Against the Current

Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The March/April issue features the Educational Crisis in California and the Unfolding Fightback with articles by students and workers in the University of California system. For International Women's Day there are reviews on gender, sexuality and liberation by Catherine Sameh, Chloe Tribich and Kate Flynn. Other articles include Malik Miah on Obama Forgets the Black Community, Michael Steven Smith on Lost Liberties in the Age of Obama and Kim Moody on the Crisis and Potential in Labor's Wars and coverage on Honduras and Gaza.
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International Viewpoint is the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International. IV is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.

Put a Socialist in the Senate!

LaBotz, Buckeye Socialist, Senate 2010

Dan La Botz, a 64-year old Cincinnati school teacher, has filed petitions with the Ohio Secretary of State to become the candidate of the Socialist Party for the U.S. Senate. La Botz, who needed 500 signatures to get on the Socialist Party primary ballot, filed petitions with approximately 1,200 signatures on Thursday, Feb. 18. La Botz, a long time labor and social movement activist, is the candidate of the Socialist Party of Ohio which is the state organization of the Socialist Party USA.

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Keep up with the campaign!"
DanLaBotz.com

Buttons to Build the Movement

Order these eye-catching buttons to spread the demand for social and economic justice. If you don't have paypal, email us!


Reads Bail out People, not Wall Street!. Around the edge, these 2 1/8" buttons read "Free Health Care," "Defend Public Services," "Living Wage Jobs," "Free Higher Education," "Troops Home Now," "Rebuild the Gulf Coast," and "Affordable Housing."

Bright orange 1 1/2" buttons boldly demand: "Bring the Troops Home Now!" Wear one everywhere to start a conversation about why US occupation can never be a force for liberation, and people's needs should come before the massive military budget.

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Produced during the massive immigrant rights demonstrations of 2006, these 2 1/8" buttons read, in Spanish and English: ¡exigimos Paz, Legalización, y Trabajos para Todos! we demand Peace, Legalization, and Jobs for All!

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Videos from Solidarity's Educational Conference

November 14-15 in New York City, Solidarity held a successful conference featuring engaging talks on a number of topics. Click here to view these videos from "Their Crisis, Our Movements"

- Crisis of Capitalism, Challenge to the Movements (David McNally, New Socialist Group)
- The New Imperialism and The Global Fightback (Vivek Chibber, Christy Thornton, Jonah McCallister-Erickson)
- The State of Resistance in Communities & the Workplace (Normahiram Perez, Steve Downs, Penelope Duggan)
- Race and National Liberation Under Obama (Glen Ford, Lalit Clarkston)

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One Year of Obama and the Democrats’ Debacle

Last fall, in the discussion that produced our analysis of “Obama After 200 Days,” we said it would be premature to speak of a “crisis” for the administration. A year after the euphoric 2009 inauguration, it no longer looks premature. People who looked to Obama and the Democrats for leadership are bitterly disappointed, and a very peculiar brand of rightwing politics has seized the initiative.
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Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left

As part of the preparation for our 2008 Convention, members of SOLIDARITY have begun a political document describing some perspectives for socialist renewal in the twenty-first century. We welcome responses to this initial draft of the document. Some of the themes here have also been developed in Solidarity's Founding Statement and our 1997 pamphlet, “Socialist Organization Today.”

— Introduction
— Social Movements over the Last Two Decades
— Regroupment, Refounding and the Arc of Resistance
— Refounding a New Left: Next Generations & Their Experiences
— The Tasks and Possibilities of a U.S. Refounded Left
— Refounding the Left: Taking Our Past Into Our Future

New Pamphlet: Hell on Wheels

New from Solidarity! Long time transit worker activist Steve Downs has written a pamphlet charting the twenty year story of New Directions, a rank and file caucus in New York City's transit union that he helped build and develop - including the challenges of keeping the rank and file democracy movement alive after New Directions won control of the local.

Read an interview on Zmag.org
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From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Justice

New from Solidarity's Feminist Commission, this leaflet responds to the right wing attack on reproductive freedom and argues that the movement must go beyond "pro-choice" to true reproductive justice. This socialist and anti-racist feminist agenda would take up issues such as access to health and child care, forced sterilization, and the division of "productive" and "reproductive" labor.
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Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left - An Introduction



As part of the preparation for our 2008 Convention, members of SOLIDARITY have begun a political document describing some perspectives for socialist renewal in the twenty-first century. Below is an excerpt from an initial draft of this document. Some of the themes here have also been developed in Solidarity's Founding Statement and our 1997 pamphlet, “Socialist Organization Today.”
T

he opening of the 21st century finds the global working class, social movements, and revolutionary left in disarray. Yet, another world – one freed of exploitation, oppression, war and environmental catastrophe – is possible, and the need to fight for that world is as great as ever. This document attempts to summarize our experiences as members of Solidarity and to draw these lessons into suggestions for today. We lay this on the table and reach out to other anti-capitalist activists, organizers and organizations also desirous of a larger, more powerful grouping committed to revolutionary change. Collective work and analysis is necessary to generalize our experiences and gain a greater understanding of the world we live in. Changing this alienating, dehumanizing profit-driven political and economic system requires an accurate understanding of our world and location of pressure points that can create openings for radical change. Socialists need organization to be effective. Since our founding in 1986, Solidarity has seen itself as an organization devoted to the rebirth of the left in the United States. At that time the U.S. organized socialist left was approaching its low ebb.

In this 40th anniversary of the revolutionary tumult of 1968, it is important to recollect how then the worldwide upsurge spawned a proliferation of socialist organizations and parties, many attached to a particular country of “already existing socialism” (whether China, Cuba, Albania or the USSR). The overriding belief at the time was that the revolutionary process would continue to unfold. There were genuine differences on the left in this era, between radicals who identified with different historical currents (supporters of the USSR, of China, of Trotskyism, of various social-democratic trends), which led to legitimate ideological competition between different organizations. Too often, however, this spilled over into an unfortunate competition even among those who adhered to the same historical perspectives, leading to unnecessary factional warfare and splits.

By the mid-‘80s, it was apparent that this cycle of radicalization had come to an end. At the time of Solidarity’s founding most of the organizations of the New Communist Movement had closed up shop. The feminist and Black liberation movements had ebbed, as had other people of color-led movements, leaving behind a rich legacy of leadership and ideas.

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  1. Social Movements over the Last Two Decades

     “The re-emergence of the civil rights movement following World War II inspired and propelled forward all of the oppositional and liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s...
    For draft-age youth in the 1960s opposition to the Vietnam War was a pivotal experience...
    While the U.S. immigrant population had been stagnant throughout the 1960s, by 2004 it had risen fourfold (approximately 34.2 million)...
    Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, campus activists developed networks to coordinate labor solidarity, environmental, antiwar, global justice and anti-racist activism...”

  2. Regroupment, Refounding and the Arc of Resistance

    “In the decade of our founding, people on the left began talking to each other across ideological lines, in ways that hadn’t happened for a long time – with a common realization that the “party-building” of the previous years had effectively collapsed, and had been abusive in significant ways to the human beings committed to it...”

  3. Refounding a New Left: Next Generations & Their Experiences

     “The period from 1999 to 2008 has created a new situation for remnants of the U.S. revolutionary left and the new progressive and popular movements...”

  4. The Tasks and Possibilities of a U.S. Refounded Left

    “U.S. revolutionaries need to understand how global capitalism is evolving, how that affects the confidence of the working class and social movements, and how those changes reveal new fault lines. We also need to support and participate in working-class and community-based struggles and social movements...”

  5. Refounding the Left: Taking Our Past Into Our Future

     “A forceful renewal of the socialist left is not entirely a matter of our will alone. It ultimately depends on developments of a more massive scale both here and around the world that in one way or another pose a significant challenge to the capitalist agenda from a left direction...”