By Stacey Barber

As part of SDUSA ‘s dual missions of advocacy for the oppressed and working class and as part of educational outreach, the main mission of the Women in Labor caucus will be to help modern day women draw lessons from the great ladies of labor like Mother Jones or Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, strikes like the bread and roses strike after the triangle shirt waist fire, where over 100 women, some of them young girls, lost their lives when they were locked in on the factory floor like slaves during the fire, which spread quickly considering that fabric was the mainstay of the seamstressing work involved — But one example of many labor struggles where women’s work, living conditions and health were at issue or women played a powerful role in whatever respective struggle.

When more and more money is going towards guns and macho militaristic swashbuckling abroad ( not just the middle east but for instance Somalia having been bombed 58 times since Trump took office…why? ) and there are more and more cutbacks that effect not just people’s quality of lives, but their very lives and ability to earn a livelihood, like the millions pitched off Medicaid under trump to pay for his scallywag adventures abroad, none of which benefit the US populace and just contribute to inflation and the quiet part has been out loud : it’s about oil. The only “feminism “ that gets pushed by the Trumps is marry a rich man and your problems are solved, provided the guy isn’t an abusive, predatory jerk. Tighten your corsets, girls! The latest salvo from the Heritage Foundation would have women back in the kitchen…for those who could afford it, and immiserating conditions for most women.

The Women in Labor Caucus stands staunchly against any cuts to any community or government-based programs that have included bettering the quality of life and improving the working and living conditions of all women inclusively and equitably. We seek to stand shoulder to shoulder with all class fighters, both men and women, all sexes and genders, all nationalities, all creeds because no matter what nation or tribe or city on earth one talks about, women compromise half. We would also seek to advocate and energetically push for any reform that is not just a current much needed defense of especially child care and social services on all levels in all states, but would seek more funding and augment services where they should be restored to the levels they were at before they were gutted in the 1990s under Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not only restored but funded so everyone in the US has the basic dignity of a living wage via UBI. And continuing to fight for legislation that is still the bare basics and has been since 1976, the ERA.

The Women in Labor Caucus is also in part a history project, of digging up the past experiences and stories of countless women over the past hundred years who have been active in progressive causes that helped uplift the living conditions and quality of life of the US working class. The saying has always gone traditionally that the rising of the women is the rising of the race or in this case, the human race. Meaning that a rise in the standard of living for women is beneficial for the health of society overall. Also what rings true is that an injury to one woman is an injury to all women in that any woman of any socioeconomic class in some parts of the US still but also in other countries where a woman’s sexual reputation depends on propertied notions such as virtue and chastity.

Just like during the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, we live in the new “gilded era “, but with a way lower cultural IQ including on the part of the ruling class. But 10% of US consumers account currently for 50% of consumer spending. The top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of society. Only 60% of Americans have more than 400 in their bank account and increasingly precarious employment means more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck; if they have a paycheck at all, with the real unemployment rate most likely closer to 10% of the working age population. Inflation in the economy isn’t just “leftist disinformation “, it’s what ordinary men and women feel in their wallet books every day.

If Project 2025 wasn’t bad enough for being the playbook for the likes of Steve Miller and other mole-like creatures from the Heritage Foundation, the Uber conservative brat pack just put out its treatise on what direction it wants the United States to go in their treatment of women. it questions women’s right to vote and posits the only naturally fulfilling role for a woman is as wife and mother. As important as that it is to many women, many women, straight or gay, in increasing numbers across demographics, are choosing to never marry, and increasing numbers of couples are going childless. Not because I don’t think the desire for family formation isn’t there, but when for a basic bedroom, when the average price is $1400 / month nationally, most youth are lucky to make that in a month, transport, food, healthcare etc. not included.

When it comes to issues of social welfare in not just the US but in many countries, women have taken the lead. When the current administration is threatening to turn the clock all the way back to 1900, in 2026, a forum that also fosters women’s leadership is also more important than ever. The mission of the Women in Labor Caucus is half-educational and half-advocacy on any issue that effects women, while drawing from the lessons of the past and applying them to the here and now to build a better future for all. All women are welcome, as are all brothers in struggle who support women’s rights and seek to foster women’s leadership. 

Stacey Barber is a member of SDUSA Buffalo.

By Michael Mottern and Stacey Barber

Antifa or antifascist, even though it was a core US value since WW II, is something Trump absolutely loathes and is currently classified by this administration’s FBI and Homeland Security department as some kind of amorphous “terrorist “organization. Recently, Trump signed an executive order authorizing a huge swath of funding for a ten-agency center dedicated to specifically identifying and rooting out “domestic terrorism “under the 21^st century version of McCarthyism, but this time questioning one of the rudiments of our Constitution, separation of church and state, making even milquetoast liberals suspect. Apparently, the US Left is way more united than Trump thinks it is. He seems to be afraid that somehow, all the social justice and economic equality the Left has traditionally stood for has magically morphed into something like Nelson Mandela ‘s former South African party, the African National Congress (ANC).

In Buffalo, NY, in 1919, there was a quasi-revolt, brief and minor, when compared to the 1932 Bonus Rally that set WWI veterans off so badly that undeniably, they wanted to revolt. In 1932, similar to the Occupy encampment of 2011, assembled a group, the DC Bonus March rally of 1932. It was a group of highly disgruntled “unemployed “soldiers, sailors, farmers and workers who assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Also, there was a similar attempt in Buffalo very briefly: the official rallying cry was all gather round “The Buffalo Soviet”; however, that quickly got put down. As ordered by then-lieutenant colonel, George S. Patton Jr, future hero of the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during WWII, the Bonus marchers in DC were eventually thwarted by the police. Patton later called the beating down of the Bonus marchers the lowest point of his career.

Occupy 2011 was no different. However, we learned something from 1919 and 1932. The Occupy Encampment, Buffalo, NY, was not only the longest running Occupy, but worked with the city of Buffalo to divest its money from Chase Manhattan Bank to a more local bank, one of them being first Niagara. The lesson learned is that it is better to be more diplomatic and united on common principles of class solidarity, economic justice and fights of Iiberations of all the oppressed, and the steadfastness and consistency in Buffalo Occupy pointed the city in the right direction  

In these dark, xenophobic times, even a former MAGA Christian who may have snapped out of the cult by seeing families torn apart in their own neighborhood by ICE would potentially be considered Antifa by Trump and his goons.

We the people are all Antifa! Down with fascism worldwide!

Michael Mottern is First Vice-President of Social Democrats USA.

Stacey Barber is a member of SDUSA Buffalo.

By Jason Sibert

The Israel-Iran war dominates America’s foreign policy at this time. Of course, many think that hardline Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu used his influence to push Trump into the war, and I think they’re right. I recently saw former Senator, Presidential Candidate, and Secretary of State John Kerry say on a news program that Netanyahu had attempted to push the US to join Israel in a war against Iran in the George W Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden Administrations. The war against Iran, just like the war against Hamas, has triggered a lot of discussion about Zionism, antisemitism, the history of Israel, and all kinds of other things related to Israel. Current events forced me to write a story on Zionism. It’s a different sort of story – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Of course, anyone who knows their history knows this: Zionism as a movement started in the late 1800s with Theodore Herzl. It existed due to the antisemitism in various parts of the world. The movement picked up steam after the Holocaust of the 30s and 40s. Since its founding in the 1940s, Israel has achieved many accomplishments. For the most part, many Jews have lived in peace since its founding, and financially, Israel has become a very wealthy nation and has experienced many years as a vibrant democracy. In addition, and I must say this as a social democrat, Israel’s economy has many social democratic features, although it no longer represents the democratic socialism defined by its earlier years, when it drew much of its politics from Labor Zionism.

I recently saw a derogatory bumper sticker posted on a wall opposing Zionism here in St. Louis. I don’t remember what it said, but I do remember thinking whoever posted the bumper sticker knew nothing about Zionism. I would love to have asked him or her, “What type of Zionism are you so against?” I highly doubt that the person in question could have answered the question, at least not intelligently. After all, there is Labor Zionism (Democratic Socialism), General Zionism (Centrism), Liberal Zionism (Emphasis on Democracy), Revisionist Zionism (Territorial Expansionism), Religious Zionism (Religious Conservatism and Nationalism), Cultural Zionism (Creating a Jewish Cultural Center in Palestine but no state), Revolutionary Zionism (a revolutionary struggle to bring Jews from the diaspora, revive the Hebrew language, and reestablish Israel) Reform Zionism (which seeks to make Zionism fundamental to the life of Reform Jews), Secular Zionism (a homeland based on Jewish culture and history and not religion), Christian Zionism (Christians who see the return of the Jews to Israel as a part of Biblical prophecy), Post-Zionism (building an Israel that in multi-ethnic and democratic), Green Zionism (environmentalism and Zionism), Federal Zionism (the idea of a nation-state with sovereign divisions), and Islamic Zionism (Muslim supporters of Israel).

From the left side of the political spectrum, I’ve heard much about Zionism being racist or settler colonialism. This is nothing new. Remember when former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan rejected “Zionism as racism” in the 70’s when this idea was being spread on the left? With so many forms of Zionism, it’s hard to argue that the movement can be defined by racism or settler colonialism, even though some in the movement support ideas that are unsavory. I have my beef with Religious Zionism because of its theocratic tendencies and with Revisionist Zionism’s thirst for a greater Israel. On a news program, I heard former Ambassador Rahm Emmanuel, a Jew whom I support for President in 2028, say the territorial expansionism of this political tendency in Israel will fail due to political opposition around the world. In addition, I have a beef with Christian Zionism because it’s guided by a centuries-old text in a world where nation-states possess horrific weapons of destruction.

The Left was also critical of Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas. Many have leveled the charge of genocide. Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation warnings and designated areas for Palestinians to flee during its military operations against Hamas. This means what’s occurring, which is horrific, does not count as genocide. I realize the effectiveness and safety of these opportunities are widely disputed. The opportunities Israel offered were disputed because many humanitarian organizations, journalists, and people inside Gaza said those “escape routes” or “safe zones” were not actually safe, accessible, or adequate for survival for many. There was limited food, inadequate water, insufficient shelter, and medical care. Also, many of the Palestinians who have been hurt in the war have nothing to do with Hamas. This means Israel is guilty of collective punishment under international law and not genocide.

Let’s move to the right side of the political spectrum, where figures like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nick Fuentes have criticized Israel because they think our foreign policy puts Israel’s interests before the US’s. Fuentes is an antisemite, and Carlson might not be one, but he deserves no credit for programming Fuentes. Kelly and Taylor Greene might not be anti-Semitic, but, like many on the right, they accuse Trump of putting Israel first and not America first. Although I don’t sympathize with the views of any of the above-mentioned right-leaning figures on much of anything, I do think the US should act in its own interest in the Middle East and not always in Israel’s self-interest.

Why doesn’t the US look out for its own interests? In my earlier story for Social Democrats USA’s blog, titled “Lessons From the US-Israel Relationship,” I quoted Michael Lind’s story “Distorting U.S. Foreign Policy: The Israel Lobby and American Power” for ammunition. Mr. Lind talked about how Israel’s occupation of the West Bank inflamed Arab and Muslim opinion around the world against the US and how the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land makes a mockery of the US commitment to self-determination for Kosovo, East Timor, and Tibet. He also talked about the power of the Israel lobby, AIPAC, and pointed out that not all Jewish Americans are in line with political currents in Israel. The Israel lobby wants two things– a huge amount of funding for Israel and diplomatic cover for the state in the United Nations and other forums, and it usually gets them. Lind also addressed the Israel lobby’s far-reaching power in denying Bobby Ray Inman the post of Secretary of Defense. Inman was savaged in the press by William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter and conservative Republican. In his New York Times column, Safire damned Inman for having “contributed to the excessive sentencing of Jonathan Pollard,” Israel’s spy in the naval intelligence service. Pollard (a traitor to his country) was a US Naval intelligence employee who was caught spying for Israel.

In Lind’s book, George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics, he discussed the times when Israel’s national interest and our own have been at odds and how Presidents like Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George HW Bush realized this and acted accordingly, or, in the case of Carter and Clinton, acted as a broker between Israel and its Arab neighbors or the Palestinians. I do consider Israel a trusted ally, and the above-mentioned Presidents defended the state and our own interests at the same time. Lind accused Israel of violating international law in continuing to occupy the West Bank. The US has not recognized territory gained by force since 1945. On the other hand, the US is in no position to lecture on international law because it violated international law with the invasion of Iraq, Libya, and Iran (along with Israel). For further reading on the Israel-US relationship, check out Lind’s story: Israel is not America’s Greatest Ally.

In addition to the treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank, I’m also concerned about the poor treatment of the Christian community in Jerusalem. Why do I still defend Israel despite all my concerns? Because the state is a necessity for the security of the Jewish community; it emerged not only out of the Holocaust but out of centuries of antisemitism, and remember what a hateful ideology Hamas, the government of Iran, and Hezbollah represent. Israel also represents a valuable way for our country to project power in the Middle East, although it’s done so in a silly way in the past. In addition, the state isn’t in the orbit of authoritarian China or Russia.

Is there an answer to the Palestinian/Israel question? I believe there is – a Palestinian confederation. I wrote about this in my story for Progressive Populist titled “The Case for an Israeli-Palestinian Confederation.” In this story, I recommend a Palestinian political confederation within the borders of Israel but not a Palestinian state. I hope my faith in Israel will continue in the future, but for that to happen, the opposition to Netanyahu must win!

Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer of the Peace Economy Project.

By Stacey Barber

Similar to there being a push post-WWII for woman to go back home from their 9 to 5s these days, the same demonic denizens who are responsible for Project 2025 are now weighing in on a woman’s right to even vote. Questions of women’s oppression are tied to questions of sexual oppression more generally, and the hysteria of trans rights was just the wedge issue. 

And there are some young conservative women lapping up the traditional wife figure like young liberal women used to eat up the girl boss and vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 when the girl boss craze was at its height. The girl boss “liberation ” seemed to rely on women wanting to be corporate executives whose job is to screw over everyone else in a company, but some of them may have found out the hard way that money without companionship is just loneliness. Or that was only for girls from the Ivy League. A lot of middle-class and working-class women go into healthcare and social work as professions, areas of professional interest, or teaching, and still want love. Just a career too, being sold the Superwoman myth of second wave feminism. 

It’s when the narrative doesn’t have any sense of the appropriate or boundaries, that the transgression is endless. When things that are supposedly liberatory or hallmarks of self-actualization, they become oppressive and exploitive. And much of the trad wife stuff just harps on what used to be fantasies but may in fact be a bit of a necessity as far as it being more ecologically friendly to produce food locally. But while a modern-day version of community-based “victory gardens” would be some urban farming, an impulse that belongs most recently to the 1960s left, not to the rich corporate cranks who invariably seem to marry the trad wives online.

Both tropes are largely bourgeois chimera that don’t reflect the day-to-day reality of working class and / or women of color. While the trad wife might be the hard-core manifestation of being gung-ho the traditional nuclear family for women, as soft girl stuff seems to transition into it, the trad wife stuff only works if one has a rich husband and doesn’t have to work. And even online trad wives are business owners, the woman who runs the biggest trad wife website, “ballerina farm”, has 50 employees under her and a personal assistant. Sounds pretty “Girl Boss” to me. They sell a version of modern-day femininity that doesn’t exist. And most guys who try to hit on women with that kind of thing are con artists, playing on women’s fears and vulnerabilities.

As a socialist humanist, I’m pro-women’s liberation and the liberation of all oppressed people, while acknowledging that women’s oppression can lead to psychological and quality of life issues for men as well in a toxic, potentially post-capitalist world. Especially for poor and working-class men, as psychiatric health isn’t just healing on a therapist couch. It’s also just having the basics like food, healthcare and shelter covered, which are bare basics everyone deserves. Even Trump…in a high security prison. 

No abstract cultural trope will bring psychological liberation unless the woman writes her own script and realizes there are many hats and roles to have throughout life. The Chaka Khan song “I’m every woman” is a decent, positive mature take on the power of being a woman; not in the war hawkishness of women like Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

It’s a tightrope performance women get asked to perform every day. But you don’t see a lot of busy people getting overly involved with memes. Although the trad wife is a squeamish reaction to the girl boss trope, both are a far cry from the messy, contradictory ever-changing and evolving everyday reality of the vast majority of women’s lives, and not just the privileged few.

Stacey Barber is a non-member activist and observer in Western New York.

By Moses Coleman

I claim to be an expert on all things politics when it comes to professional legislative or even everyday conversations. In this, the reality is that I only know from first- or secondhand experiences of what the machine is. The machine is the political divide between left and right. I understand politics mainly through secondhand experiences from my brother Aaron. For he is the one who introduced me to the debacle of politics and everything it brings. I recall sitting in the guest section, watching Kansas legislators debate issues that don’t matter in the end. That session lasted until 2 in the morning.

I don’t know theory, nor do I claim to understand it. I just follow what is called social democracy because it hasn’t led me astray with action. This is plainly just feelings and educated guesses based on prior knowledge of how the world works. I must admit I am only 23, so I may not have the experience to talk, but I do have it. Life has happened on life’s terms, and in that, it gave me the understanding of how life works to beat you up.

I have been through life just like anyone else, so-called shitty experiences that shaped my beliefs and values, which in turn influence my actions. I first came across a shitty experience after my eldest brother died. That led me to question existence and what life truly means. I have found answers in the nonanswers that life has given me. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. I have faced my G-d and said my prayers. Nonetheless, the house of cards that is standard politics is built on lies and mischievous behavior.

The politicians know that their corporate donors are watching more than the average citizen is. That’s how they get away with said behavior. There is no accountability from the people. Lobbyists, as they are called, spend trillions of dollars buying out people whom we elect to get their way. Usually, their way is to increase profits for themselves. The lobbyist offer money and other gifts to politicians to sway them. In the debate hall, the division of left and right shines, but in the halls, the story is different. The division isn’t there, and they treat each other with respect. It’s almost like the politicians know when they are being watched. In how they get away with malicious behavior.

I am a leftist, in particular a social democrat, who believes in welfare so we all can contribute to society to our fullest. The workers, who drive everything, have the same ability to succeed as the corporations. I believe this can be done through capitalism. In the sense that money is recognized as a tool, not as an end, all means all. In a society where the dollar is actualized into self-propelled innovation, yes. But, right now, there are 30 water bottle companies competing for the dollar. How is that innovation? I am not a Communist for the simple fact that I support capitalism.

In conclusion, I am no specialist about politics or theory. I just follow a whim that hasn’t led me astray. A whim that other people see and follow with me. For I have been through shitty experiences in life and accepted that I don’t know about it. Lobbying is the biggest problem in the current system, along with the lack of accountability from the people. They are too busy slaving away to act or notice, and I am a social democrat because I believe in capitalism.

Moses Coleman is a member of Kansas City, KS SDUSA.