Portal Blog

In the months since October 7th many labor unions have struggled with how to speak out in solidarity with Palestinians, in the face of backlash from workplace management, within their rank and file, and from external critics. The pressure to stay silent is great and the consequences have included losing jobs, funding, and entire careers.

In a June 17th email to supporters, a day after being endorsed by the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), Jesse Cornett, City Council candidate in District 3, accused PAT of “hate speech” for using the phrase “from the river to the sea” at an event. PAT was already facing heavy backlash against a posted (and now-removed) curriculum on Palestine, which was the focus of numerous local news articles in the Oregonian, Willamette Week, and others. We strongly disagree with Candidate Cornett’s political position, and stand with Palestinians and PAT.

In the context used by the Portland Association of Teachers, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of other organizations and events, the phrase “from the river to the sea” has been used as a call for Palestinian self-determination and an end to decades of occupation and injustice. This phrase long precedes the events of the past eight months. Attempts to claim that the phrase is evidence of bigoted beliefs are either misinformed or made in bad faith. Not only does Cornett’s attack smear generations of Palestinians struggling under occupation, it erases the nearly 40,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. His reference to the right-wing-led censure of Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, as justification for his position is deeply cynical and offensive. 

Portland DSA stands with the Portland Association of Teachers’ right to free speech and vehemently oppose any person or organization which tries to repress their speech, especially on this urgent issue of the genocide in Gaza. We will not ignore calls from our Jewish comrades in Jewish Voices for Peace, who have eloquently laid out their positions in this letter of support for PAT. We encourage you to read the entire letter and share it with others, especially those who may not be aware of the Jewish movement for peace. Portland DSA ultimately decided that since we are a multi-ethnic and secular/multi-faith organization that it would not be appropriate to undersign the JVP statement, which included phrasing such as, “As Jews, we believe that everyone has a right to be safe. And here we ask Jewish students and parents to make a distinction between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable.”

Portland DSA supports educators in asserting their political/moral obligation to contradict the one-sided, pro-Israeli perspective shared by the US government, mainstream media and news outlets, and a vast number of US institutions with financial ties resting on the success of Israel’s genocidal mission.

While the US spends billions of dollars on aid and weapons for Israel (over $12b this year alone) our public school students, parents and teachers are told that funding is not available for supplies, facilities, or fair wages.  A major function of suppressing speech around Palestine is to obscure this contradiction and to distract us from the real reason that we can’t have appropriate funding for education: the greed of the capitalist class.

Those of us in the labor movement entered this fight not just to improve our working conditions, and the conditions of the people we serve, but to exercise our collective power over our work and what we make.  The recent successes of organizing in the tech industry have resulted in remarkable successes with highly motivated yet un-unionized workers at Intel. Organizing alongside workers with our BDS and labor working groups, DSA played a crucial role in supporting those workers to pressure Intel to call off construction plans for a manufacturing plant in Israel. The labor movement does have the power to impact the events in Gaza, in spite of what capitalist education bureaucrats would like you to believe. Those of us on the left must make our positions public, to share in the work of solidarity and embolden others to do so in the process. It is our responsibility as socialists to stand firmly with teachers and support their right to teach and contextualize the historical and present conflict over land in Palestine through school curriculum, in whatever ways their members collectively deem appropriate. 

We unequivocally support PAT in their internal process of developing their classroom materials and trust their experience and expertise as educators as they work to support and nurture students of all backgrounds in their classrooms, without the hostile scrutiny of the press, or politicians hoping to elevate their profile. 

Politicians without clear platforms or policy ideas will do their best to create a “controversy” to generate press coverage, demonstrating a lack of political principles. These actions should indicate clearly to us how the candidate would behave once in office, and how they would, or would not, represent the people of Portland.

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-reporters-fired-pro-palestinian-remarks-1837834

https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2024/06/17/city-council-candidate-endorsed-by-teachers-union-asks-it-to-stop-using-phrase-from-the-river-to-the-sea/

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/22/academic_freedom

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The Portland Democratic Socialists of America expresses our outrage at the murder of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police Department. This murder is part of the systemic violence of police everywhere against people of color and the working class. We offer our condolences to the Nichols family, and we stand in solidarity with the black community of Memphis and with all others protesting for an end to police brutality and racist violence.

55 years ago, civil rights leader and democratic socialist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis while organizing with striking sanitation workers. As socialists, we recognize the essential task of grappling with the profound interactions of capitalism and racism. We believe that anti-racist organizing rooted in class struggle is how we can fight back.

Police are the armed wing of the capitalist state, and their role in society is to enforce exploitation. It is police who break strikes, evict families from their homes, harass the houseless, jail the poor, and attack those who are suffering. Police do not act as a service for public safety, but rather as an occupying army, hurting those who need help, and defending those who cause harm.

The only way to rid our society of the capitalist police is the self emancipation of the working class into a socialist society. Protests, no matter how powerful, will not be enough. To win black liberation, the working class and oppressed people must organize and take control of society. The best way forward is an alliance between organized labor and the movement for black liberation — the coordination of an independent, anti-racist, working-class movement that fights to overturn racial -capitalism at the workplace, in the streets, and on the ballot line.

To meet this moment, protest energy must develop into political movement which can sustain itself. We cannot rely on the ruling class to deliver reforms.

To that end, Portland DSA calls for the following initial steps:

1. The immediate reallocation of 50% of the PPB budget to fund housing, community services, education and healthcare
2. The immediate establishment of a democratically elected oversight board empowered to investigate officers and hold the PPB to account
3. End the war on drugs and tough on crime policies, provide full addiction care, and decriminalization of drug use
4. An end to the sweeps of homeless encampments and the public provision of shelter to those in need
5. The establishment of a labor slate for the 2024 city council elections, unified around proposals to reallocate money from the bloated police budget to provide for public services and fund housing, food, education, and healthcare.

This work must begin with public support for protests, and a movement to improve the lives of the most marginalized and oppressed. We must build a fighting socialist movement for black liberation.

Organized workers can overturn the racist, capitalist system. They can provide the winning leverage to Black Lives Matter.

The only way to win justice is to expand these protests into a mass movement. To achieve this, we must convince workers to join the struggle — unions and workers must become the strongest opponents of racism. This means a conscious project of reform within existing labor unions, and a coordination with organizations rooted in communities of color. We must also create our own, enduring socialist structures. And we must wholeheartedly support this protest movement.

With solidarity and shared struggle to guide us, a better world is possible.

In solidarity,

Portland DSA Steering Committee

Tax The Rich is a seasoned Portland DSA working group where we think about how to move money and power from the rich to the working class. We’re a rag-tag group of amateurs and academics – all levels of expertise (or lack thereof) are welcome! We have several main categories of the work we do: wealth taxes, work on the city budget, supporting coalition campaigns, and tax education.

So far, our wealth tax work has been remarkably successful! In 2021-2022, we saw the first $208 million dollars flow from the wealthy to fund universal preschool. Our universal preschool campaign, which we worked on beginning in 2018 and through the passage of the Preschool For All measure in November of 2020, is good for kids, families, and workers. Through our work on the preschool campaign, we learned that although the tax code is famously skewed in favor of the wealthy, given the democratic choice, Multnomah County voters are more than ready to change that.

We’re also not slowing down in our ballot measure and taxation policy work! We’re already working on our next wealth tax, which would tax extreme “intangible” wealth, which includes stocks and bonds. This type of wealth is currently only taxed when it’s sold, or sometimes through the estate/inheritance tax, which means that the wealthy hold onto their money tax-free. That’s not very fair when the rest of us pay taxes on our wealth via income taxes and property taxes.

Our proposed intangible wealth tax (or an “extreme wealth tax”, as we’ve taken to calling it),  would be a 1% tax on extreme wealth over 10 million dollars, bringing  in about 2.6 billion dollars in revenue annually. But, we still have work to do: most importantly, we’re still trying to figure out what the tax should fund. Our research crew has discussed what $10 million would mean for housing, preschool and education, mental health and addiction services, and more, but we’re still mulling any and all possibilities. If you have ideas of what this tax should fund, please reach out and tell us about them!

When we’re not coming up with new taxes, we’re working on other projects. One of our long-standing traditions is advocating around the city budget. Each spring, we do our best to let Portlanders know what’s in the proposed budget, and encourage people to take action. We make shareable and easily digestible social media content, create phone scripts that Portlanders can use to call the councilors, as well as template emails for the phone-shy. Some people even get empowered to testify in front of the council!

We can’t afford to step away from the budget work this year. Over the last few years, our conservative city council has decided to spend our hard-earned tax dollars in ways that make the Portland Police Bureau and the Portland Business Alliance very happy. With this year’s even more conservative city council, the budget is probably going to reflect their cozy relationships, rather than finding ways to serve the actual needs of Portlanders. Join us for our annual deep dive into the budget, and brainstorm ways to tell our council to fund a budget that serves all of us, not just the rich and powerful.

Of course, the fight towards economic justice is too big to do alone, and so we’re proud to support all fights that work towards a more just Oregon. We helped our friends at Eviction Representation For All by developing a capital gains tax that will fully fund legal representation for all renters in eviction court, as well as other tenant services. We’ll be doing our part to ensure that their measure is successful on the ballot this spring. Additionally, we’re finding ways to support OPAL’s very cool fareless Trimet campaign, which you can learn more about here.

Lastly, our educational work is central to much of what we do. Our goal across our social media pages is to make tax policy interesting and maybe even fun. We mostly do that through social media content: we’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! After all, it’s hard to convince people that we need to change tax policy unless they understand how and why it’s broken in the first place.

If any of this work sounds interesting to you, we’d love to have you! We’re really excited about our February social, which is at 8pm on Thursday, February 9th at Worker’s Tap: come hang out! Of course, we also have our regular meetings every second Thursday of the month at 6:30pm. These meetings are hybrid, so you can join us in person at the IWW, or virtually over Zoom, whichever works better for your schedule.  If you have any questions or comments for us, feel free to reach out to co-chairs Emerson or Lauren on Mattermost, or email us at taxtherichpdx@gmail.com!

By Jamie Partridge, secretary PDX DSA Labor

For years now, the Portland DSA Labor group has sponsored Socialist Job Fairs, about every six months. Up to fifty socialists, half DSA members and half we are just meeting for the first time, show up to connect with about fifteen workplace organizers, looking for the right job. A job organizing with other socialists: to form a union or energize an existing union.

We manage to place about ten participants each time. At organized companies like UPS, Hyatt Hotel, City of Portland, Maletus Beverage, US Postal Service, Burgerville. etc. At unionizing companies like Starbucks and Amazon. And of those ten, some don’t stick around.

Now we are launching a Socialist Workers Support Group, to provide regular mentoring, group support and workplace organizer training and political education about socialists in unions.

In previous eras socialists were often respected workplace leaders. These radicals helped organize workers into a collective force that went beyond workplace fights and into the political arena. That is much less common today. The left often finds itself on the outside looking in when workplace struggle erupts. Socialists are more likely to be organizing strike support than leading strikes.

This divide has weakened both workers’ movements and the left. The socialist movement is stronger when tied to workers’ movements, and vice versa. Rebuilding the link between them is key to revitalizing both, and to keeping our movement grounded in the reality of workers’ lives.

Socialists should root themselves in the labor union movement. Not as supporters from afar or paid staff, but as rank-and-file workers. Not as saviors with all the answers, but as organizers for what Marx called the “self-emancipation of the working class.”

Consider the advantages of a union job that matches your talents, and of choosing one together with fellow DSAers. The pay is decent, and the work itself may be fulfilling, too. All our political work isn’t shunted off to nights and weekends; you can be talking with your co-workers every day. There’s no mismatch between your political life and what you do to keep body and soul together.

Find us at https://tinyurl.com/pdxdsalabor