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Beyond the Ballot:
A Report
From February 27th to March 1st YDS held its national outreach conference entitled “Beyond the Ballot: Making the Movement Matter” at the Academy of Environmental Science in New York City. The event, attended by over 150, focused on developing strategies for building progressive and radical social movements to push the Obama administration to the left. This year, YDS successfully increased the prominence of socialist politics in workshops and plenaries while articulating why building a democratic socialist organization is necessary for even moderate reforms, let alone power shifts between labor and capital.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, spoke on the plenary “Now, the Hard Part: Movement Building Under Barack Obama” with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Bill Fletcher Jr., a radical trade unionist, and DSA Vice-Chair and Temple Professor, Joseph Schwartz. Goodman reminded the audience that the media plays an important role in making and breaking progressive change. She encouraged activists to use communication, while admitting the limitation of mainstream media in promoting anti-establishment viewpoints even when they are popular. Fletcher reminded the audience that socialism more than just a topic for study groups. He also spoke about the need to critically examine social movements and organizations in order to better the movement we already have. Schwartz proclaimed there is social democracy in the United States- but it is isolated to the affluent in American suburbs with their excellent public schools and services. He told listeners the goal of democratic socialists is to expand such social benefits to all. All speakers agreed that the Obama administration offered an opening to social movements, but that we need to have one foot in the system and one in the streets. Visible protest with direct demands would help distance Obama from his corporate backers.
The next plenary was “Student Debt: The New Indentured Servitude.” This session fit right into YDS’ national programming as the organization, at the YDS Summer Conference voted to make student debt a national priority. The panel featured academics Christine Kelly and Jeffery J. Williams, and was moderated by leading YDS and New Jersey intercollegiate activist Michael McCabe. Kelly, a historian of student activism, discussed the fight against tuition increases in the days of Roosevelt and afterward. She articulated only organized student bodies could successfully fight against raises in fees and for increased funding. Williams, in a popular experiment, asked the audience how many had graduate school debt, then undergraduate debt. Combined, a good portion of the auditorium raised their hands. Then he asked how many had high school debt. No one had their hand raised.
Williams used this moment to highlight that our society views education as a right until the age of 18. He also said that skyrocketing debt is a new phenomenon born over the past few decades. He and Kelly connected the dominance of neoliberalism to the shift from grants to loans in subsidizing an individual’s higher education. When asked by an audience member about the need to increase technical schools because higher education is “a privilege,” both answered that the role of socialists and progressives is spread the idea that college education is a right to those who qualify. Kelly, who recently joined DSA, ended by telling the audience her family directly benefited from the GI Bill which enabled her father to attend college. She stressed that young socialists must remind a generation that grew up with anti-government rhetoric that the state can be a force for good.
On Sunday, DSA Youth Section (YDS’s old name) veterans addressed the issues of the America’s weak economy and imperial wars. Mark Levinson, the first DSA-YS chair and current chief economist for labor union UNITE-HERE, and Dr. Schwartz, the first DSA-YS national organizer, spoke on “The Economic Crisis and the Wars: Seeing Through the Misdirection.” Levinson told the students that only the starry-eyed conservative economists did not predict the bubble bursts of housing and the stock market. He added that growing income inequality contributed the crisis. The stagnating wages of the working-class forced people into debt. Higher wages at the top and deregulation of financial instruments led to more speculation. This proved to be a dangerous combination as the economy tanked largely due to bad debts and poor investments. Schwartz, who filled in for an injured Frances Fox Piven, told the audience that the “dirty little secret” is that the U.S. could be perfectly safe with a drastically cut military budget via espionage and border defense. A great deal of our spending is dedicated to maintaining our Cold War style imperialist army and being ready to invade developing nations. Schwartz also said socialists should also push for more democratic control of the capital that our government is now investing in failing banks. He reasoned since it’s our tax money, it should be socially and democratically owned.
The closing panel was “We are an Intergenerational Movement!” with DSA Vice-Chair and Midwest Academy trainer Steve Max and journalist and author Liza Featherstone. Max said he would offer no advice to student activists on how to organize themselves. He would, however, tell that the socialist movement was a historic struggle that had achieved great changes in this country. While not always featured prominently in textbooks, socialist organizations helped activists become smarter and more organized movement builders. Featherstone stressed the critical role socialist organizations play in building organic activists and intellectuals. Both Max and Featherstone reminded us that there is a strong anti-intellectual current in American politics on both the right and left. They agreed that being active in YDS is a great way to build an educated democratic left and to counter reactionary and misguided anti-intellectualism.
The conference also featured fourteen workshops with topics ranging from labor, immigration, gender, sexuality, and race, healthcare, the economy, the environment, the war, and more. One of the most successful workshops was “Strike While the Iron is Hot: How to Build a YDS chapter.” Over twenty chapter activists and those interested in starting chapters from ten schools came together to discuss how to build a socialist organization through programming and intellectual development. The attendance of younger chapter activist including high school students showed that there is a new generation ready to grow YDS.
The atmosphere of that workshop and the entire conference was one of hope - even if cautious. Gone is the anger and resentment of youth activism under Bush. YDS is ready to play a strong and visible role in building progressive social movements and a democratic left under Obama. We know that we are socialists and Obama is not - no matter what the right-wing says. We’ll continue recruiting and building DSA as a multi-generational socialist organization. “Beyond the Ballot: Making the Movement Matter” only emphasized our belief that elections play an important, but limited role in social change. Obama’s election created many opportunities for social change. Now our job is not only to convince him that our ideas are right; we must build the movements to make him enact them.
Click Here for Conference Schedule
Dates: Friday, February 27 - Sunday, March 1
Location:
For conference schedule click here.
For a list of affordable hostels click here.
For the conference flyer click here.
For The Facebook event click here.
For Fundraising tips click here.
For Conference Registration, Housing, and Travel Scholarships click here. Register before February 24th and save $10. The deadline for requesting travel subsidies is February 1st. The deadline for requesting housing is February 15th. Day passes are available for sale at the door. Prices are $10 for Friday, $20 for Saturday and Sunday each. Those wishing to just attend the plenary with Amy Goodman will be admitted for $15. She will be speaking at 10:30 AM on Saturday, February 28th.
Registering before February 24th saves you ten dollars. The deadline for requesting travel subsidies is February 1st. The deadline for requesting housing is February15th. Requests for housing and travel subsidies can be made on the registration website.
We encourage campus groups to plan ahead and apply for financial support from their schools as early as possible. Contact us if you have any questions, want to volunteer at the conference, or need help with fundraising or transportation needs. You can reach us at yds@dsausa.org or 212-727-8610.
POLITICAL CONTEXT
Progressive social movements need to capitalize on the energy and excitement aroused by the Obama victory. Simultaneously, as the economic crisis worsens, students and aspiring students need to be especially wary of cuts to education budgets. We must offer “critical support” to the Obama administration and begin pressuring him to enact policies that benefit
As Barack Obama begins his tenure as leader of our country we must remind him that young people overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Obama captured two-thirds of under-30 voters – a nine point increase from what 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry received. Now is the time to reap the fruits of our labor. Please join our discussion about how to continue the trend of progressive victories.
Let’s make the most of these political crossroads!
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Workshops and panels will feature organizers and trainers from the anti-racist, feminist, youth, queer rights, labor union, green, and peace movements, as well as noted activist scholars and voices from the democratic left.
We are still developing the full program, but the preliminary list of speakers includes:
Amy Goodman, is a syndicated columnist, author and the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on 700 radio and television stations in North America. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts.” Goodman has written three books with her brother, journalist David Goodman. The latest is the NY Times bestseller Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Their two previous books are also New York Times bestsellers Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back, and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. Independent bookstores chose it as the #1 political book of the 2004 election season.
Bill Fletcher Jr., longtime trade union activist. Former president of TransAfrica Forum, former co-chair of United for Peace and Justice, founder of the Black Radical Congress, and former Education Director of the AFL-CIO. He is also co-author (with Fernando Gapasin) of the book on the crisis of organized labor, Solidarity Divided. Member of Democratic Socialists of America, YDS’s parent organization.
Frances Fox Piven, is widely recognized as one of
Jeffrey J. Williams, has analyzed the fate of higher education, especially the near-complete corporatization of universities and the growth of student debt. He also writes on contemporary criticism and other literary topics. His work has appeared in more popular as well as academic venues, such as the Voice Literary Supplement, Dissent, American Literary History, and College English. He is one of the editors of the textbook The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, and he is editor of the literary and critical journal, the Minnesota Review. He is currently a professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at
Liza Featherstone, is the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart, and co-author, with United Students Against Sweatshops, of Students Against Sweatshops. Featherstone is a contributing writer to The Nation magazine, where she writes about labor and social justice issues. Her writing also appears in Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Columbia Journalism Review, Salon, Left Business Observer, and Dissent, and many other publications. Featherstone teaches in the Union Semester program at CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Labor Studies, as well as in the political science department at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the Journalism School at New York University.
Christine Kelly, is a professor, author and longtime activist. She teaches political science at
Stephen Eric Bronner, distinguished Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University and author of the new book: Peace Out of Reach: Middle Eastern Travels and the Search for Reconciliation. His other works include Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Right-Wing Ambitions, and The Erosion of American Democracy, and Socialism Unbound. He is the Senior Editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture. Member of Democratic Socialists of
Joseph Schwartz, Chair, Department of Political Science, Temple University and Chair of Steering Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America and Vice Chair of Democratic Socialists of America. Schwartz is the author of the recently released book, The Future of Democratic Equality.
Corey D. B. Walker, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at
PLANNING YOUR TRIP / FUNDRAISING / GETTING TO
People come to YDS conferences from all over the country. If you are coming from out of town, it is important to plan your trip as early as possible. We’re committed to ensuring that everyone who wants to come to “Beyond the Ballot” is able to attend. We’re offering travel scholarships and housing accommodations for those coming to NYC by plane, bus, car, or train (more info below), on a limited, first-come, first-served basis with preference given to YDS activists. However, we highly recommend that you fundraise to help cover costs. Click here for great tips on travel planning, economizing and fundraising, from getting cheap plane tickets, hosting events to raise money, to hitting up your student government for funds. Please remember that plane tickets are typically cheaper the further in advance you purchase them and that Student Government Associations often require plenty of advance notice if you are requesting special funds from them. Do plan ahead!
CARPOOLING - NEED / OFFER RIDES TO NYC?
If you are within driving distance of
HOUSING ACCOMMODATIONS IN
We are working to provide out-of-town conference goers with free housing. If you live in
REQUESTING HOUSING OR TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIPS:
You can request or offer housing assistance and/or travel scholarships in the on-line registration form. YDS has a limited budget to help subsidize travel costs. Preference is given to YDS members and those wanting to start YDS chapters. If you request a travel scholarship, please fill out the appropriate information on the registration form or contact us at the email address below with your details. We will respond to you shortly to let you know if your scholarships request has been granted how much financial assistance YDS can provide.
REGISTRATION & COSTS:
Registration costs for the entire conference will be based on a sliding scale of $20 - $75. Special consideration for low-income individuals will be made with priority given to YDS members and those starting chapters. On-line registration forms are available here. Registration fees include conference materials, admission to all conference sessions, the plenary talks, two lunches, two breakfasts and admission to the Saturday night party.
QUESTIONS OR CONFERENCE IDEAS:
If you have any questions about the conference, do not hesitate to contact us (see contact info below). If you have ideas or suggestions you would like to propose to conference planners, if you would like to volunteer to help with preparations or to assist during the conference itself, don’t hesitate to email us at yds@dsausa.org call us at 212-727-8610.
Workers and Students of the World…Relax - Saturday Night Party
Saturday night Party is free for all conference-goers and friends of YDS. Directions to party will be available at registration tables.
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