5LL #5 - DSA, Unions, Immoral Wealth, Appalachian Feminism, Do What You Love

Why the Democratic Socialists of America Won't Stop Growing
Kate Aronoff, In These Times

DSA’s electoral work has attracted national media attention in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez’s historic win. Yet it’s just one part of a bottom-up approach to politics that sees the ballot box and state power as tools for advancing toward a more radically democratic society. Members—most of them millennials, in small towns and big cities in every corner of the country—are engaged in everything from occupying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices to evangelizing about Medicare for All. Many reporters have tried to divine what DSA believes, be that the group’s policy prescriptions or its ideology. DSA, though—to crib from Karl Marx—isn’t looking merely to interpret the world, but to change it, campaign by campaign, door by door. What’s made DSA’s ascendance remarkable is less its analysis of capitalism than its ability to put people angry about capitalism to work.

Why You Should Care About Unions
Meagan Day and Bhaskar Sunkara, The New York Times

Unions improve wages, benefits and working conditions for their members. But it’s not just to members’ advantage. Collective bargaining affects pay standards across entire industries, meaning even nonunion workers benefit. Unions also secure legislation that protects all workers, from workplace safety guidelines to a guaranteed weekend. And they reduce gender and racial wage gaps across industries, which contributes to broader equality in society.

It's Basically Just Immoral to be Rich
A.Q. Smith, Current Affairs

Here is a simple statement of principle that doesn’t get repeated enough: if you possess billions of dollars, in a world where many people struggle because they do not have much money, you are an immoral person. The same is true if you possess hundreds of millions of dollars, or even millions of dollars. Being extremely wealthy is impossible to justify in a world containing deprivation.

There Is a Kind of Feminist Revolution Happening Right Now in Appalachia
Eliza Griswold, The Cut

But these activists I’ve been following in Pittsburgh aren’t just focused on everyday problems — they’re also strategically visionary. Averse to promoting themselves on Instagram or co-opting #MeToo to sell key chains and onesies, they’re about identifying the gamut of interwoven structural inequality and working communally to solve them. I’ve found it thrilling — lately, especially, as a bulwark against the dismal, daily political slog — to follow an emergent activism that doesn’t rely on hashtags and #pussygrabsback T-shirts, or any other trappings of late capitalism. Unlike liberal feminists, who focus principally on issues of gender and representation, feminist socialists see themselves as calling for a much more profound redistribution of power, particularly when it comes to class and race.

In the Name of Love
Miya Tokumitsu, Jacobin

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers. Superficially, DWYL is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who is the audience for this dictum? Who is not?

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