Several reasons why not to jump on the DSA bandwagon

 (Self-disclosure:  I was a member of DSA for thirty years, from March of 1996 until I resigned in March 2026 in protest of DSA not being as it had once been, an organization devoted to socialist democracy.  Ever since 2016 it had become increasingly ultraleft and pro-Stalinist, and I could no longer be a member in good conscience--GF) 

Hamilton Nolan, one of the chief labor writers for In These Times, a now pro-DSA far left socialist newsmagazine that used to be social-democratic (and was arguably better when it was), has an article in the August-September 2026 issue, “Unions Should Hop on the DSA Train,”[1] on why today’s U.S. trade unions should enthusiastically support DSA and support its “extremely pro-union” (Nolan’s words and emphasis) candidates and program.  Nolan goes on to add that U.S. unions, notably in New York City, which is the geographical focus of his article, “are not really ‘progressive’ as much as they are full members of the Democratic Party power structure,”[2] which he sees as a mixed bag—conferring real benefits, to be sure, but also tying labor unions to the Democratic Party Establishment.  Which Nolan feels should be broken up by the left, and that unions should unite with DSA to do precisely that. 

 

Nolan focuses primarily on leftist Democratic candidate Claire Valdez, who had been a UAW organizer prior to becoming a House of Representatives candidate, even as he concedes that her defeated opponent in the Democratic primary, Antonio Reynoso, was “a strong progressive himself, and would have likely been as pro-labor as anyone in Congress.”  Valdez is the only one of the three famous New York City Democratic primary candidates who had the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and won that Nolan focuses on—perhaps because, not only does she have a prior union background, she also does not carry the excessively ultraleft political baggage Avilla Chevalier carried from her earlier social media posts (where she said “fuck Kamala Harris,” questioned the validity of interracial relationships, and urged seizure of the “means of production,” among other things); and Valdez is also a member of DSA, where the third candidate, Brad Lander, is not.  But what Nolan leaves out is that all of these “progressive” candidates were running not against Democratic Party centrists, but against fellow progressives, all of them; and it wasn’t labor or economic issues that propelled the three to victory, it was accusing their opponents of being pro-Israel and accepting money from AIPAC.  In other words, the three left candidates made their campaigns a referendum on Israel’s war against Hamas, and garnered their strongest support from the white, college-educated youth living in gentrified neighborhoods and working as members of the PMC, the Professional-Managerial Class.  The more traditional working-class voters and nonwhite racial minorities tended to vote for their opponents, according to the voting records of the neighborhoods the candidates carried.[3]

 

So, the Democratic Party primary races didn’t pit socialist-minded progressives against centrists or DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) as much as they did the further left against the already-substantially-left.  It was not a gain of new left faces so much as a shuffling of those already progressive in the first place—with Valdez, Lander, and Avilla Chevalier only somewhat further to the left in actual stated politics aside from Israel than their already-left opponents.

 

Nolan also touts another reason for his enthusiasm for Valdez:  that she wants to introduce legislation “for the federal government to fund union organizing.”  He notes this bill “has little real momentum in the Democratic Party,” but that, somehow, if labor unions would get behind it, it could most likely become law, even if other pieces of pro-labor legislation, such as the PRO Act, don’t.  Of course, what’s to prevent counter-legislation to Valdez’s proposal to “level the playing field” by providing a role for the federal government to fund organizing of employers’ associations or chambers of commerce?!  Hamilton Nolan doesn’t say, just as he doesn’t address the Constitutional challenges that might well arise.  But then, DSA is remarkably silent on Constitutional questions in any serious way, even as it cavalierly advocates scrapping the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights?), abolishing the Senate, and greatly expanding the House of Representatives, as it states in its program as adopted at its last Convention in 2025.

 

DSA supports far, far more than standard progressive issues such as Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and heavily taxing the rich.  It also supports a raft of programmatic proposals that are bound to be controversial, to say the least, among ordinary working-class voters, unionized or not (and the vast majority are not unionized at present, of course).  These include abolishing both police and prisons, fully open borders for the U.S., abolition of ICE, and no deportations for any reason.  Not reforming the police or providing social workers and mental health professionals to help defuse police-citizen confrontations, not making prisons more humane and enabling them to be better rehabilitators, not reforming ICE and correcting its abuses, not better immigration policies and border safeguard procedures, but outright abolition across the board—that is DSA’s fully stated position, which even many socialists would regard as ridiculously ultraleft and unworkable. 

 

Certainly I would, as a democratic socialist, a “mere” social democrat who looks for inspiration for the kind of socialism I want to the New Deal and the Scandinavian countries, as well as the welfarism of Europe; and not to the authoritarian “socialisms” of the former U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, or Cuba; and certainly not to North Korea, which DSA’s International Committee says we should be allowed to visit as tourists—and see first-hand the North Korean Potemkin Villages on the official guided tours??

 

But back to workers, who may often be economically populist (hence, supportive of measures today such as Social Security and Medicare, and who could be supportive, thus, of Medicare for All, and even the Green New Deal, as it would deliver lower energy prices); but they are also often socially and culturally conservative, and yes, oftentimes even given to racism and an attitude of “as long as it doesn’t happen to me, I don’t object to it.” 

 

Such is hardly likely to bring ordinary working people to embrace DSA, which, by its own internal polling, has a membership that is both overwhelmingly white and college-educated, far more likely to be PMC rather than traditional working class (only 4% of DSA’s membership was blue-collar in 2021), and while its members identify strongly as “working class,” are not likely to be working-class themselves, except in the broad sense of being employees, oftentimes in the arts, the non-profits, and the professions, and in jobs that require a college degree.[4] So, it’s a socialism that DSA has built around the frustrated ambitions of the PMC.  Which is not to say these frustrations aren’t legitimate, and don’t thwart people, and even cause harm (look, e.g., at adjunct faculty, Ph.D. holders barely eking out a living by onerously having to teach multiple college courses, sometimes at multiple schools; or liberal arts college graduates who are delivery drivers, and thus part of the precariat).  But this is a different appeal than the bread-and-butter socialism of traditional socialist movements, which were overwhelmingly working class in composition, and were usually shunned by the college educated.

 

Then there is the matter of Stalinism within DSA, which complements its ultraleftism.  Currently, DSA is taking its political strategy from the Popular Front era of the Communist Party in the late 1930s and the 1940s, when the CP tried to present itself as just impatient, thoroughgoing liberals who worked actively in the Democratic Party of FDR.  DSA emphasizes running now as Democrats and left-wing challengers in the Democratic primaries, while also simultaneously wishing to eventually form a third party of the left; however, that is off into the indefinite future.  But DSA’s political program, as we’ve shown above, is ultraleft, so that currently DSA is using a Popular Front policy to advance a political program more akin to the ultraleft period of the CP, Third Period Communism of the early 1930s, when the Comintern directed a hard left turn by world Communists, and declared infamously, “Fascism and social democracy are twins.”  William Z. Foster, a prominent CPer back then obligingly contributed a book outlining Third Period Communism’s aims, Toward Soviet America.  In it, he wrote, in Chapter V, “Under the dictatorship [of the proletariat established by the Communist Party] all the capitalist parties—Republican, Democratic, Progressive, Socialist, etc.—will be liquidated, the Communist party functioning alone as the Party of the toiling masses. Likewise, will be dissolved all other organizations that are political props of the bourgeois rule, including chambers of commerce, employers’ associations, rotary clubs, American Legion, Y.M.C.A., and such fraternal orders as the Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks, Knights of Columbus, etc.”   (Found in William Z. Foster, Marxists Internet Archive, marxists.org)  Certainly then, no electoral democracy or freedom of association as we’d understand the terms!

 

But the overwhelmingly young DSAers of today (73% of its members are Millennials or younger as of 2021, according to the North Star survey) have no sense of left history, and know little, if anything, about the various permutations of the Communist Party, and are often enamored with Marxist-Leninist or Leninist-Trotskyist “vanguardism.”  Consider that the caucus representing the majority of members of DSA’s National Committee (DSA’s leading body between conventions), the Red Star caucus, a Maoist/Marxist-Leninist tendency (but all the leading caucuses in DSA nowadays are essentially Marxist-Leninist or Leninist-Trotskyist), states boldly and publicly, “We do not condemn Hamas, and neither should you.”[5]  In fact, one of DSA’s Co-Chairs, Megan Romer, is a member of the Red Star caucus!  This is indeed a far cry from the DSA of yesteryear, which was much smaller, but undoubtedly more politically astute, and was committed to a social-democratic version of democratic socialism, what DSA founder Michael Harrington called the “left wing of the feasible.”  The feasible, in the here-and-now.  Not ultraleft programmatic measures and postures, not rampant Israel-phobia, not a pro-Hamas posture, not uncritical support given to repressive regimes that call themselves “socialist” or allege “anti-imperialism,” not a blind Third Worldism and automatic support extended to the Global South; in short, not much of anything in DSA politics today,  This is, in summary, why the left and the labor movement today, or at least its saner sections, should not automatically endorse DSA or  jump on the DSA bandwagon.

 

 

 

 

 

   

---

[1] Online at https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-unions-dsa-democratic-socialists-of-america

[2] Unless otherwise attributed, all quoted passages are from Nolan’s August-September 2026 In These Times article.

[3] From the Substack column, “The Lamppost,” of Anton Alterman, a democratic socialist professor in New York City, this from his June 30, 2026, column, “Genocide again: Goldman, Poetica, Anti-Semitism “:  “Chevalier, a Columbia-educated black professional of Dominican heritage, lost significantly in majority black, majority Hispanic and majority low-income areas; she won overwhelmingly in young, college-educated, higher-income areas. Brad Lander won an overwhelming victory with every constituency except working class neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, though Goldman [his primary opponent] also prevailed in higher income Wall Street areas (he is, after all, one of them, the heir of a Levi Strauss fortune). Claire Valdez won handily with everyone except poor and black voters; Antonio Reynoso outpolled her by a full 51 percentage points among black voters. This is the constituency for DSA ideologues who run primarily on anti-Israel platforms: white, disaffected college grads.”. lamppost@substack.com

 

[4] Taken from the DSA membership survey of 2021, as provided by the North Star Caucus within DSA, https://www.dsanorthstar.org/uploads/1/1/8/2/118222942/2021_member_survey_gdc_report.pdf

[5] Organizational statement of the Red Star caucus.  The quote is the title of the statement.  https://redstarcaucus.org/we-do-not-condemn-hamas/

The Current Crisis in US Education

 

Leading articles in the Atlantic and New York magazine have laid it out in stark and unsettling detail:  student reading and math scores on the standardized NAEP tests issued to US students portray US students’ math and reading scores at their lowest point since 2015, after consistently falling since then.  A direct contrast to the situation prior to 2015, when math and reading scores were consistently rising, indicating that US students were reading better and were doing math better consistently.  Now they are doing much, much worse.  Not the top Tenth Percentile students, who are well achieving, and are consistently staying that way.  No, the worst affected are those in the lower percentiles, who are getting worse, less able to do math, less able to read at grade level, much less at adult level.  Which means, they will be more and more likely to be shut out of the job market for lack or requisite scores.  Since they are now among the most marginalized, the most subject to class and racial disparities, the most likely to live in resource-starved neighborhoods, the American problem with equity and its achievement will only get worse.

 

Many reasons are given for this decline, of course, but they tend to be presented as sole causes, rather than what they really are, a series of interlinked causes.  Among them are:  isolation and reliance on inadequate virtual learning during COVID, the rise of smartphone use, antipathy by teachers and parents alike to the standardized tests of the No Child Left Behind Act, which were often seen as punitive, with low scores on such tests leading to punishments.  Also, the clout of teachers’ unions, who want standardized pay and benefits for all teachers against merit-based pay for good teachers.  (It’s still the case that the poorest qualified college enrollees are the ones who go into education, and many a college professor has complained that his/her worst students are the Education majors.)  To which I would add, schools, especially public schools, becoming the dumping ground for all kinds of societal problems and neglect, and are thus unrealistically expect to address long-festering social problems and issues of equity, equality, and equality of opportunity while also teaching to an acceptable level needed pedagogical skills, especially in science, math, literature, and reading.  But such are impossible demands to meet, and unsurprisingly, in the name of equity merit and emphasis on developing talented individuals are allowed to ignominiously fall by the wayside.  But as economist Noah Smith recently pointed out in his Substack column, “Noahpinion,” allow merit and talent to be shortchanged in the name of equity, demanding equal results, no matter how specious, rather than equality of opportunity, shortchanges all students, https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/bad-education-is-a-terrible-way-to?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email.  

As Karl Marx himself pointed out in the “Critique of the Gotha Program,” not all individuals are equal to the same quality and quantity of work, which was his justification for the pay method of the first stage of communism, “socialism,”:  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work,” in contradistinction to “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  But Marx here was only concerned with physical capacity for work, even though he should’ve added, mental and intellectual capacity as well, for not all are equally intellectually gifted.  Gifts are widespread across the human race, but they are most unevenly distributed.  So, the bottom line is, when we truncate the especially gifted in the name of an “equity” that only ensures the triumph of mediocrity, we only shortchange ourselves as a human race and as a human society.  Noir can we sanguinely expect AI to fill in for what we have lost in basic cognitive math and reading skills.  AI is no substitute for human ability and knowledge, and is itself frequently wrong.  If we humans lack the cognitive skills to recognize AI error, we only perpetuate it.  There was a famous experiment several years ago, involving students given a math test where they were allowed to use calculators, but the calculators were set to be 20% off.  Yet, for many of the students, face with the cognitive dissonance engendered between what their own cognition told them was the correct answer, and what the calculator said was the correct answer, chose the calculator’s answer instead!  Not at all auspicious.  That is why teaching critical reading and math skills is vitally important not only to the US educational system, but to any educational system.  It is time to get back to the “basics” on teaching and learning, and perhaps, not allow or insist that our public schools address all social problems, a task they are not prepared to undertake.  (Private schools, and charter schools, have the leeway to address which social problems they will address, and which they will blithely ignore.)  Equity is a worthy goal, but it is not the only goal.  And it will not happen overnight, but will take some time.  For a start, we’d be better off emphasizing equality of opportunity rather than equal results.  As a good psychotherapist I had once put it, “If it weren’t slow, it wouldn’t be real.”  Real, sustainable change takes time.  That which is easily and facilely achieved can be easily and facilely undone, also.  Lest we forget.

 

I’m a socialist, and while I believe in equality and equity, I also believe in utilizing talent, ability, merit, and skills, and enabling as many as possible to attain them.  If this means unequal results in an equality of opportunity, so be it.  It’s like the Superbowl:  no matter how evenly matched the two teams are, at the end of the game there is a winner, and a loser.  They can’t both win.  Yes, we do need a socialist meritocracy, a Jeffersonian “Aristocracy of talent in a democracy of opportunity.”  We d need to encourage our best and our brightest, and we can by providing readily-available access to excellence, which is what the New York City magnet schools and CUNY system of higher education have done so well over the decades—enabling marginalized, working-class, and Jewish students access to achievement and excellence, giving them the chance to excel.  No, they didn’t all become real-estate moguls, but so many of them became distinguished scholars, professors and teachers, and even Nobel Prize winners.  This is what we should be aiming at as socialists, a meritocracy based on equality of opportunity, not penalizing the meritorious and talented because it doesn’t elevate mediocrity and inability to achieve in a false and spurious sense of “equity.”    

Christianity, Immorality/Sin, Theology and Atheism

 

(Selected indignation, insight, witticism and commentary from me, an ex-Catholic atheist.)

 

Say It Loud and Clear!

 

The question professed Christians cannot answer: "Why do you Christians sin so much?" Isn't the God you believe in, once you embrace him (or is it her, or it?), supposed to infuse you with the Divine Grace to make you stop sinning?! I had a Catholic priest tell me, as a lame apologetic, "We're all sinners." To which we "immoral" atheists can reply, "We may have 'sinned' by masturbating, or having sexual intercourse outside of marriage, but none of us sinned by—

Catholic priest-pedophilia (or by Protestant pedophilia), nor by its deliberate cover-up by Catholic bishops and cardinals!"

 

Christian Liars

 

Of the Ten Commandments, both the Protestant Ninth Commandment, and the Catholic Eighth Commandment, forbid bearing false witness against one’s neighbor, i.e., lying.  Yet Christians, notably both Protestant and Catholic, lie all the time, especially when 1.) it’s to their advantage to do so; 2.) to get back at someone; or 3.) to curry favor with a third party; or of course, for any combination of the above.  They’ll even lie under oath, perjure themselves, if they think they can get away with it.  They’ll lie shamelessly, banking on God’s forgiveness.  What hypocrites!

 

So Many Moral Pieces of Shit…

 

…believe in God and the Savior Jesus, and look forward to Divine Forgiveness for their transgressions when they die, or even before, even as they freely commit moral atrocities against others, in direct contravention of Christ’s own admonition to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”!

 

Had a Chat with Satan Today

 

He affirmed that he likes me, and thinks I’m really worthwhile.  He also gave me a number of good things over the years:  metal music, “playing with myself,” recreational sex, just to name a few.  But Jesus Christ, meh.  While he says he loves me unconditionally, he also says I’m going to burn in hell forever for being an ex-Catholic atheist!  As for Jesus’ Christian followers, they were notable for consistently treating me like shit.  They are the analogues of the “good Jews” Jesus himself called “hypocrites,” “Pharisees,” "whited sepulchers."

 

Heretical

 

Did Satan create Catholic priest-pedophiles, deliberately covering-up Catholic bishops and Cardinals, indifferent-to-priest-pedophilia Popes, and in my case personally, booze-soaked unctuous hypocrite Catholic priests such as my high school principal?  No, theologically speaking!  According to Christian (not just Catholic, but including Catholic) theology, all these and even more nefarious evils were created by omniscient, omnipotent, infallible and benevolent God himself, not only out of his unconditional love for all humanity (even as he sends many humans to the torment of burning in hell forever!), but also, as part of his—Perfect Divine Plan.

 

The Gospel According to Johnny B. Goode

(No, Chuck Berry, I do not apologize!)

 

To paraphrase the Gospel of John—

 

“For God so loved the world he gave it Catholic priest-pedophiles and deliberately covering-up bishops, Cardinals, and even Popes; Prosperity Gospel hucksters such as Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar; Antichrist Christians such as Donald ‘I’m proud to be a Christian’ Trump; Popes Francis-and- Leo XIV-bashing Catholics such as JD Vance, and much more.  Further, in his Yahweh incarnation, God gave us Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and those nasty West Bank Jewish settlers; in his Allah incarnation gave us Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, and Islamism; and in his Catholic incarnation, gave us the Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo, the ecclesiastical murder of Giordano Bruno for teaching modern science, and the burning alive of tens of thousands during the Middle Ages for alleged witchcraft, for homosexuality, and for heresy!”

 

On the Problem of Evil

 

I would remind you that it wasn't Satan who created Catholic priest-pedophiles and their covering-up bishops and cardinals, Prosperity Gospel hucksters such as Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar, Christians such as "I'm proud to be a Christian" Donald Trump, or white Christian Nationalists—he turned all this creation over to God, who did it as part of his Divine Love manifested in his Perfect Plan!

 

Have to Hand It to the Catholic Church

 

It certainly knows how to provide expertise on moral and behavioral issues.  For example, its experts on sexuality, sexual and romantic love, and child rearing are all—ordained celibate old men who read about all such matters in Latin while in the seminary!

 

Response to a Christian Door-to-Door Missionary

 

In answer to the question, “Will you allow Jesus Christ to enter your life today as your personal Savior?”:

 

“No, thank you.  I’ve already allowed Satan to enter my life as my personal Savior.”

 

 

It’s Hard Being an “Immoral” Atheist!

 

It’s really hard being an “immoral” atheist!  And Christians should be more charitable, and realize that.  Consider this.  We spend our days in very busy, hectic, activity raping, robbing,  pillaging, and murdering.  Our days are so busy and hectic doing all this that we don’t even have time to take a decent lunch break.  All we can do is grab a baby to eat on the run.  Then, after our hard, hectic days, the only way we “immoral” atheists are able to relax in the evening is through wild sex-and-drug orgies, after which we finally get some sleep by passing out in a drug-and-alcohol-induced stupor.  That’s a hard life we “immoral” atheists have!

 

Aside from Being an Atheist, What Am I?

 

I’m a victim of overwhelmingly Christian maliciousness, cruelty, abuse, and insensitivity, primarily Catholic, but also Protestant, upscale alleged “freethinkers” who didn’t want to confront the religious abuse I suffered, and one nefarious Jewish person I thought was a good friend until he betrayed me, then had the chutzpah to insist I “forgive” him for his alleged “egregious stupidity”!  (In reality, though, his actions were all deliberate; the “egregious stupidity” on his part was getting caught and being held to account!)  I was bullied and socially ostracized in the Catholic grade and high schools I was forced to attend; my Catholic siblings (my four younger sisters who grew up with me, all pretty, pert, all of them sorority girls in college, and all of them—vapid) regarded me as an ugly, unpopular nerd they wanted nothing to do with.  My Catholic parents, when they weren’t screaming at me at the top of their lungs in 15-minute-long tirades, utterly ignored me; and as a young adult in Indianapolis, the “peaceable religious progressives,” with whom I agreed with on a good 90 percent of the political issues of the day, responded to me with maliciousness, bigotry, and dismissiveness.  All that, too, is what I am.

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Irony Alert! (lest the "woke" left get offended"): Slavery Was Fun!

 In "honor" of Trump and his minions' "whitewashing" (apt term) of American history, museum exhibits, and just plain grousing, as the MAGA loyalist complained about the Smithsonian "overemphasizing" slavery:

1.)   The newly enslaved got to leave their constricted African villages and travel, move, to new and exotic lands across the Atlantic Ocean.

 

2.)   The newly enslaved went there by way of a leisurely sea cruise on well apportioned ships.

 

3.)   The newly enslaved had the opportunity to learn new job skills.

 

4.)   The newly enslaved got exposure to Christianity, and thus became “saved,” instead of being damned to hell for their indigenous pagan religions.

 

5.)   The newly enslaved males had lots of opportunities to have sex with slave women (to reproduce more slaves, of course), and newly enslaved females often had sexual opportunities as well, especially with interracial sex.

 

and last,

 

6.)   The newly enslaved got to meet new people, usually people of a different race and ethnicity, thus diversifying their social circles.

 

So, who says slavery wasn’t fun?

 

 

A Most Inauspicious Sixtieth Anniversary

 

The year I graduated from high school, 1965, was also the year in which average SAT scores peaked.  From then on, they declined.  Not coincidentally, I believe, it was also when the “dumbing down” craze was inaugurated among educators and academics, in order to make a college education more “accessible” to minorities, women, and other groups considered disadvantaged.  By lowering the bar, it was argued, more deserving people could get in, could enter the hallowed Halls of Ivy, and move up socially and economically in US society—thereby ending decades of deliberate discrimination that kept especially generations of African Americans locked into poverty and low-paying, dead-end jobs.  This was also a time when automation was eliminating many low-skill factory jobs, thereby creating new technological unemployment.  Last, the seemingly triumphant final success of the Civil Rights Movement in breaking down the legal barriers of segregation and discrimination, along with the rise of the New Left, meant that there was fertile social ground, especially among the young white and well-educated, to at last seriously address the “race problem” in American life.  Militant demonstrations occurred on college campuses demanding Open Admissions for anyone who wanted to attend, a demanded echoed by black nationalist groups on campus from newly admitted African American students.  Academic standards were seen as barriers to social and racial justice, not as necessary linchpins and gates to ensure a quality education.

 

Looking back sixty years later, we see that what was also inaugurated was a horrible naïveté along with white masochistic guilt, particularly among newly radicalized students and academics.  This meant that, far from opening up academia, “dumbing down” only debased the quality of education colleges offered, and brought in large numbers of students not at all prepared for college academic expectations.  This, coupled with a supposedly “hard-headed” businesslike “transactional” approach to education, where education was valued not as an end in itself, but only as a means for being credentialed to get a good-paying job, made it join naïvely with this “transactional” approach, both of which in tandem played key roles in debasing the quality of education, made education as an end in itself seem “worthless,” and fueled a deeper anti-intellectualism and distrust of “educated elites” that debased the whole of American society, especially when Trump came into prominence, or ever since at least 2015.  A debasement that haunts us horribly today.  Further, while I don’t relish at all quoting or acknowledging conservative commentators, I admit that sometimes they get it right more than does the left—a case of even a blind squirrel finding an acorn sometimes!  (As a former co-worker of mine once put it.)  So, I do have to acknowledge far right commentator Joseph Starobin when he pointedly noted that US society had degenerated from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college today.  The same point was made very recently (as I write, late July 2025) by Boston Globe’s conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby in his column “Arguable,” where he noted that a Massachusetts high school graduate in 1895 was expected to know more, and did, in fact, know more, than a Massachusetts high school graduate today.  He pointedly notes that back then an education was considered both a right (hence, public schools) and a valuable end in itself, against both the onslaughts of the business-transactional right and the anti-discriminatory left against such a supposed mere “nostrum.”

 

And yet—educational equality seems further away today than it did sixty years ago, with many critics, and even rival racial and ethnic minorities, claiming that “affirmative action” and “DEI” only brought a bunch of unqualified African Americans onto college campuses, to the detriment of both more “meritorious” racial and ethnic groups (notably Asians), and even merit itself.  This has even fueled overt racism, such as Trump supporter Charlie Kirk’s comment that if he were on an airplane, the only way he could ensure the pilot was competent was if he was a (presumably straight) white male!  Thus, were “he” gay, transgender, female, African American, Latino, other dark-skinned racial minority, “he” might be “unqualified” to pilot an aircraft, owing “his” piloting to “his” being a DEI hire instead!  

 

Thus has “dumbing down” backfired.  Rather than creating a more racially inclusive society, it’s created a more racially divided society, as even the whole concept of African American “merit” is under question.

 

As my old academic advisor Scott Gordon, late Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, pointed out in his 1980 book, Welfare, Justice, and Freedom, there’s an unavoidable contradiction between equality of opportunity and equality as such, or as we and many African American militants put it, equal results.  For equality of opportunity means there are winners and losers, winners and also-rans, some who make it to the top and some who don’t.  It’s like the Super Bowl:  no matter how evenly matched the two teams are, at the end of the game there is only one winner, and the other team is the loser.  While equality of opportunity is a prerequisite for equal results, equality of opportunity does not mean equal results, certainly not in the short one—and no amount of “revolutionary impatience” can change that.  Certainly I, who wishes to eventually see equal results, must concede, in terms of reality, they are still quite a ways away, and that the ability of African Americans to attend college does not ensure their success when they do.  Social, cultural, educational, economic, and other obstacles are still in the way.  (Which does not in any way justify Trump’s open attack on the very notion of even trying to achieve racial equality or even rough parity.)  Further, we are living in a society today that has grown tired of even trying to achieve racial justice, to address even minimally the vast injustices done to black Americans all the way back into slavery.  While I do not know what the solution is, I do know that the naïve left’s “dumbing down” agenda it’s eagerly promoted sixty years ago and since only created another problem, not any kind of solution whatsoever.         

The "Letter to the Editor:" In These Times Refused to Print

 I wrote a highly critical "Letter to the Editor" of the left newsmagazine In These Times on an article it published in its November 2024 issue, Shane Burley's "Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists and Cease-Fire Activists," which can be found here:  https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-zionist-israel-gaza-jewish-institutions.  In These Times refused to publish my "Letter," which is not surprising, since In These Times does not publish, it seems, anything critical of its magazine.

Here is my "Letter to the Editor":

To the Editor:

 

Shane Burley’s article in the November 2024 In These Times, “Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists and Cease-Fire Activists,” elicits the following reaction as a longtime democratic socialist subscriber and contributor to ITT:

 

First, I think that these “pro-Palestine” former staffers at mainstream Jewish institutions are trying to have their proverbial cake and eat it too.  They want to work there as anti-Zionists and pro-Palestinian activists when much of the other staff, the leadership, and even much of the clientele of these mainstream Jewish institutions are going to see them as hostile pro-Hamas infiltrators into these very Jewish spaces, not as genuine, if critical, Jews.  I think a good example of this is the person Burley first documents in his article, Dan Fischer, who was fired for attending an “All Out for Palestine” rally on October11, 2023, a mere four days after Hamas’s violent killings, mutilations, rapes, and taking of hostages in Israel, and well before the Israeli government launched its campaign against Hamas in Gaza.  The leadership of the synagogue where Fischer worked rightly saw this participation as hostile and pro-Hamas, and said so openly to Fischer.  Also, Fischer stated at the rally he attended that he was “proud to be in solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestine,” not even mentioning Hamas, and in fact, de facto conflating the civilian people of Gaza and Palestine with blood-stained Islamist Hamas!  Being “in solidarity with” the murderers, mutilators, and rapists of Jews is hardly a “Jewish value” that commends itself to employment in a Jewish synagogue!

 

Second, it’s the same with all these people who were fired, all of them, tellingly, after October 7, 2023, a “day in infamy” that ranks with Pearl Harbor and 9/11.  All of them will protest, no doubt, that they stand for “inclusiveness,” yet they deliberately “other” all those Jews and Israelis who were murdered, raped, or taken hostage, along with their families, friends, and those who cared deeply about people being victims of such atrocities—be they either Israelis or Jews of the Diaspora.

 

As for wearing the keffiyeh, it, too, changed its meaning after October 7, 2023, and became not just a symbol of solidarity with Palestine, but, since the Hamas butchers themselves wore the keffiyeh while committing their atrocities in Israel, it became as well as a symbol of support for Hamas.  But none of those fired have even one word to say against Hamas!  Not one!  No, they all implicitly conflate support for Palestinians with support for Hamas—and their silence on this very important issue speaks loudly and in volumes!  Keeping on staff those who cannot even condemn Hamas would indeed be difficult for any mainstream Jewish institution—it would be akin to employing someone who cannot condemn the Holocaust!

 

As for a ceasefire, I’m all for it; but it cannot be, as so many pro-Palestinian activists want it to be—a unilateral move on the Israeli side, with no reciprocity from Hamas.  While Netanyahu certainly deserves much blame for there not being a ceasefire, much more blame goes to Hamas, in my opinion.  Hamas’s intransigence in the face of every ceasefire offer proffered is what has prevented a ceasefire to date.  And when there was one, a brief ceasefire and hostage exchange in November 2023, Hamas unilaterally broke it.

 

Last, almost all states have Work at Will labor laws—in the absence of a labor contract, an employee can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.  Similarly, many employers also have dress codes, which one is expected to conform to as part of employment.  A ban on wearing a keffiyeh would fall under such a code.  Same as, where I work, I was formerly banned from wearing jeans, and had to wear only a company shirt and either black or tan slacks.  One may not like such rules, but they’re there.  And no, wearing a Magen David, or Star of David, necklace around one’s neck is not “political clothing.”  It’s cultural clothing, indicating solely that one is proudly Jewish.  The Magen David existed long before the state of Israel, and was also used by the—Nazis—as a mandatory badge to be worn to mark oneself as Jewish!  If the Magen David means Zionism, then why doesn’t it also mean Nazism?

 

Those are some of my thoughts on Burley’s article from the vantage point of a socialist internationalist upholding the socialist values of secularism and humanism, opposing all right-wing religious fanaticism such as that which animates Hamas, and a democratic, as opposed to an authoritarian, socialist.

 

George Fish,

ITT long-time

subscriber and

several times

published ITT

contributor,

Indianapolis, IN 

 

   

 

 

Yet Another Significant Event for Me This Year: My Well-Regarded August 2024 Leaflet to my Fellow Kroger Employees on Our Upcoming Contract Negotiations, May 2025

 Here's the text.  Two 8 1/2" X 11" pages.

(Updated to reflect the abrupt resignation of Kroger's CEO on March 3, 2025.)

To my fellow Central Indiana Kroger workers and union members

by George Fish, Produce Department Stocker, Kroger J-100, Indianapolis,

and proud member of UFCW Local 700

 

I’m writing you on my own initiative as a fellow Kroger worker and member of UFCW Local 700, a rank-and-file worker like you with some things on my mind concerning our upcoming contract renewal in May 2025. 

 

·     Back in 2000, a minimally “livable wage” was defined by the Indiana Economic Development Commission to be $10.00 an hour.  Today, because of the increase in the cost of living, especially the inflation we’ve experienced since COVID, that minimally “livable wage” would be $18.22 an hour—more than the top of the non-department-supervisor wage set in our last contract of $17.60 an hour!

 

·     In fact, our $17.60 an hour tops causes us to lose money—because the purchasing power of that $17.60 an hour is only $9.66, or as you can plainly see, noticeably less in purchasing power than $10.00 was in 2000! 

 

·     But more.  As union members, we certainly want more than a minimally “livable wage”:  we want, say, 30% over such a minimum, which would bring the wage we justly require to—$23.69 an hour!

 

·     Wages under the 2022 contract increased by only 10%, while inflation of prices reached 25%!  Yes, fellow workers, we’re losing money under our present contract, which is why we must demand much more of the union and Kroger in our upcoming 2025 contract!

 

·     As you can see, fellow workers, we can justifiably demand $24 an hour or even more, so that we’re not losing money at Kroger by working!

 

I’ve informally surveyed as many of my fellow union workers at the store I work at as I could, and they’re all in agreement:  in our next contract we definitely need more money!  Other things they (and I) agree we could use would be a COLA (annual cost-of-living-adjustment, so that our wages don’t fall behind increases in the cost of living), paid sick days (as you know, right now we have none, so that if we’re sick we’re SOL).  Other good suggestions from our fellow workers were Kroger matching 100% our 401(k) pension contributions, more time off and vacation time, speeding up the seniority requirements to get more leave time, part-time workers having the same benefits as full-time ones, so that Kroger can’t play part-timers off of full-timers, a defined path to full-time status for part-timers, an end to contract givebacks to Kroger, and a demand that really resonated with my African American fellow workers, Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Juneteenth as designated paid holidays!  All these things I personally think are good demands we should be insisting on in our next contract, and of course, there may be others.  So, I urge all of you, fellow workers, dialogue among yourselves on what you want to see in our upcoming May 2025 contract.  Remember, May 2025 is not all that far away.  And yes, maybe we should think about, and dialogue about, using the strike option if we must.

(OVER)

Last, I’d like to say, even insist, brothers and sisters, we are the union!  We, the rank-and-file are UFCW Local 700, and also, the whole of the International UFCW!  It’s not just our union reps, or the officers, or the shop stewards, it’s all of us.  And whatever we can gain, we can gain best by dialoguing among ourselves and determinedly standing together!  Yes, despite what it will say, Kroger can afford it, can afford to do much better.  After all, in its proposed merger with Albertson’s, it’s buying out Albertson’s with cash!  Also, former (abruptly resigned, March 3, 2025) Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen made a whopping 502 times in pay alone what the average Kroger worker makes!  Kroger has done very well under the inflation, we ourselves feel it when we buy our groceries at Kroger,

even with employee discounts, so it can definitely do better by us, the backbone of the Kroger system—and its profitability! 

 

We should also change, I think, that provision in our union contracts that states that we, the union workers, will not interfere in the “ordinary business decisions” of Kroger—because so many of those “ordinary business decisions” affect us directly and adversely!  From obnoxious managers to massive shortages of workers in all our departments, to no provisions made when workers are off sick or on vacation so that the rest of us have to double up on the work, to using only part-timers when full-time workers are needed—these are “ordinary business decisions” that affect us vitally in our work at Kroger!  And yes, our say in such should be recognized in contract!  We aren’t just flunkies to be ordered around by the managers! 

 

That’s what I have to say to all of you, brothers and sisters.  So, in ending, I urge you do not only dialogue with me, but with all our fellow Kroger workers and union members as well, dialogue among ourselves, and let’s get a decent contract this time around!  My fellow workers, feel free to e-mail me at georgefish666@yahoo.com.  Put “Union Contract” in the subject matter bar, so it won’t get lost in my Spam filter.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, my fellow union brothers and sisters!