September 22, 2023

Last Sunday, the DSA’s National Political Committee held its first meeting of the term. Official notes have yet to be provided, but the meeting sparked some interesting commentary and debate. For coverage:

• Bread & Roses, a caucus that holds three elected seats on the NPC, released their accounting through their caucus organ, The Call.
• Red Star, another caucus that also holds three elected seats on the NPC, released their analysis of the event on their caucus organ, Zenith.
• Socialist Majority Caucus, which holds two elected seats on the NPC, covered the event on their caucus organ, The Agitator.
• The DSA staff union released a statement in response to the organization’s budgetary matters and concerns.
• An analysis published on Medium assessed the tactics used to cover the NPC’s discussion on DSA’s budget.

Review of Mark Paul’s “The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights”. “Rutgers Professor Mark Paul provides a full-spectrum picture of what we could think of as a version of the Sanders program, located historically in the history of U.S. social democracy. Paul’s objective is to propose a framework for understanding the full gamut of economic and social policy in the 21st century.”

AP reports: Biden uses executive power to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps

“After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program. In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.” Maryland is one of 10 states with complementary programs in place or in the works.

“The Google trial is going to rewrite our future”

“The verdict [in Google’s antitrust trial] will effectively establish the rules governing tech competition for the next decade, including the battle over commercialized artificial intelligence, as well as newer technologies we cannot yet envision.The history of antitrust prosecutions shows this again and again: Loosening the grip of a controlling monopolist may not always solve the problem at hand (here, an online search monopoly). But it can open up closed markets, shake up the industry and spark innovation in unexpected areas. … Ultimately, antitrust law’s most important function is to rebalance economic power, taming the excesses that are the inevitable consequences of a capitalist economy.” Analysis in NYT from Tim Wu, prof at Columbia Law and Biden NEC counselor 2021-23; author of The Curse of Bigness.

The “FREE” mask starts to peel off social media

What are the odds that Meta, and then the smaller fry, will follow Musk into direct monetization? (Variety)

“The Colombian right has done everything in its power to undermine Gustavo Petro. That hasn’t stopped the nation’s first leftist president from achieving ambitious reforms for Colombia’s poor and working class.” From Jacobin.

And a good watch from Jacobin and Progressive International: In episode one of the new video series The Internationalist, “we travel to Ramallah to hear from Dr. Yara Hawari on the past, present, and future of Zionist settler colonialism — and the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom and justice.”