Vietnam War. Also, there is no single “left” in America. Labor unions, Black-led groups, women’s rights organizations and others are all separately navigating their relationships with the Democratic Party.
“We are not the first people to try to break this impasse,” Tempest’s Natalia Tylim said on a panel about the upcoming election. “In U.S. history, there have always been people who have organized and tried absolutely everything they can to build representation for working-class people and the oppressed. We have to have a little bit of patience with each other and ourselves given the fact that this isn’t going to be solved right now.”
No comments:
Post a Comment