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International Women’s Day SOCIALIST Fight for Parental Leave and Kshama Sawant Column p. 5 ALTERNATIVEIssue #21 - March 2016 Suggested Donation: $2 We Need a Party of the 99% What’s a Feminist to Do? Building a page 5 #Movement4Bernie page 6 Clinton Attacks Single Payer #Movement4Bernie page 6 Why Black People Should Builds on Momentum Not Support Hillary Sanders and the Left page 3 page 6 page 8 WHAT WE STAND FOR WHY I AM A SOCIALIST Fighting for the 99% J Immediate, unconditional legalization and J No budget cuts to education and social equal rights for all undocumented immigrants. services! Full funding for all community needs. J Build a mass movement against police Theresa Powers A major increase in taxes on the rich and big brutality and the institutional racism of the business, not working people. The federal criminal justice system. Invest in rehabilitation, Chicago, IL government should bail out states to prevent job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons! cuts and layoffs. Abolish the death penalty. Black Lives Matter. J Create living-wage union jobs for all the J Fight sexual harassment, violence against unemployed through public works programs women, and all forms of sexism. to develop mass transit, renewable energy, J Defend a woman’s right to choose whether infrastructure, health care, education, and and when to have children. For a publicly affordable housing. funded, single-payer health care system with J Raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, free reproductive services, including all forms I used to live in a small, predominantly adjusted annually for cost of living increases, of birth control and safe, accessible abortions. white, liberal-arts-college bubble. I spent as a step toward a living wage for all. Comprehensive sex education. Paid maternity $100K to learn about all of the social prob- J Free, high quality public education for all from and paternity leave. Fully subsidized, high- lems in the world, with slim concrete solu- quality child care. tions offered except for “go into politics and pre-school through college. Cancel student working. The more I thought about the cycles J Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and work within the system.” My free time con- debt. Full funding for schools to dramatically of poverty and homelessness, the more I transgender people, including same-sex sisted of delivering sandwiches to folks who lower teacher-student ratios. Stop the focus connected those to the failures of capitalism. marriage. slept outside on the street because that was on high stakes testing and the drive to Regardless of the paradigm that’s hammered the best I knew to do. When I graduated and privatize public education. into our heads, there’s no such thing as pull- Money for Jobs and Education, moved to Chicago from Massachusetts, my J Free, high quality health care for all. Replace ing ourselves up by our bootstraps. And char- Not War whole world changed. the failed for-profit insurance companies with ities are just band-aids meant to perpetuate J End the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Embarking on a year of service at a home- a publicly funded single-payer system as a the broken system we live in: they rely on the Bring all the troops home now! less shelter, I quickly learned that many of step toward fully socialized medicine. very class that creates many of the problems the problems the nonprofit world is trying so J A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts J Slash the military budget. No drones. Shut they claim to try and solve. hard to fix clearly stem from a broken system. to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid! down Guantanamo. I am a socialist because I know that, Homelessness and poverty would have no J Repeal the Patriot Act, the NDAA, and all when we come together and fight, we can J Stop home foreclosures and evictions. For reason to exist if everyone was granted other attacks on democratic rights. win. Socialism offers clear solutions to the public ownership and democratic control of the basic human rights of housing, a living overwhelming amount of problems our world the major banks. wage, health care, etc. When people work Break with the Two Parties currently faces. I’m fighting for equality for J A minimum guaranteed weekly income of full-time and cannot pay their rent, are not of Big Business all humans, an end to poverty and homeless- $600/week for the unemployed, disabled, receiving adequate mental health services, J ness, and a world that serves the interests of stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others For a mass workers’ party drawing together or are forced out of a home due to domes- the majority, not just a select few. J unable to work. workers, young people, and activists from tic violence, it’s obvious that something isn’t J Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For workplace, environmental, civil rights, and democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to women’s campaigns to provide a fighting, fight for better pay, working conditions, and political alternative to the corporate parties. social services. Full-time union officials should J Unions and social movement organizations Appearing on SocialistAlternative.org be regularly elected and receive the average should stop funding and supporting the wage of those they represent. Democratic and Republican Parties and in March J No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing instead organize independent left-wing, anti- companies into public ownership and retool corporate candidates and coalitions as a first them for socially necessary green production. step toward building a workers’ party. Supreme Court J Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay Socialism and Internationalism and benefits; share out the work with the J Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, Battle Heats Up unemployed and create new jobs. environmental destruction, and war. We need After Justice Scalia’s sudden death, the battle Environmental Sustainability an international struggle against this system. to replace him rages between the Republican- J J Fight climate change. Organize mass protests Repeal corporate “free trade” agreements, controlled Senate and President Obama. This and civil disobedience to block the Keystone which mean job losses and a race to the fight will likely become a focal point for debate XL oil pipeline, coal export terminals, and bottom for workers and the environment. about the country’s political direction. Indeed, there are significant implications for cases fracking. Massive public investment in J Solidarity with the struggles of workers and affecting women’s rights, labor rights, and environmental protections. This raises the renewable energy and efficiency technologies oppressed peoples internationally: An injury question of how meaningful change to improve the lives of working people is achieved. to rapidly replace fossil fuels. to one is an injury to all. J A major expansion of public transportation J Take into public ownership the top 500 The Further Rise of Donald Trump: A Socialist View to provide low-fare, high-speed, accessible corporations and banks that dominate The prospect of Trump winning the Republican transit. the U.S. economy. Run them under the nomination is of deep concern to that party’s estab- J Public ownership of the big energy companies. democratic management of elected lishment. But it is also, for very different reasons, All workers in polluting industries should be representatives of the workers and the a major issue for progressive workers and young guaranteed retraining and new living-wage broader public. Compensation to be paid on people, who are rightly repelled by his noxious jobs in socially useful green production. the basis of proven need to small investors, racism and xenophobia. Many say he is a fascist: not millionaires. is that a correct description? How do we fight back Equal Rights for All J A democratic socialist plan for the economy against the growing threat from the right? J Fight discrimination based on race, nationality, based on the interests of the overwhelming gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, majority of people and the environment. For a socialist United States and a socialist Bernie’s Socialism and Ours age, and all other forms of prejudice. Equal Bernie Sanders has popularized the idea of democratic socialism to an audience of world. J pay for equal work. millions. His program for a $15 minimum wage, free higher education, and single-payer health care speaks to the interests of working-class people. But his vision of socialism Socialist Alternative Editor Tom Crean • Editorial Board Ty Moore, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon, Jess Spear, is of a reformed and regulated capitalism. We, on the other hand, believe the lives of Joshua Koritz, George Brown ordinary people here and around the world cannot be decisively changed for the better • [email protected] until the capitalist social order is overturned. Now is the time for a wider discussion of • PO Box 150457, Brooklyn, NY 11215 how we achieve real socialist change. J 2 SOCIALISTALTERNATIVE.ORG•MARCH2016 CAPITALISM Seattle Workers and Youth Push Back Puerto Rico – A Spiraling Crisis of Debt, Capitalism Creates Austerity, and Colonialism Homelessness Rebekah Liebermann While Seattle’s economy booms and corporations like Amazon make super-profits, an acute shortage of affordable housing is forcing more and more people into homelessness. The 2016 One Night Count found 2,942 people sleeping Teddy Shibabaw unemployment is at 12.5%, with unsheltered across Seattle, with poverty at 41% overall and 56% for another 1,500 living on the A homeless encampment in Seattle’s University District. A U.S. colony in all but name, children. The multinational corpora- streets or in their cars in nearby Puerto Rico faces a debt crisis tions that treated Puerto Rico like a million additional funding for emergency resources for the which is the byproduct of over a playground are relatively unscathed.