Radio Socialist Olympia: Recent Episodes
Radio Socialist Olympia
In this episode, Isaac talks with Syd Locke, longtime Olympia DSA member and our endorsed candidate for the Washington State House of Representatives for 2024. They discuss Syd's campaign, DSA's approach to electoral politics, the current political moment in our country, and what our tasks will be going forward.Note from Isaac: Apologies for the audio quality in this episode, there was some background noise in the recording that I couldn't account for, and filtering that out also made our voices sound a bit muffled and produced some odd artifacts. I tried to correct for that, it's still not perfect, but should be clear enough.
In this episode, Isaac speaks again with Mike Hines, President of the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 367, which represents about 8,000 grocery and retail workers in Southwest Washington. They discuss events in the union since their latest contract went into effect, staffing cuts in the stores and the union’s response, state and local legislative efforts, and the status of the proposed Kroger-Albertson’s merger. They then talk about 367’s plans for the future, including a new Organizing School, Workers’ Bill of Rights legislation, and preparation for the next round of bargaining with the big grocery chains.UFCW 367Website: https://www.ufcw367.org/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ufcwlocal367SB 6007https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2023-24/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Passed%20Legislature/6007-S.PL.pdf?q=20240703095153ESHB 1893https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2023-24/Pdf/Bills/House%20Bills/1893-S.E.pdf?q=20240703131420New tenant protectionsOlympia: https://www.olympiawa.gov/community/housing___homelessness/tenant_protections.phpTacoma: https://www.tacoma4all.org/initiative01DSA’s Rank-and-File Strategyrfs.dsausa.org/DSA’s Strike Ready Campaign (2023, supporting UPS Teamsters)https://docs.google.com/document/d/17z9-sMHBGG4p2Q8aGtod6zsLHd54l3ODr0m3y72L6C4/view367’s Member-Driven Model[Upload image file]South Sound Organizing Schoolhttps://www.southsoundorganizingschool.org/ Workers’ Rights Summit - Olympia, Saturday, July 20th, 2024RSVP: https://secure.everyaction.com/rM3M8dKJWUWsZPbYaHallg2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1961382314279452/Previous interview with Mike Hineshttps://soundcloud.com/user-252886254/rso-ep05
Welcome to the fourth, and long-awaited (we hope) episode of Why We're Socialists, and Not Liberals. In this episode we discuss why a liberalism is simply not up to the job of responding to the far right, and why a left-wing approach is needed, and what that would look like. This is an especially theory-heavy episode in which we explore the philosophical underpinnings of far right ideology so that we can better understand how to fight it. We read well over 2,000 pages of pretty dense academic leftist theory in order to produce this episode and we hope you appreciate the effort. Here are our sources in case you'd like to do some reading of your own.The Reactionary Mind by Corey RobinThe Destruction of Reason by Georg LukácsThe Authoritarian Personality, by Theodor Adorno et alBreaking the Impasse by Kim MoodyFascism: What It Is And How To Fight It by Leon TrotskyLeviathan, by Thomas HobbesDonald Trump, Lumpen Capitalist. Samuel Farber. Jacobin Magazine, October 19th, 2018. https://jacobin.com/2018/10/donald-trump-lumpen-capitalist-class-electionsDisney Company Drops YouTube Star PewDiePie Over Anti-Semitic Jokes. Camila Domonoske. NPR. February 24, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/14/515184619/disney-company-drops-youtube-star-pewdiepie-over-anti-semitic-jokes Reply in the Senate to William Seward by Jefferson Davis. February 29th, 1860. https://constitutingamerica.org/reply-in-the-senate-to-william-seward-by-jefferson-davis-1808-1889-reprinted-from-the-u-s-constitution-a-reader-published-by-hillsdale-college/ Report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the Douma poison gas attack. January 27, 2023. https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023/01/s-2125-2023%28e%29.pdf The Rank-and-File Strategy, from the DSA website https://rfs.dsausa.org/ Behind the Bastards podcast, Part One: The Eternal Fascist. Also found in audiobook form on the website http://www.thewaroneveryone.com/ Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ HEGEMONY, WAR OF POSITION, & HISTORIC BLOC: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ANTONIO GRAMSCI’S STRATEGY CONCEPTS, Harmony Goldberg, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ Recommended reading (we didn’t use these in our episode but recommend them anyway)The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O PaxtonAgainst the Fascist Creep by Alexander Reid RossNeoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Neo-Nazi, by Elizabeth SandiferThe works of Kim Stanley RobinsonConspirituality Podcast
My comrade from DSA Isaac Wagnitz and I are proud to share with you our latest episode of Radio Socialist Olympia. We're extending our break here from the Why We're Socialists series to interview Billie and Nora, two of the Starbucks workers and union organizers behind the successful union campaign at the Cooper Point Starbucks in Westside Olympia. Note: we mention the Tumwater Starbucks in this episode. Since this episode was recorded the Tumwater location won their vote 12-3.
My comrade from DSA Isaac Wagnitz and I are proud to share with you our latest episode of Radio Socialist Olympia. We're taking a break here from the Why We're Socialists series to interview Michael Hines, president of UFCW 367, which represents around 8,000 grocery workers in the South Puget Sound area. I couldn't make it to record this episode, so it'll just be Isaac asking the questions. The interview covers a lot of ground about the state of the grocery industry during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and how changes in the industry have affected workers. Next up after this will be an interview with Norah and Billie, two workers from the Cooper Point Starbucks in Westside Olympia, who succeeded in winning a union 19-2! We hope you enjoy this episode and we'll try to have that next episode of Why We're Socialists out soon.
Sources: Hungry at the Table, a study conducted by Economic Round Table https://economicrt.org/publication/hungry-at-the-table/
Food Retail: Financial Trends, Industry Challenges & Opportunities for Workers: a slideshow that was part of a presentation at the UFCW 367 leadership conference in January 2022 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qTlWlgwmbqsXgVyAVAiTHF72TRv0NfWy/view?fbclid=IwAR0DernkDCPaq4fSNLHv-k1rcjl9YqljNf5wsxWDGk00Sn2ZP3ZLwMJRQQw
DSA Labor: The Rank & File Strategy https://rfs.dsausa.org/
Home in Tacoma for All platform: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/home-in-tacoma-for-all-platform/
Matt Bruening: When McDonald’s Came to Denmark https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
Welcome to the third episode of Why We're Socialists (and not Liberals). In this episode we go discuss ultraleftism, where it came from, and what to do about it. As we will continue to do, we have included our sources so you can read them for yourself.
The Liberal to Ultraleft Pipeline, Patrick Dalton, 2021 https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/21-03-breaking-the-cycle
Liberalism, Ultraleftism, or Mass Action? Peter Camejo, 1970 https://www.marxists.org/archive/camejo/1970/ultraleftismormassaction.htm
Anatomy of the Micro-Sect, Hal Draper, 1973 https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1973/xx/microsect.htm Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, Lenin, 1920 https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/index.htm
Exiting the Vampire Castle, Mark Fisher, 2013 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/
Ultraliberalism: The Dominant Tendency of the American Left, Ramsin Canon, 2022 https://midwestsocialist.com/2022/02/07/ultraliberalism-the-dominant-tendency-of-the-american-left/
You Can’t Fake It, by Alex Gourevitch, Current Moment and Jacobin, 2017 https://jacobinmag.com/2017/02/general-strike-donald-trump-womens-march-immigration-ban-ludlow-strike
1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions, National Labor Relations Board https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1947-taft-hartley-substantive-provisions
2: Amendment to Resolution #5 – Building Worker Power to Win Democratic Socialism: A Labor Strategy for DSA in 2021-2023, Socialist Alternative. https://convention2021.dsausa.org/secondary-amendments-to-resolutions/#P1D
Related reading
The Poisoned Chalice of Hashtag Activism, Amber A'lee Frost, Catalyst https://catalyst-journal.com/2020/09/the-poisoned-chalice-of-hashtag-activism
NGOism: The Politics of the Third Sector, Benjamin Y. Fong and Melissa Naschek https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/05/ngoism-the-politics-of-the-third-sector
This is the second part of our series on why we're socialist and not liberals. In this episode we give a broad overview of the historical development of liberalism and socialism as ideologies, and then use that to explain how each is a product of their respective historical and material contexts. We also compare and contrast the two ideologies and attempt to show how socialism is a distinct ideology, and not merely the left wing of liberalism or progressivism as many people seem to believe.
Sources Revolutions podcast, by Mike Duncan Episode 1.12b- Supplemental The Diggers, by Mike Duncan Episodes 3.1-3.54 on the French Revolution, by Mike Duncan Episodes 8.1-8.33 on the 1848 Revolutions, by Mike Duncan Episode 10.3 - The Three Pillars of Marxism (as an alternative to the essay by Lenin) Liberalism at Large: The World According to The Economist, by Alexander Zevin The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx ‘“Neoliberalism” isn’t an empty epithet. It’s a real, powerful set of ideas.’ Mike Konczal, writing for Vox. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, by V.I. Lenin Behind the Bastards podcast, The Non-Nazi Bastards Who Helped Hitler Rise to Power, by Robert Evans. The Romance of American Communism, by Vivian Gornick. Philosophize This! podcast, by Steven West Episode 132: Carl Schmitt on Liberalism, pt. 1 Episode 133: Carl Schmitt on Liberalism, pt. 2
Suggested reading Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels by Hal Draper Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism by Ellen Meiksins Wood A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics by Hadas Thier Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America by Barbara and Karen Fields
This is the first episode in a new series we're calling "Why we're socialists (and not liberals)." In it we give definitions of liberalism and socialism, broad overviews of the philosophical and ideological distinctions between the two, and explain what motivated us to start this new series. we hope you enjoy it and find it educational.