A discussion on a proposed 'Open Borders' resolution for the DSA convention

[Today I received the link to a "Resolution on Open Borders" posted on Medium that is being proposed for the DSA Convention. As I explain in the comment below that I posted to Medium, while I share the sentiment behind the proposal, I think presenting open borders as a demand, rather than as an aspiration, is a mistake.

[It should not be demanded of countries that are victims of imperialism because abolition of their border controls and defenses would facilitate attacks against them, primarily from the United States. Yet viewed solely as a demand on the U.S. government, it not only would  be impractical but also lead to victimization of refugees and other immigrants in Europe who likely would be expelled and deported to the United States. And in the fight for immigrant and refugee rights, it would take the focus away from the fight for legalization of the undocumented and accepting Central American refugees.]

I very much agree with the sentiment and much of what this resolution says, but I think it suffers from a one-sidedness and lack of precision that would be very unfortunate for the organization to apply -- even though, again, I completely agree with the sentiment.

What do I mean by "one-sidedness?" I think this captures it:

Whereas border and immigration enforcement are tools of white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism

What is wrong with that?

• Well, are Cuba's borders a tool of "imperialism" or rather a barrier to imperialism? 
• Should Venezuela not have enforced its borders against the "aid caravan" that Washington was pushing to legitimize "President" Juan Guaidó? 
• Are we really for Iran not defending its borders against American Imperialism's Fifth Fleet and CentCom troops? 
• Do we think Yemen would really be better off if the savagely barbarous medieval family dictatorship of the Sauds were allowed to invade and take over the country?

I know the comrades will answer, "that's not what we meant." Of course not. But it's what the text says:

Be it resolved that DSA supports the demand for open borders
Be it resolved that DSA supports the the uninhibited transnational free movement of people....
Be it resolved that DSA recognizes and reflects our support for open borders in our evaluations and endorsement of political campaigns.

Some comrades will respond, "C'mon José, we're in the United States, nobody will think we're talking about some other country's borders."

But if that what was meant, that is what should have been said, if for no other reason that to avoid distracting polemics. (And even then, applied only to the United States, I don't think it is right, as I will explain further down).

But first, as to what "nobody will think," that's strictly from the perspective of an "American" (i.e., someone who indentifies solely as being "United Statesian," to use what would be the English equivalent of the Spanish word "estadounidense.")

But there are tens of millions of us born in or descended from Latin America who have a very different set of lenses through which we look at the world.

As Latinos in the United States we demand we be treated as "Americans," that our undiminished human, civil and political rights as members of U.S. society be respected.

Yet at the same time many of us identify with the sentiments expressed by Malcolm X in his famous 1964 speech, "The ballot or the bullet."

No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. 

And then, as in this clip from the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards, we all sing together the song by Los Tigres del Norte, "And if we look at the centuries, we are more American than the children of the Anglo-Saxons."

So Latinos --especially immigrants-- will look at this demand very differently than most Anglos would.

But there is also a more immediate reason. This is not a demand raised by the immigrant rights movement, not even the Latino immigrant-based left wing of the movement. And it takes the focus away from where it should be, which is on the most immediate victims of U.S. policy: the undocumented already in the country and their families, as well as the refugees at our southern border.

Another immediate reason not to adopt the wording in this resolution is the election campaign. Obviously, given what I've said, I'm not for injecting this demand into electoral politics.

Although I think the way he has argued for his position is narrow and even reactionary, I agree with Bernie Sanders in not calling for open borders.

The U.S. unilaterally abolishing all immigration restrictions would simply be an invitation to the European imperialist countries to forcibly deport to the United States all refugees and even non-immigrants their Trumpites don't want, i.e., facilitate a generalized "ethnic cleansing" that, without a vastly broader transformation of U.S. society, would be impossible to handle and further victimize those expelled from Europe.

You might say, well, we won't accept people who are being forced to come to the United States but that implies border controls, not open borders.

And more practically, it is simply not a demand that American working people, including most of the tens of millions who view themselves as sympathetic to socialist ideas, can possibly understand. Trump uses this to demagogically claim that his critics want to flood the country with cartel hit men, human traffickers and drug dealers, and the way to counter that is to point to the thousands of refugees, minors and families, who are in fact arriving at the border.

While I agree with the sentiment of "open borders," I think it is better expressed as a desire for no borders, as in "for a world without borders."

I think it was a weakness of my resolution that it did not deal with the issue, and have actually drafted an addition to it but have not added it yet because I had already circulated the resolution for signatures without it. I am hoping after the June 2 deadline for submitting resolutions and verifying the signatures there will be some guidance on whether you can refine your own resolution and how.

That addition would be a new point IV under "Therefore be it resolved" and would say:

The Democratic Socialists of America reaffirm that the aspiration of the socialist movement is a world without borders, while recognizing that slogans that point to this ideal, such as “Open Borders,” are not current demands of the immigrant rights movement.

It might seem very modest but I actually think it is important to add it, because I very much agree with the idea in the "open  borders" resolution that

DSA develops political education resources to be shared with chapters across the country to deepen and broaden the understanding of the demand for open borders and how to fight for it. 

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the comrades who worked on this resolution because I think it is very important to have an open but comradely discussion on these sorts of issues and I believe that the end result in this and many other cases will be converging towards a more balanced and nuanced position, and even if not, a better understanding of the differing points of view in the organization.

Black and Latino "identity politics" are working class politics

[The Democratic Socialists of America are holding their national convention in  Atlanta in August, and in connection with the event I've been publishing on my blog various posts related to issues in the DSA.

[This one is from the DSA's national discussion forum. A comrade who described himself as unorthodox in the NYC DSA Afro-socialist caucus and in his branch noted that in a recent election Zephyr Teachout lost the race for attorney general of the state of New York to a less progressive candidate who was Black.

[He said he had posted in response to that outcome that Blacks and Latinos needed to be taught what progressive means. I think some people objected to the wording, but I put that aside to focus on what was behind that phenomenon of Blacks and Latinos preferring a Black candidate over a more progressive Anglo woman, and what it means for the political approach of socialists in the United States.]

I think all socialists and progressives need to wrap their heads around the democratic right of oppressed minorities to political inclusion and representation.

I was born in 1951 and the battles for the right to vote when I was a teenager are seared into my memory. And perhaps because I have lived in the Atlanta for more than 30 years, the blood that was shed and the lives that were lost are very much alive for me. And at bottom, the fight was not just for the right to vote but most of all it was about the right to vote for one of your own.

And I know this very well because my community, the Latino community, faces the same problem. We are 10 percent of the state population. We have two of the 180 members of the state House of Representatives. We have no Latinos in the state Senate. We have all-white apartheid regimes in places like Dalton, which are half Latino, more when you include Blacks and Asians, and in the world’s chicken processing capital Gainesville, just an hour from Atlanta. And two of the four large counties in the core Atlanta metro area with about a million people each are both majority-minority but have all-white governments and until 2018, white Republican-dominated legislative delegations (that changed in one of them, Gwinnett, in 2018).

The Latino adults in Georgia have been overwhelmingly undocumented and that has turned the Latino community as a whole into the victim of a new system of de jure discrimination, the same idea as Jim Crow although the details are different. For a quarter century we have been used as a punching bag and scapegoats by white politicians. Now the U.S.-born children of the undocumented are coming of age. And just like the Blacks vote Black, sometimes with an assist from us, Latinos are going to vote Latino, and get help from our African-American sisters and brothers.

And you might say, but your Black and Latino politicians are just as bad as the white ones. And I’d respond, first, so what? Our people have as much of a right to fuck things up as white people have done. And second, it’s not true. There are no whites getting lynched, no white churches getting bombed, no white people being deported back to Europe, not even are white people being disproportionately incarcerated. Nor are we going to exclude them from any political representation, like they did to us.

And suppose you were to run a white DSA member against one of the two Latinos in the state legislature, Pedro “Pete” Marín, a moderate democrat (he describes himself as pro-business and a fiscal conservative, although socially liberal). I’d vote for Pete Marín, and I don’t care if it was Eugene V. Debs himself who was the DSA candidate. Because Pedro stood up and fought for our community against every single anti-immigrant bill that has been proposed in our state legislature.

And when the big wave of Latino immigrant rights protests took place in 2006 Pedro was there – not just at the demonstration for the photo-op but at the planning meetings where no reporters were allowed (well, except for two: me and a Chicana sister who worked for the AJC).

And if endorsing Debs came up at my DSA chapter I’d oppose it, explaining his would be a racist campaign. – not because Debs was a racist, which he was not, but because politics is not about speeches or programs but about the clash of social forces. And in that District a white candidate running against Pedro would simply be a re-assertion of white supremacy. If Debs won, it would be a demoralizing blow to the Latino community and would encourage the racists.

You might say “you’re letting identity politics overwhelm class politics.” But what I’m telling you is this: the movements of Blacks and Latinos in the United States are the most acute expression of class politics.

You say you lived in France, then study Frantz Fanon; you’re in the Afro-socialist caucus in New York, learn from Malcolm X; you read Spanish, read Che and Fidel.

And if that doesn't convince you, find Engels’s fight with the English in defense of the rights of the Irish in the First International, or Lenin’s report to the Second Comintern Congress on the national and colonial question.

For Bernie, but against a DSA 'independent expenditure campaign'

[A Convention of the Democratic Socialists of America will be held in Atlanta at the beginning of August. As part of the lead up to the convention, I will be publishing some articles discussing issues before the convention. And although I was a signer of the initial Socialist Majority Caucus statement, this article represents only my own views.]

What does it mean "for" Bernie but "against" an independent DSA campaign for him?

• I am for DSA members (and all working and progressive people) supporting Bernie's candidacy and joining his campaign.
• I am against the DSA having our own "Democratic Socialists for Bernie" effort separate from Bernie's campaign, which is the approach outlined by the DSA's National Political Committee in "Part 2. Initial Bernie 2020 Campaign Plan Proposal" of the endorsement procedure it adopted.

The problem is that DSA insisting on having "an independent political identity" that is "centered around core demands of Sanders’s platform — not merely the candidate himself" contradicts the most important, core message of "the candidate himself" which he communicates by having just three words in the headline of the home page of his website: "Not me. Us."

You might think: that's just a tag line to recruit volunteers: the sign-up form is right there. But I think it has much greater political significance.

Bernie stressed in his campaign launch, as he did in 2015-2016, that his is a class campaign: it defends the interests of working people. That's why he wouldn't accept backing from corporate PACs or lobbyists four years ago, and why he kept emphasizing his average donation was $27. And he adds that should he win, he cannot make the changes, only we can through our own movement of working people to carry out a "political revolution." In other words: "Not me. Us."

The central message, which should be our central message as well, is that working people need to come together into a united class movement. 

Saying, "our message is: come together as a class. And that is why we are running a separate campaign and urging people to join our splinter pro-Bernie campaign" makes absolutely no sense.

DSA members who were part of leadership discussions and the NPC campaign proposal itself present the reason for having our own "independent expenditure campaign" as mostly a legal question, and even the use of that term reflects the approach.

I think the issue should be examined first exclusively as a political question. We should decide what approach makes sense politically, and then figure out implementation, including legal technicalities. That is completely missing from the NPC's document.

For me, the main consideration is what has been happening in  this country over the last decade. I maintain that it is an elemental movement by working people to cohere as a political force, as the "class for itself" that Marxist literature refers to. 

This tendency among working people to come together politically is a qualitative change from the situation that had prevailed since the 1950s McCarthy era until this decade, when the Occupy movement raised the slogan: "We are the 99%!" Occupy was the first time in many decades that there was a clear expression of class political consciousness by millions of working people and moreover coming strictly from below.

Since Trump lost the election and became president, the DSA's growth has been one of the main visible signs of this gathering subterranean force that is transforming American politics. People who were moved to do something would Google "socialism" or "democratic socialism," get directed to our web site, and the most conscious and committed would join.

Almost certainly, that has stopped for the time being. As things stand, people are going to go to Bernie's web site to sign up for and contribute to his campaign instead. I want to be with them, not in our separate more-socialist-than-thou effort.

And look at the practical side. By doing our own independent canvassing, we contact the same people the official campaign has already talked to, which is not just wasted effort but counterproductive. And it creates an impression of disorganization that rubs off on the candidate.

There is also the issue of message discipline. We can say whatever we want as an individual or a DSA member, but not when you're knocking on doors for Bernie. Because you will be perceived as part of Bernie's campaign, and if that's the way you're going to be perceived, then you also have to speak and act on that basis. 

Using a different name like "democratic socialists for Bernie" doesn't solve the problem. Most people will see that as a branch of Bernie's campaign, and therefore, we have no right to step beyond the usual latitude other Bernie canvassers have. 

And that being the case, the "independent political identity" of "our" Bernie campaign is going to come across as simply an opportunist use of Bernie's campaign to promote our group.

Then there's the idea that the DSA is going to "take it to a higher level" because we're going to tie the Bernie campaign to local housing justice efforts or many other issues. But the most important way to do that is to take these  issues to the other Bernie activists as we rub shoulders with them doing campaign work. If we have our own canvassing, tabling, etc., that means we have to stay away from Bernie's people doing the same thing, and then we're not going to be in contact with those other activists.

It is a sectarian blunder to insist on having our own "independent political identity" by having an "independent expenditure" pro-Bernie campaign. It isn't a legal question. It is a political question. Our DSA political message is for working people to come together in a class movement, and Bernie's campaign is the immediate vehicle for doing it.

Again, splitting from the main campaign structures to promote uniting in Bernie's campaign makes no fucking sense.

"Independent" of Bernie's campaign is the wrong political message. Our political message should we that we want all working people to join together in Bernie's campaign.

The "political identity" we want to promote is not the ideological one of "democratic socialism" but the class-based movement to carry out a "political revolution" that Bernie is projecting. That is the next step towards creation of a working class party.

But isn't it a contradiction to have a workers party gestating in the oldest bourgeois party in the world, the Democrats?  Absolutely. It is a total mess. Especially in the most important point: establishing a clear and universally recognized distinct identity as a political force.

But we don't get to choose whether politics should have evolved in this way. The fact is, it has. And it is not the role of Marxists to simply denounce the contradiction, but instead to work in and through it to a resolution.

The DSA's National Political Committee majority should suspend implementation of its national campaign proposal, and instead prepare a discussion for the convention. It needs to prepare a document motivating its idea of an "independent political identity" and an explanation of what this entails.

It should also organize  to bring other views, especially those of other comrades in the leadership who oppose the majority proposal, to the membership.

Whether and how to relate to Bernie 2020 will be the most important practical political question before the convention.

Discussing and deciding this democratically is not something that will just happen. It has to be thought through and organized, beginning with bringing out the different viewpoints and options; finding the ways to bring them to the membership as a whole; and getting as many DSA members as possible engaged in discussing and choosing among these options. That is the National Political Committee's real job right now.

Using a favorable vote for a Bernie endorsement as authorization for what I and other Bernie supporters reject as a sectarian approach, and one that was never discussed beyond the NPC, would be an undemocratic usurpation of decisions that properly belong to the membership and the convention, and a tremendous disservice to the task of figuring out how to organize a mass, democratic, socialist political movement for the 21st Century in the United States.

--José G. Pérez