T.O. 100: Strike Wave – Cornel West – Immigration – UC Retaliation – Transgender Rights – AI – Ralph Schoenman Obit

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Message to Our Readers on Our Expansion Drive – The Editors

• Editorial: Wave of Strikes and Working-Class Fightbacks Sweeps the Nation

• A Pathway to Citizenship is Long Overdue, So Is Breaking with the Democratic Party – by E.J. Esperanza

• FRANCE: POID Statement – Our Position: Open the Borders, Grant Asylum!

• S.O. Statement: Cornel West’s Presidential Campaign: Where We Stand

• Why We Don’t Endorse Cornel West’s Presidential Bid – by Millie Phillips

• Stop the Attacks on Transgender People! – by Kim Guptill

• Repression and Retaliation Against UC Student Workers’ Strike – by Fernando David Márquez Duarte

• Driverless Robot Taxis in San Francisco: Dangers of Artificial Intelligence – by Bradley Wiedmaier

• Ralph Schoenman, Presente! – by Mya Shone

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Support Our Socialist Organizer Expansion Drive

Dear Readers:

Two weeks ago, we launched our Fall 2023 Expansion Drive, as we have done every year for the past 32 years. In just two weeks, we raised $800 toward our $5,000 goal. This is a great start, but it’s only the beginning of what we hope will be yet another successful drive.

This is where you, our readers, come in.

We call upon you to make a contribution of $50 (or more) to our Expansion Drive. You will continue receiving our Electronic Issues every two weeks, but you will also receive our monthly print edition and the biweekly newsletter of the International Workers Committee Against War and Exploitation (IWC).

Issue No. 100 of The Organizer (new format; No. 318 old format), which you are now receiving electronically, is available in printed format, so order your copy today ($30 for one year) for wider distribution to co-workers, family, and friends. If you wish to receive a bundle of The Organizer please let us know asap!

This fall we also need your help to send political activists from various political backgrounds and from all corners of the world to a conference in Paris in November to help organize the fightback against the capitalist onslaught on working people, a conference to promote the struggle for socialism worldwide!

We need your help! Please send a donation to The Organizer Newspaper to our new address: P.O. Box 1782, New York, N.Y. 10025. Let us know if you wish to receive a print edition, in which case please send us your contact information (email and home address). You can also send your donation via PayPal; the link is on our website: www.socialistorganizer.org.

We thank you in advance for your continued support,

The Editorial Board,

The Organizer Newspaper

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Wave of Strikes and Working-Class Fightbacks Sweeps the Nation

Editorial

Sometimes the world seems to be in a hopeless situation. Poverty and hunger are on the rise; war is escalating; a global pandemic is running rampant; prices and rent continue to increase; a new wave of technology threatens to lay off entire sectors of workers, mercilessly adding to the ranks of the unemployed and unhoused.

However, as capitalism pushes workers to the brink, we are fighting back. In this country alone, a wave of labor militancy not seen in decades has been silently building to a crescendo. While the people have suffered greatly over the last several years, profits have hit record highs and workers across the country are waking up to the fact that these “crises” are manufactured and are preventable. They are taking matters into their own hands with the most powerful tool the working class has: the strike.

SAG-AFTRA Joins WGA in longest Hollywood strike in generations

On July 13, the 160,000-member strong SAG-AFTRA — representing actors and other media professionals — joined the ongoing writers guild (WGA) strike to make national headlines as the first Hollywood shutdown in six decades, costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollars every week. The workers are fighting for a fair share of the industry’s record profits, while also demanding protections against a wave of new technologies.

Streaming services such as Netflix have transitioned from content distributors to major producers, giving them a larger share of the profits and increased control over the budget, leading to brutal cost-cutting in areas like production or wages for content creators, and an increased dependence on new technologies such as AI.

In a nationalized industry, where all workers and society would share and benefit equally in the work, there is no reason that technology like AI should be feared. Indeed, AI could be used to help writers organize their thoughts, allowing them to devote their full time to explore different creative directions.

However, within the existing exploitative profit-driven framework, it makes sense for unions to fight for strict protections against this new technology. Public support for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike is high, and pickets continue across the country.

Threat of strike “changes the game” for UPS workers

As we go to press, members of Teamsters local unions representing 340,000 UPS workers have just voted to approve a new five-year contract, narrowly averting what would have been one of the largest strikes in U.S. history, disrupting package shipments, causing supply-chain lags and many other wide-ranging impacts on the economy.

Prior to the agreement, 97% of voting members approved the authorization to go on strike, and the union organized effective and visible practice picket lines all over the country at the initiative of the rank-and-file. They demanded higher pay, the elimination of the two-tier pay system, more full-time jobs, improved safety conditions, and harassment protections.

This credible strike threat forced management to put an incredible $30 billion in new money on the table and address most of the union’s demands. 86% of members voted in favor of the five-year contract, from the record 58% of members participating in the vote.

However, at least one group of mostly part-time workers did call for a “No” vote on the new contract. These workers believed that the momentum they built for this massive strike had given the union the leverage to hold out for much more to support part-time workers. Their voices should not be discounted.

Could a true demonstration of the power of the hundreds of thousands of UPS workers in strike action have led to an even greater victory than the one being celebrated today? Given the gains won at the bargaining table, the overwhelming majority of UPS were not so sure, which is why they voted to support the contract.

UAW Women’s Conference demand strong contract, pledge to strike if they have to.

UAW gears up for contentious negotiations in September

The waking of another sleeping giant — the United Auto Workers — may add energy to the strike wave. Current labor contracts for nearly 150,000 UAW-represented employees across the nation’s largest three auto manufacturers, “the Big Three,” Ford, GM and Stellantis (Chrysler), will expire on September 14, and the new UAW leadership has chosen to forego the traditional friendly photo-op handshake between the union and management to kick off the negotiations.

The newly elected president, Shawn Fain, instead met with rank-and-file workers at several plants and has signaled that the leadership represents a break with a regime that, time after time, has thrown up its hands and accepted cutbacks and concessions while the major auto manufacturers raked in record profits.

Anger simmers among academic workers nationwide, may boil over this fall

This fall, yet another strike may be on the horizon that would shake the entire state of California. The California Faculty Association (CFA), the union representing 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches across the 23 campus California State University (CSU) system, has entered into impasse with the CSU in their re-opener negotiations, and has begun organizing contract action teams throughout the state to prepare for a potential strike that could occur before the end of the year.

This massive work action would follow a wave of academic strikes in recent years that has not been seen in the country for many decades. To name just a few:

Columbia University student workers led a ten-week strike in the fall of 2022; part-time faculty at the New School in New York struck for three weeks in 2022; 48,000 UAW-organized graduate workers at the University of California struck for six weeks in the fall of 2022; in January of 2023, 800 unionized faculty at the University of Illinois-Chicago struck for six days; 23,000 graduate students in the Graduate Employees Organization at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor organized a 146-day strike; 9,000 educators at Rutgers University walked out on April 10 for one week; postdocs and staff scientists at the University of Washington just ended a weeklong strike.

In every one of these cases, major improvements to pay and benefits were won as a direct result of these strike actions.

Breaking the stranglehold of the two-party system

These strikes and work actions — which are mainly spearheaded by the rank and file — are confronted with a major obstacle, however. The leaders of their unions are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party, which is precisely one of the two ruling-class parties, along with the Republicans, that is imposing the cutbacks, slashing living-wage jobs, fomenting U.S. wars and interventions, dismantling public services, and promoting division among working people in the U.S. and worldwide.

Workers are going into battle against their class enemies with one arm tied behind their backs. Breaking the ties of subordination to the Democrats, and thereby to the capitalist class, is an urgent task. It requires promoting labor and community fightbacks, deepening — and helping to finance – the organizing drives like the ones underway at Starbucks and Amazon, and democratizing the trade unions.

It also requires putting into action the resolution on independent working-class political action – a Labor Party – that was adopted by the 2017 national convention of the AFL-CIO but has yet to see the light of day. [See other articles in this issue on the efforts launched by Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) to promote such a Labor Party.]

The world may be in a dire situation, but U.S. workers are showing that we won’t take it lying down. We are waking up to realize that by mobilizing in our own name we have the power to confront and beat back capitalist domination – for a better world than what capitalism has to offer.

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A Pathway to Citizenship is Long Overdue, So Is Breaking with the Democratic Party

By E.J. Esperanza

As Democrats line-up behind President Biden’s bid for re-election, Democratic Party leaders in Congress re-introduced a “Registry Bill” that promises to provide a pathway to citizenship for approximately 8 million undocumented workers.

The legislation – H.R. 1511, Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929—updates the registry date to January 1, 2016, so that undocumented workers who migrated to the United States before 2016 can be placed on a pathway to citizenship.

The Registry law was first enacted in 1929, and originally permitted certain immigrants who had been continuously present in the United States since June 3, 1921, to apply for permanent residency. Since then, the eligibility date has been modified several times. The last time was in 1986 under Republican President Ronald Reagan when the date was changed to January 1, 1972– 37 years ago!

In those four decades, over 11 million undocumented workers have amassed on our shores without basic civil or democratic rights.

Of course, these migrants didn’t just appear out of thin air; they were displaced by U.S. multinational corporations and forced to migrate, largely from Mexico and Central America, after “free-trade” agreements in the 1990s and early 2000s cannibalized economies south of the border.

Today, H.R. 1511 is lauded as “historic and long-overdue” for undocumented workers. Over 148 of the largest labor unions and most prominent immigrant rights organizations have endorsed the legislation.

But are the Democrats finally going to deliver a pathway to citizenship? No, this legislation is dead on arrival. In fact, the fanfare given to this legislation by immigrant rights organization is surprising, to say the least.

Not only does the legislation unnecessarily exclude over 3 million immigrants, but the Democratic Party no longer controls Congress and simply doesn’t have the votes to pass H.R. 1511.

So why introduce the legislation now? The truth is that the legislation is purely symbolic and a crude attempt to lure Latinx voters to vote for Biden in 2024. This, after Latinxs are growing disillusioned with the Biden administration, which has largely replicated Trump policies at the border and detained and deported more immigrants than Trump. It has also increased the detention of immigrants in for-profit facilities – where immigrants have been dying – even though Biden has the power to issue an executive order to abolish them.

If the Democrats really wanted to pass the Registry Bill, they could have done it when they controlled both chambers of Congress in 2021-2022. Instead, Democrats hid behind an un-elected parliamentarian to axe the Registry Bill from the reconciliation process, which would have allowed the Democrats to bypass the filibuster and pass legislation with a simple majority.

This is history repeating itself. President Obama promised immigration reform and despite super-majorities in Congress between 2009-2010, the Democrats decided to bail out Wall Street instead – deporting a record 3 million undocumented workers in the process.

Is it time for immigrant rights organizations to break with the Democratic Party and pursue an independent class-struggle strategy? I think so.

This is long overdue.

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FRANCE: POID Statement

Our Position: Open the Borders, Grant Asylum!

They are hypocrites, those politicians who are pointing the finger at refugees, when it is their military interventions, the plundering by the multinationals and the IMF’s plans that are forcing thousands of families into exile.

They are dangerous, those who are dividing the workers and peoples in order to weaken them in their class struggle against the governments that are responsible for war and exploitation.

They are criminals, those who seek to deny to the oppressed the opportunity for asylum and a dignified life for themselves and their children.

They are liars, those who claim that there is “no money” to welcome refugees (just as there is “no money” for wages, schools and hospitals). What about the hundreds of billions of euros in public funds handed out to the capitalists and poured into war budgets?

They shed crocodile tears every time lifeless bodies are found, but demand more firmness, less welcoming, more control of immigration.

The only internationalist and democratic working-class position is to demand that all governments welcome with dignity all those seeking asylum!

Open the borders immediately, throughout Europe, free the detainees in the detention centers, grant asylum and regularize all undocumented migrants! There is only one working class and it knows no borders!

This is the position of the Democratic Independent Workers’ Party (POID). It is inseparable from the demand for the withdrawal of French troops from all countries where they are intervening.

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Cornel West

Cornel West’s Presidential Campaign: Where We Stand

Socialist Organizer Statement

The main obstacle facing the U.S. working class, the oppressed Black population, and the youth is the refusal of the leaders of the labor movement, and of the Black struggle, to break with the Democratic Party, one of the two capitalist parties — and to build a Labor Party rooted in the unions and oppressed communities, as well as an independent Black working-class party linked to the struggle to build a Labor Party. There is no political party that represents exclusively the interests of the exploited and oppressed.

The need for such an independent working-class party is all the more urgent given the strike wave and workers’ mobilizations this past summer – the most powerful in decades.

The subordination of the labor movement to the Democratic Party – and thereby to U.S. imperialism – is encouraged and promoted by the policies of Bernie Sanders, the DSA, and a whole array of leftist parties that are already calling to vote for Biden-the-Warmonger to stop Trump.

All of them serve one main purpose, which is to sheepdog workers and young Black activists back into the Democratic Party by covering its anti-worker policies with a pseudo “progressive” brush. This is why they get a lot of play in the mainstream media. This same accusation can be leveled at the majority of Black leaders who claim to champion the fight for Black liberation but subordinate themselves to the graveyard of all social movements: the Democratic Party.

At every major election, the refusal of these “leaders” to break with the Democratic Party and champion the struggle for a Labor Party and a Black working-class party creates a vacuum. It’s a vacuum that political currents claiming to be “independent” of both the Republicans and the Democrats seek to fill. In the 2024 presidential election, it’s Cornel West who is positioning himself to play this role, running as the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

Among the main slogans put forward by Cornel West in his bid as the Green Party’s candidate are ending poverty and houselessness, demilitarizing the police (abolishing Cop-Cities), Medicare For All (single-payer healthcare), education, reparations for Black people, and ending wars and ecological collapse.

Some of these slogans are very general. What, for example, does he mean by reparations? Is he talking about the right to self-determination for Black people? And when it comes to ending wars, does he call for the withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO troops from Ukraine? Overall, however, his platform is in tune with the aspirations of millions of workers, Blacks and young people — all of whom want profound change.

Having said that, we must note the following:

Cornel West does not call on the labor movement to break with the Democratic Party. He does not call for a genuine workers’ party or an independent Black working class party. In fact, he first announced his campaign run as the candidate of the People’s Party, a multi-class populist party that featured right-wing politicians of the LaRouche party at an “antiwar” demonstration last February organized by People’s Party leader Nick Brana.

Even when West stepped down as the People’s Party’s candidate, he continued to support the People’s Party’s politics and his initial decision to run as that party’s candidate. It was simply that the People’s Party was only registered in a few states, West explained, whereas the Green Party was registered in more than 20 states. He reiterated that he was “honored” to have been chosen as the People’s Party’s candidate.

Like the People’s Party, the Green Party is a multi-class formation that does not place its orientation and activities at the service of workers’ interests. Experience shows that “green parties” in the major imperialist countries always end up rallying to the side of imperialist governments and are often their most hawkish wing (as in Germany today).

Given the absence of genuine political representation for workers and Black people in the 2024 presidential election, thousands of activists, workers and young people are looking favorably at West’s campaign, and many are beginning to organize campaign committees.

Socialist Organizersupports the political orientation of the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI). We have no interests separate and apart from those of workers, young people and the oppressed. We address everyone fraternally – including all those who look favorably upon Cornel West’s candidacy: Join us in promoting the widest debate on the need for the U.S. labor movement and the Black Liberation Movement to break with the Democratic Party. Together, let’s organize this discussion in the columns of the monthly The Organizer newspaper. We await your contributions.

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Why We Don’t Endorse Cornel West’s Presidential Bid

“We will seek to work with him and his supporters in a comradely way on mutually supported issues.”

By Millie Phillips

Cornel West, currently running for president of the United States on the Green Party ticket, could appear to be an ideal candidate for those with socialist aspirations. As a well-respected Black academic and progressive Christian theologian, he may appeal to many demographics that might mistrust the secular socialist left as overly white and anti-religious.

Being neither race-reductionist nor class-reductionist, he cuts across identity differences, an approach that could widen his support and help build more effective social justice movements. Unlike many DSA members (he was formerly an honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America), West is not trying to herd left-leaning voters back into a party that consistently undermines their interests and betrays their trust. Unlike many academics, West is an engaging, accessible public speaker and writer.

Thus, the question is not why Socialist Organizer would endorse West, but why would we not?

We do not endorse Cornel West’s presidential bid and here is why: 

First: We don’t think his choice of office is strategic to building a mass movement of working-class voters who reject both ruling-class parties, Republicans and Democrats.

Within recent memory, there have been many unsuccessful challenges to the presidency by left-wing candidates both within and outside of the Democratic Party. They simply couldn’t compete with candidates supported by ruling-class money.

As supporters of Bernie Sanders learned the hard way, even a Democratic Party primary campaign that raised vast amounts of money and had enough support among voters potentially to win, was crushed by the Democratic Party leadership, which will do anything to defeat campaigns not beholden to its ruling-class masters.

Election laws developed by both capitalist parties ensure that third-party or independent campaigns remain marginal, limiting them to propaganda efforts with no chance whatsoever of winning beyond local, or, very occasionally, state-level offices. This leads to the next point; the dreaded “spoiler effect,” the claim that left-wing candidates take votes away from liberal Democrats and thus help get Republicans elected.

Second: We reject the “spoiler effect” and agree with West’s supporters that he should not be accused of it. If the Democratic Party truly cared about democracy more than it cares about defending capitalism and its war machine, it would work to change undemocratic election laws, doing whatever it takes to get rid of the electoral college and to establish national ranked-choice voting, eliminating the spoiler effect altogether.

If Trump (or possibly another Republican) defeats Biden in 2024, the Democratic Party will blame West for Biden’s defeat, exacerbating divisions among liberal-to-left voters and further tarnishing the image of third-party efforts. We reject the idea of “lesser evil” – neofascists and neoliberals are both leading us on a path to barbarism or outright annihilation. The Democrats have enabled the Republicans every step of their way toward outright fascism. However, many voters have yet to realize that both parties are just leading us down different forks of the same path.

Third: West’s choice to run on the Green and People’s Party tickets is not grounded in the political interests of the working-class – the vast majority of actual and potential voters.

His initial choice, the People’s Party, is a small, new populist effort credibly accused of internal abuses of power, including sexual and racial harassment. It cannot even offer ballot access for West. The Green Party is a more credible effort as regards elections, with some ballot access and local election victories, but is internally dysfunctional and not based in the working class. Neither seek to build a party that galvanizes the latent power of workers and their unions to challenge capitalist hegemony. 

Socialist Organizer wants to see a national working-class party with a significant base in labor unions, the only organizations in the U.S. that are organized based on class and have sufficient resources to pose a credible challenge.

Learning painful lessons from our work in the now defunct Labor Party, Socialist Organizer was among the organizations that came together to build Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), a group that seeks to build a base for such a new party well before declaring that one already exists.

LCIP believes we should start locally, not nationally, where independent candidates have a chance of winning and can be selected and held accountable by assemblies of local community and labor activists, and to use electoral victories to build up regional power sufficient to support a national party. 

We understand the appeal of Cornel West’s campaign and we seek to work with him and his supporters in a comradely way on mutually supported issues, but we remain committed to LCIP’s vision of how to build lasting working-class political power.

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Stop the Attacks on Transgender People!

By Kim Guptill

Imagine if you were forced to use a restroom that makes you feel unsafe. Or that you are not allowed to play your favorite sport. Or that the books you see yourself in suddenly disappear from your library. No need to imagine, of course. These scenarios are real. According to The Washington Post, in the first six months of this year, state legislators have introduced over 400 bills attacking the rights of transgender people.

There are bills aimed at preventing trans girls and women from playing on “female” sports teams, barring trans youth from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, and restricting gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. Recent targets include bans on drag shows and gender-affirming care for adults.

School boards across the country have ordered books depicting transgender people removed from the shelves. In the House of Representatives, the Parents Bill of Rights Act has passed, which would require parental consent for children to change their names on school forms or use bathrooms matching their gender identity. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, also passed in the House. It defines sex solely on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” and restricts transgender girls and women from competing on their sports teams.

These are attacks on transgender persons’ right to exist in public. And they have grim consequences. Data from the National Institutes of Health indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide.

In Tennessee, a transgender man and suicide survivor awaits the fate of a bill that effectively bars Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming care. If it becomes law, the state would de facto force him out of transition, as he cannot afford private care – an economic reality suffered by the majority of transgender people under capitalism. “Transitioning was not a cosmetic procedure for me; it was lifesaving treatment,” he said. Pause and take that in. Lawmakers want to erase this man’s existence.

Many of these bills have been drafted by a network of religious right nonprofits, working closely with legislators. Their decidedly unholy work threatens the separation of Church and State.

And while it may not be surprising that the entire tsunami of anti-trans legislation has been introduced by Republicans, it is also no surprise that we have heard nary a peep in response from the Democrats.

In his February 2023 State of the Union address, Biden said only that trans children deserve “safety and dignity,” but mentioned no commitments to fight the overwhelming wave of bills. In April, Biden proposed a rule that would allow schools and colleges to create limits on the participation of transgender athletes. A leader who truly “ha[s] their backs”– as Biden self-proclaimed just a week earlier on Transgender Day of Visibility– would have called for an outright ban.

At the state level, some Democrats in the Texas State legislature crossed party lines to vote in favor of banning healthcare for trans youth.

Neither capitalist party can be trusted to fight for the rights and dignity of the people they claim to represent. Ultimately, the divide-and-conquer approach advocated by the ruling class, combined with the private ownership of the healthcare industry – two hallmarks of our capitalist system – form major roadblocks in the fight for full rights for trans people.

Socialists have had a long record of supporting the rights of gender variant people. Following the 1917 revolution by workers and peasants in Russia, homosexuality was legalized, and sex-change operations were also reported. Unfortunately, many in the public associate socialism with the Stalinist bureaucratization that reversed these and many other gains of the revolution.

As trans activist and community organizer Adrian Silberding puts it: “The revolution will not be gender-conforming. … Anywhere people are fighting oppression, trans people are in the room.”

I am the mother of a 28-year-old transmasculine socialist and a 30-year-old trans woman activist, both of whom agree. At the Socialism 2022 conference in Chicago, the crowd of 1500 was overwhelmingly young and queer. These people are educating, organizing, and mobilizing to fight for trans rights.

We call for the immediate cessation of attacks on trans youth and athletes! We demand the expansion of transgender healthcare, and protections for the rights of trans people to exist in public! We call for the reversal of censorship of all forms of trans expression!

To achieve these goals, we call on the trade unions to mobilize their members in support of trans rights, just as we call upon all supporters of democratic rights to embrace this struggle. Adoption of even a fraction of these 400-plus laws would be a serious blow to all working people!

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Repression and Retaliation Against UC Student Workers’ Strike

By Fernando David Márquez Duarte

On December 23, 2022, after six weeks of strike, the University of California (UC) reached an agreement over collective bargaining with the UC student-workers’ union.

Some gains were made, like a mild salary increase (though the most significant wage increase in the contract won’t kick in until October 2024), protection against workers’ dismissal and disciplining, and an improved process of grievances. There were several aspects that were not improved from the previous contract, however, like disability rights and access, international workers’ rights, parent workers’ support, Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), and police defunding.

The University admins, however, have been carrying out repression and retaliation against UC student workers, violating the contract that they agreed upon months earlier. The retaliation began against three student workers who wrote with chalk “Livable Wages Now!” on the outside wall of a concrete UCSD building.

Protests erupted on all UC campuses, with the largest actions at UC San Diego, where more than 60 student workers were issued “student conduct violations” and threatened with suspension and expulsions. One of the fabricated charges is “disruption of university activities.” The UC police were deployed to silence the protesters.

UC admins also sent “overpayment notices” to thousands of UC student workers who participated in the strike, stating that the workers have to return part of the already received salary or if not, the UC would dock it from future payments.

On August 15 the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) acknowledged that the UC conducted illegal retaliation against student workers in the case of UCSD workers charged with “felonies” and in the case of the “misconduct” charges filed against 50+ student workers who participated in peaceful protests in July.

PERB’s complaint affirmed that UC retaliated against academic workers, unilaterally changed conditions of employment when they issued disciplinary measures, and that they unlawfully consulted with the UCSD Office of Student Conduct.

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Driverless Robot Taxis in San Francisco – Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

By Bradley Wiedmaier

The specter of the implementation of Artificial Intelligence is poised to possibly transform society in greater ways than the Industrial Revolution. San Francisco was forced into the front ranks of this transformation by the imposition by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in a recent three to one vote. It granted unlimited access — which it later changed to a more limited access — to the city by two driverless robot taxi, autonomous vehicle (AV) operators.

Threatening to potentially eliminate all taxis driver jobs and also the human driver jobs of “ride share” vehicles, this massive job-terminating threat could signal the beginning of the end of employment for drivers, one of the largest categories of workers today. Five other AV operators are next in line seeking clearance to expand testing for additional robot-taxi vehicle models, as well as robot light-duty delivery vehicles, robot-buses, robot-vans and an autonomous street sweeper. 

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had allowed localized testing previously in areas in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties in Silicon Valley neighborhoods near the operations of the additional tech AV outfits. The first two companies, now granted unlimited operation by the CPUC, include Waymo and Cruise which are subsidiaries of Google/Alphabet and GM, and may soon be joined by Zoox for Amazon, Apollo for Baidu, along with AutoX, Nuro and WeRide which are seeking testing phases in San Francisco.

The reality of Waymo and Cruise, defy their claim to have completed testing by the continued interference of Emergency Response vehicles 55 times. Fire, police and ambulance operations have been blocked and delayed, so much so that the San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson testified at the CPUC against allowing unlimited operations by them.

There are still questions with performance on hills, speed bumps, fog and rain, which are extremely common conditions in San Francisco especially with its world-famous hills. The vehicles have just stopped in traffic 72 times and the “fare” had to be rescued. Speeds above 45mph are a concern … but the AVs have been given unlimited access including to freeways within SF. At the greater speeds stopping in the middle of traffic could be life threatening, and Fire Chief Nicholson has warned of the potential of these vehicles causing “a catastrophe.”

The California Labor Federation has spoken out against the authorization, and demonstrations have occurred at all stages of the CPUC hearings. However, all the SF City elected officials of the Democratic Party remained quiet during the hearing process. Some raised questions but did not lead any organized campaign against the unlimited use.

San Francisco as a charter city of the State, has the ultimate constitutional authority over its streets and traffic operations. Since the vote, one Democrat has spoken against the move but hasn’t challenged the authority of the CPUC to authorize unlimited access to the City by the two AV fleets. No discussion of the vast social dislocation and costs which will be caused by the decision was considered or estimated.

The profits of the AV companies, fueled by the dislocation must be key, in paying for the potentially monumental social cost caused by these industry changes. Those in power have made zero provisions to address or provide for the massive job losses.

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Ralph Schoenman

 Ralph Schoenman, Presente!: An Homage to a Life of Struggle

By Mya Shone

Our comrade Ralph Schoenman, one of the founding members of Socialist Organizer, died Monday, July 3 at the age of 87. Never one to stand silently by, there is hardly a continent in which Ralph Schoenman was not active and engaged. His articles, books, radio broadcasts, and riveting speeches demonstrate as well that he was a master of intellectual rigor – which he considered to be in service to the struggle for democratic rights and socialism.

Ralph Schoenman was not a man to look back. He never recorded his personal experiences in the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, or his involvement with the revolutionary struggles in Bolivia and Iran, or prepared to write a memoir. He always looked forward. Today that means to the preparations for the conference “For the reconstitution of the Fourth International, for the World Party of Socialist Revolution” in November.

As a teenager in the United States during the McCarthy witch-hunt, Ralph became an ardent defender of civil liberties and railed against imperialism. The writings of Tom Paine were especially meaningful to him. He always said, however, that Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy-biography of Leon Trotsky transformed his life and thinking. He sought Deutscher out and they became close friends until Deutscher’s death.

Unlike Deutscher, Ralph was inspired by Trotsky’s efforts to form the Fourth International and so Ralph became associated with — if not always a member of — the Fourth International for the next 60 years.

“The self-activation of the masses,” he would say, “should be the foundation for every campaign.” Thus, he began a long association with Bertrand Russell, who was the titular head of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) when Ralph was a graduate student and served on its youth executive. “In speaking for the movement over a period of two years,” Ralph wrote to Russell on July 21, 1960, “I have felt a root disparity between our argument for urgency and the fact that we are conducting annual marches.” Ralph proposed civil disobedience at the Defense Ministry in London but only on the condition that several thousand participation pledges were gathered.

Ralph and Bertrand Russell also garnered the support of noted celebrities —the Committee of 100 — as well as union leaders. When the British government refused a march permit, Dai Davies, head of the Federation of Welsh Miners, threatened a coal miner strike. The permit provided, the turnout exceeded expectations as 15,000 marched into Trafalgar Square, with many moving on to sit-down at the Ministry.

Opposition to the U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam, including the first exposé of the use of fragmentation (cluster) bombs and chemical warfare, multiple investigative trips to North Vietnam, the formation of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign — a united front effort of 80 organizations — as well as The International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam itself in 1967 are only a few contributions.

 Above all, we must pay homage to Ralph’s longtime commitment to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, the many campaigns and interventions he organized, as well as his extensive writing, notably The Hidden History of Zionism. As Ralph was the first to say, his understanding of Zionism and his appreciation of the Palestinian struggle developed through the years. He hoped that no reader of The Hidden History of Zionism “would ever again perceive Israel and the Zionist movement in the same light.”

In 1963, Ralph met Akiva Orr, an Israeli political activist and author. Aki introduced Ralph to the concept of a democratic and secular Palestine. “Minimum justice,” Ralph would later write, “requires dismantling the apartheid state and replacing it with a democratic, secular Palestine, where Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, live together with equal rights and opportunities.”

On June 6, 1982 when Israeli forces attacked and invaded Lebanon, Ralph and I were together already. We prepared immediately a full-page appeal and a series of exposés soon followed, all of which were published in major newspapers across the United States. Then we left for war-ravaged Lebanon.

Our searing eyewitness accounts, including of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, did not suffice. Ralph garnered the support of the P.L.O. leadership, the Mayors under house-arrest, and the leaders of each organization and labor union in the Occupied Territories for a great march to Jerusalem for self-determination on September 18, 1983, the first anniversary of the massacre. That the march was called off was a matter of exigency at the time, but its organization left an indelible impact.

In late December 1987, as a general strike engulfed every Palestinian community under Israeli rule and the brutal Israeli response ignited the First Intifada, we prepared a campaign with our Fourth International comrades: “The Time Has Come, End All Aid to an Apartheid Israel,” which called unequivocally upon people to “Join the worldwide call for a democratic and secular Palestine.”

Upon hearing the news of Ralph’s death, our comrade François De Massot stated aptly, “Ralph was totally a rebel — in the true Irish sense of the word ‘Up the rebels!’ and Ralph’s example, he added, “would certainly be very useful today.”

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