AOC and the Squad’s List of Left-Wing Accomplishments Is Quite Long

  

AOC and the Squad’s List of Left-Wing Accomplishments Is Quite Long

 

BY

BRANKO MARCETIC

As with any elected official, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad should be criticized when needed. But left-wing vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns.

JACOBIN. 

WE POST THE JACOBIN PIECE HERE.

HTTPS://WWW.DSANORTHSTAR.ORG/BLOG/AOC-AND-THE-SQUADS-LIST-OF-LEFT-WING-ACCOMPLISHMENTS-IS-QUITE-LONG

It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days. Once the darlings of the American left, the group of progressive and socialist House members that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and others are as likely to be savaged these days from the Left as they are from the Right. Popular YouTube commentators regularly denounce them as “sellouts,” protesters interrupt their meetings calling them warmongers, and even committed socialists question what the point of the Squad has been.

The lion’s share of this ire has been trained on Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who’s faced relentless criticism since winning office from all sides, sometimes over substantive issues (once failing to show up for an Amazon union rally, casting a vote that denied railworkers the ability to strike), sometimes over remarkably petty ones (conciliatory rhetoric, the positioning of her hands while being arrested).

Much of this was crystallized in a recent critical analysis of Ocasio-Cortez’s record in New York magazine by Freddie deBoer, who charged she has drifted “from radical outsider to Establishment liberal,” making mere “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion that she is a gadfly,” and argued that her and the rest of the Squad’s entry into Congress has been entirely fruitless.

Read more.

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-aoc-the-squad-left-criticism-policy-accomplishments

 

Photo

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in front of the US Capitol, 2022. (Nathan Posner / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A Few Words About democratic socialism

TUE OCT 13, 2015 AT 06:55 PM PDT

A few words about democratic socialism from some democratic socialists

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The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest such group in the United States (formed in 1982 by a merger of the New American Movement—a group I was in—and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, a remnant of the old Socialist Party of America. Today the stated view of DSA (which has formally endorsed Sanders) is this:

Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.

Today, corporate executives who answer only to themselves and a few wealthy stockholders make basic economic decisions affecting millions of people. Resources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.

Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.

Democratic socialists have long rejected the belief that the whole economy should be centrally planned. While we believe that democratic planning can shape major social investments like mass transit, housing, and energy, market mechanisms are needed to determine the demand for many consumer goods.

Obviously, not every democratic socialist is a member of DSA, including Sanders himself. And other democratic socialists take a different view on some matters. But the approach laid out above is clearly not the authoritarian socialism that some would like to make of it.

[Full disclosure, I was a member of New American Movement from 1971 until it merged with DSOC in 1982 to become DSA, a group I have been associated with since then.]

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO METEOR BLADES ON TUE OCT 13, 2015 AT 06:55 PM PDT.

The False Dichotomy Between Movement Building and Electoral Politics

By Tom Gallagher

Most people we might think of as being on the American left don’t generally embrace the idea of “American exceptionalism.” There is one apparent exception to this unexceptional point of view, however, at least in some corners of the American left. That is the notion that in the U.S. – unlike any other country with a reasonably democratic system – electoral politics are somehow only an optional part of a serious political movement. The latest expression of this “only in America” point of view comes in response to Senator Bernie Sanders’s declaration of his intention to run in next year’s Democratic Party presidential primaries.

The objections to his candidacy come in at least two variants – “not now” and “never.” The “never” perspective is articulated by David Swanson in hisCounterPunch article, “Invest in Activism, Not Bernie Sanders.” It’s not that Swanson doesn’t like Sanders. On the contrary, although he allows that he has some disagreements with him – which he characterizes as “imperfections” on Sanders’s part – Swanson considers “the contrast with Clinton ... like day to night.” Nevertheless, he pleads, “please do not give him or Hillary or the wonderful Jill Stein or any other candidate a dime or a moment of your life. Instead, join the movement,” referring to people seeking justice on the streets of Baltimore, trying to abolish nuclear weapons in the halls of the United Nations, and doing any number of other valuable things.

This movement, he reminds us, “has always been the driving force for change.” For instance it “gave women the right to vote” and we should support the efforts of those now “struggling to create fair elections through steps like automatic registration in Oregon, and pushing legislation to provide free media, match small donors, give each voter a tax credit to contribute.”

Obama is not a socialist. But, we are !

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA

75 Maiden Lane / Suite 702 / New York, NY 10038

212-727-8610 / fax 212-608-6955 / www.dsausa.org

Obama is not a socialist, but we are !

The  nation’s largest  democratic socialist organization meets in Emeryville  Oct. 25/27  to plan for :

 Socialism in the Age of Obama.   

The  DSA convention begins with a Bay Area  outreach event -- Building the Next Left -- Rebirth and Renewal,  Friday, October 25, 2013,  Humanist Hall,  390 27^th Street, Oakland. The event features writer John Nichols; Catherine Tactaquin, Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Steve Williams, Co-founder of POWER ( People Organized to Win Employment Rights); and Maria Svart, National Director of Democratic Socialists of America.

Last week  right-wing politics in the Congress forced the nation precariously close to a default on the national debt that could  have produced  a second great economic crisis.  The Democratic Socialists of America view this political corruption and cynicism as an opportunity to organize a New Left -- a powerful political movement left of the Democrats working with labor, workers organizations, immigrant groups and social movements to --

Rebuild a Participatory Democracy in a Multicultural U.S.

Speakers at the convention include: John Nichols, Tom Hayden, union leaders Jose La Luz and Michael Lighty, immigrant rights activists Catherine Tactaquin and David Bacon,  Joe Schwartz, Maria Svart, Steve Williams and more.

Hartmann: Meet a Real Democratic Socialist