DSA: To Fight U.S. Imperialism—Defend Iran, Break from Dems!

***This episode was recorded before the latest "ceasefire."***

Lital and Edward are joined by Tara from Chicago to discuss JBA's effort to put forward a resolution calling for Chicago DSA to take a side with Iran in the US-Iran War. We talk about what arguments were raised against the resolution, how we got bumped off the agenda "for lack of time" twice, and why its in the interests of American workers to stand with Iran and fight for the defeat of the U.S. and Israel in this reactionary war.

You can find our original resolution, "Mobilize Labor to Defend Iran!" here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DT_3UCf9NrKsZlVM_9rLNdSxCWVU8iSl/view

You can also read our reply to Bread & Roses here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cbOTC_s4n13PI75Hbd_JZElLJGs07VPR/view

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Hello and welcome to this episode of Gimme a Break, the podcast of the Just Break Already caucus in the DSA. I'm your host, Lutal, along with Edward. Hello. And the audio you heard at the beginning are chants defending Iran from the anti-imperialist contingent of the Maoist Communist Union and the Spartacus League at an April protest in New York City against the war on Iran. And today's episode is focused on efforts by JBA supporters in Chicago to get DSA to pass the resolution to mobilize labor to defend Iran against U.S. imperialism in this war, which has been at a lull, but there have been fresh strikes against Iran in the last day or so, and there might be full-blown war again by the time this episode airs. So since March, the resolution has twice been put on the agenda of the Chicago General Chapter meeting, and twice the quote clock ran out. We in the JBA understand that it is the duty of socialists in the belly of the beast to take a side with those countries oppressed and under attack by U.S. imperialism, which has been on a rampage. This means standing for the victory of Iran and the defeat of the US and Israel. As Lenin explained during World War I in his work Socialism and War, a revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war and cannot fail to see that the latter's military reverses must facilitate its overthrow. Socialists must explain to the masses that they have no other road of salvation except the revolutionary overthrow of their quote own governments, whose difficulties in the present war must be taken advantage of precisely for that purpose. Now, our resolution also insisted on the basic point that it's impossible to oppose imperialism while the DSA is part of the genocidal imperialist Democratic Party. And let's not forget that Joe Biden and the Democrats armed and enabled the genocide against the Palestinians. In the case of Iran, the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, want the regime to submit and put the country fully under the U.S. boot. They criticize the war, but mainly on the grounds that Trump lacks clear aims and they were not consulted beforehand. And you have many left caucuses in the DSA that claim to oppose US imperialism and have been critical of DSA's quote weak response to mobilizing in the streets against the war. Yet the reaction was not to support this resolution, but to oppose it. One such caucus, Bread and Roses, explicitly told people to vote against our resolution, saying it was, quote, dead end ultra-left politics. So our guests this episode, our Chicago JBA comrade Tara. Hello, hello, who's been part of the effort to push this resolution forward and also helped write a response to Bread and Roses, which you can find in our JBA link tree. Welcome, Tara. And Edward is also part of the Chicago JBA. So he's being interviewed as well. Can both of you explain a bit of what motivated putting this anti-imperialist resolution forward and uh what why is it important to fight for the DSA to be anti-imperialist and not pacifist or focus on just economic issues?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Well, I think a big part of it was just seeing the response from DSA right out of the gate with the war in Iran. It wasn't very long after the war started that they put out this call for like, oh, we gotta call Congress, get them on board with the war powers resolution. The thing to do right now is to phone bank your politicians, which is a complete waste of time. As you laid out there at the beginning, the Democrats don't actually oppose Trump in any meaningful way on the Iran war. They have tactical disagreements. All of this is a way to avoid the hard question in this conflict, which is which side are you on? Are you with the US ruling class in this conflict against Iran, or are you with the people of Iran who are being starved, strangled, attacked on all sides by the US and the Zionist attack dog in the Middle East?

SPEAKER_03 4:49

And I'll just add to that that our resolution called specifically for concrete steps to be taken that form a class independent strategy, not relying on the Democrats or Republicans or any capitalist class politician to pass any sort of war powers resolution, but using a strategy that is class independent, a very fundamental Marxist idea that the working class maintains political, organizational, and ideological independence from the capitalist class. So we identified in the resolution that both Democrats and Republicans share the same imperialist goal of strangling Iran, and that it's their effort to further the dominance over West Asia, which will only serve to further divide the working class around the world, and also will result in the lowering of quality of life for working people abroad and here in the US. We said that it's impossible to oppose imperialism while the DSA continues to be part of that genocidal imperialist democratic party. We said that phone banking and pressuring capitalist politicians is that dead end strategy for any anti-imperialist working class demand. In short, we drew the class line.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

So the way the resolutions work is like there's a number of where as is. And so what you what you guys just laid out was kind of like the whereas parts, right? Like why this is important. And then there's the therefore. So could you guys explain a little bit what was concretely posed in the therefore of like what what we wanted the DSA to do?

SPEAKER_03 6:14

We asked the DSA to stand clearly for the defense of Iran and defeat of US Israel. It's a clear anti-imperialist stance. And then we called for the DSA to mobilize labor in a class independent way. So for members of the DSA and unions to take these arguments to their coworkers and tie US aggression in Iran to the rising costs of living at home and greater and greater job insecurity here, to use it as a lever to build a core of anti-imperialist trade unionists. We asked that these members of unions fight to pass resolutions calling for the defense of Iran and for union contingents to stand with Iran at anti-war demonstrations. And then we also called upon the Chicago DSA labor branch to begin facilitating conversations about how to create a class-independent approach that employs class struggle tactics to resist imperialist aggression wherever it manifests, via Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and any other nations.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Right. And the main reason that was sort of our be it resolved in this is because we wanted to shift the discussion away from a classical DSA thing about the answer is in Congress or the answer is in city council or the mayor's office, but to actually put it where the real power in society is. The working class is the class in society with its hands on the levers of production. They're the people who can shut down weapons being sent to Israel to use against Iran, weapons being sent from the United States to attack Iran. Now we're far from that at this point. I mean, the consciousness is not there. However, what we're advocating is sort of a step in that direction, right? To have those conversations, to build core within the unions, uh which is anti-imperialist and doesn't buy into the pacifist or the people who were for Trump and now are upset the America First kind of arguments against the Iran war. Something really different from both of those things.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

You mentioned how we're obviously not very close to that happening at the present moment. But on the other hand, the war is pretty unpopular with a lot of the population and also with lots of workers. But going from there to actually doing something and taking concrete action to stand with Iran is gonna take more than a resolution. The idea behind this is to start now in the working class, having those kinds of discussions in the unions. There are unions in Chicago like the CTU and others that take political stances and could be part of an anti-imperialist contingent at one of these demonstrations. What kinds of uh anti-war protests have there been in Chicago? And what has there been as far as any real intersections with unions in that?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Few and far between for the most part. There was a mobilization on May Day, which was more of like a larger no kings kind of deal, right? It was, you know, work shopping, all that stuff, like kind of popping off the Minneapolis one, two, three protests. As far as I remember, wasn't it very explicitly against the war in the same way? There's kind of not much, you know, in terms of what's actually happening on the ground with demonstrations against the war in Iran right now.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Yeah. But National DSA put out a statement at the beginning of the war that said that they were against imperialism, but everything they said to do was phone banking, call your congressman, get the war powers resolution. So we were trying to counter that kind of pacifist and looking to the Democratic Party answer to an actual uh class struggle perspective. So we've put this resolution forward at two consecutive branch meetings, correct? Correct. Okay. And so um, I guess if you guys want to say what happened the first time we did it and what the reaction was.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

I think that something that was interesting about the first time we forwarded this resolution is that we were forwarded an email by a concerned member who did not support uh the resolution. And in it he stated three primary concerns. Uh he didn't like calling for the defense of Iran and the defeat of US and Israel. He thought that that would be siding with the oppressive rulers of those countries, that the resolution rejects every available political mechanism, like electoral politics, diplomacy, war powers, authority, and then replaces them with going to the working class. He said that this substitutes moral witness for every concrete level or lever of power, which I think is a humiliating statement from a socialist to make. To question the power of labor, suggesting it isn't a concrete lever of power. It's the most concrete lever of power that we have as a class. And then finally, he questioned whether the Chicago DSA should even be directing members on a matter of this magnitude. So basically challenging the chapter's authority to engage politically and independently as a chapter. That was kind of like the first response that we received to the resolution. Okay, so that was um that was in March.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

And that was that letter was forwarded to us by the local leadership to every single person who signed the resolution. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

So it wasn't like from the leadership, but they forwarded it as a way of not themselves having to take a position on the resolution.

unknown 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Uh yeah. So I think maybe we didn't really like so part of that argument. Well, I guess there's there's different levels to it. There's like part of what was in that letter, it sounds like is kind of the classic argument that you wouldn't take a side with Iran because that because there's an oppressive regime there. So how did you guys answer this?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Well, I think one very easily understandable response to that for people who are in unions is like you don't always agree with what your union leadership does, but you would defend your union against an attack from the US government or the company. Like in this situation, Iran is an oppressed country which is under attack by the United States and Israel. Taking a side with it against the US and Israel doesn't mean you have to support the leaders of Iran. And in fact, the leaders in Iran, the theocracy that oppresses the people there, gets part of its credentials from the fact that it does sometimes stand up against US imperialism. And if they're the only people who are seen to be standing up against the US, of course they're going to they're going to generate support that way. One way to actually undercut it is to come out in defense of Iran as socialists and to say that, no, look, we're united against the US, but we have a different strategy that can actually win here.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah. The US is obviously like the biggest imperialist power right now that is the source of all of this aggression and chaos around the world. It's really a capitulation to imperialism to not take a side or that you're neutral between the US and Iran. It's couched like they're not good, they're bad, or whatever, which of course we don't politically support the Iranian regime, but we understand that the more that the US is successful in oppressing these countries, the more it's able to actually oppress the working class at home, too. That these things go hand in hand. So I guess that's another question because I feel some of the opposition to what we were trying to do is also why are we raising this? This isn't that much of an issue for the working class. I think it's actually kind of obvious right now. Every day you look in the paper, they're like, oh, inflation is up because of the war and gas prices. So I don't think it's hard to tell what the connection is. But maybe if you guys wanted to speak to that a little of what is the actual link between the conditions of the working class in the US and the war. I guess why can't we just like focus on bread and butter issues and not deal with these kinds of questions that are more controversial?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

It's kind of hard to deal with the bread and butter issues when you can't afford bread or butter. The prices keep going up and up and up over through this war. I just got gas for like $579 a gallon today, which is ridiculous. The way I think about it is if the US is successful in this conflict, that means the US ruling class has more power, more money, more resources to wage war on labor here. Uh defeating Iran would put it in a better position to continue its offensive against the working class here at home and make our lives even worse. And to like defend yourselves against these attacks, you can't pick and choose the arenas that you fight back in. There has to be some kind of united effort here. If the US gets a black eye on Iran, that opens up space for workers here to get more of what they need to defend themselves from Trump and the Democrats' attacks. So I think they're connected in that way, right? Every success for the US ends up being a defeat for the working class, whereas the opposite is also the case. Every success for the working class and for Iran in this conflict can be a defeat for the US.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

I was reading an article this morning and it was three CEOs from like McDonald's, Whirlpool, and something else, and then a fitness company, and and the uh executives were sounding the alarm. Americans have run out of money. They're not purchasing our products anymore. Even the rulers are starting to become concerned about the Iran war, linking it to uh the degradation of the quality of life for the working class.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

So you described this letter that we got that was critical of the resolution and basically telling people to vote against it. This was for the March meeting. But we also got a response I mentioned earlier from Bread Rose's caucus. They actually uh wrote a guide to how to vote on the resolutions for the meeting and included a recommendation on our resolution.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

So the groundwork caucus um encouraged a no vote and and they were honest about their position. They favor a strategy that involves pressuring politicians to sign the war powers resolution. The Bread and Roses Caucus, on the other hand, went full on sectarian. They urged their caucus members to vote no. They tried to dismiss it based on their claim that our caucus is a fringe ultra-left sect, and our anti-imperialist class struggle stance is dead end ultra-left politics. So their opposition appeared also to be rooted in our refusal to endorse the so-called independent but also act blue funded Cook County Democrat 25th Ward committee person, Byron Sigho Lopez, who is running a DSA candidate running in Chicago right now. So they cited this in their voting recommendations for our resolution. Um, so we instead argued in this instance to give critical support to Ed Hershey of the Working Class Party, which is a candidate he's uh drawn a clear class line in his campaign. So this shouldn't be surprised as the just break already caucus that we would not support a Democrat and we would support the class class independent candidate. What is Bread and Rose's position? That is a good question. I don't think that they've put out a statement independent of the DSA national statement.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

When we looked when we were writing the the response, the only thing we could find was from 2025 during the last war with Iran.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

They said basically our resolution was ultra-left fringe position in their response.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

It was just basically like an identity-based, you know, argument against us.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

The argument about uh Sigcho Lopez, that's the argument because our resolution made it clear that that you can't separate the question of fighting imperialism and being tied to the Democrats. A lot of people will raise that because he's running independent. His position on the war is like basically just the same kind of no war, call your congressperson kind of thing, right? We had some reaction on Twitter to the resolution and to the bread and roses response. A number of people would concede or say DSA had been weak on the Iran war. I don't know if you want to speak to that a little more. I think there's a general sense that there really hadn't been much response from the DSA to mobilize anything. A lot of people are like, why isn't there a real anti-war movement? DSA has like thousands of members. Why weren't people mobilized when the war started and at various points? Even on a pacifist level, it come out and protest. But then they thought they had like a gotcha because Ed Hershey does not himself defend Iran. My understanding is he's probably not very different on that question. I think he has like just a no-war position.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

What it boils down to is Hershey's campaign is drawing a line against the Democrats. The Democratic Party is in favor of strangling Iran. You cannot say the same thing about the Hershey campaign, right? You clearly cannot say the same thing about the Hershey campaign.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

There's a number of like Maoist caucuses in the DSA, liberation, others who do, you know, who will put out statements like taking, you know, or talking about, you know, be the oppressed against the against US imperialism, and they'll cycle on that, but then they don't want to break, you know, the Democratic Party connection. Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

After the March meeting, we were able to talk to a lot of people. Um, and I would say that there is a decent amount of people in the Chicago chapter who definitely call themselves anti-imperialist. Um, there was genuine genuine enthusiasm for the fact that our resolution called for a clearly anti-imperialist stance. It seemed for some that in the first version of the resolution, they wanted more clarity about how to engage labor in the US to fight against imperialist war. And some said that they supported the resolution generally, but then disagreed with calling for the defeat of US and in Israel and instead favoring the more pacifist ceasefire type of outcome. So when we forwarded the uh resolution again, again, we we kept all of the politics in it. We we made some slight modifications based on some member feedback who were generally enthusiastic about it. And then we forwarded it again, got on the agenda. But one of the issues is at the chapter meetings, all of the resolutions for membership are always placed at the very end of the agenda. And so member voice falls off the agenda quite literally. So much so that there is another group of people who were forwarding a resolution to possibly have more chapter meetings because this keeps happening to resolutions forwarded by the membership. So this is something that's causing a little bit of tension within the chapter that this keeps happening. But in the June chapter meeting, we reintroduced the resolution, uh, slightly modified, but it got on the agenda, but it did not get put to an official vote because we ran out of time. Um, we had to sit through hours of boring bylaw revisions and resolutions to create new committees, by offices, et cetera. But we did not get to making a statement on the Iran war or mobilize labor to defend it.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

And so when it got to actually the resolutions, which there were, I think, like, I don't know, 10 resolutions that were being considered. What they did during the break was they had a survey to determine the order the resolutions would be considered in. And basically, it was just like an online survey you did. You voted for which ones you wanted to talk about the most, and then you voted how you felt about them, right? If you felt like you were ready to vote in favor, ready to vote against, undecided. And so when they did the survey, we actually got some pretty interesting results. We had 20% of those who voted, um, voted in favor, said they were to vote yes on the resolution. 40% said they were ready to vote no on the resolution, and then about 39% said that they were undecided or neutral. So if we had the opportunity to actually motivate the resolution, I think we could have moved a good chunk of that 39%. It said they wanted to hear the debate on this resolution. A lot of the DSA left talks about anti-imperialism. But I think you can see that in at least in the reception we've gotten, that a lot of it ends up being subordinated to what uh the Democrats' electoral chances are going to be, right? Like clearly, if we had passed this resolution that said the Chicago DSA is for the defeat of the United States in this conflict, they would have had a microphone in front of every DSA elected in Chicago. And I think that, like, whether they want to admit it or not, I think that plays into the sort of unwillingness, this commitment to the strategy of electing Democrats as the road to socialism. I think you see this in different areas, right? Palestine, Venezuela, Iran.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Like a lot of what's happened in New York with the DSA has been about not like not putting Mamdani in a bad position vis-a-vis the Democrats. When the Iran war was happening, I think that's when Mamdani went and had his like cozy meeting with Trump to make some real estate deal or something. The New York DSA did like nothing pretty much to mobilize any for any protest, even on a pacifist basis, against the war in Iran. There's an anti-war working group in the New York DSA and put forward a resolution to do a protest uh for calling for Maduro's release outside of his uh trial, which was happening in Manhattan. Maduro has been imprisoned in New York City for the last few months. So they had this resolution. We had actually gone to the anti-war working group meeting and we supported this resolution. We also spoke at the meeting on the importance of mobilizing outside Maduro's hearing. And we also argued for defense of Venezuela and connecting that as well. But shortly after that meeting, the resolution basically got squashed and the leadership basically did a coup and overthrew the leadership of the anti-war working group and called new elections. When there was a protest outside the hearing, the DSA was like nowhere to be found. The leadership of the New York City DSA really did not want to put Mamdani in any kind of position of pressure vis-a-vis opposing Maduro's abduction, the Iran war, outside of some nice words in any real way to actually put pressure on him. Shortly after that, too, there was a protest against the Iran war, which I don't think the DSA was at at all. Maybe a month later, they had a small contingent finally at one of the protests. But I mean, DSA like brags that they have 14,000 members in New York City. So it's pretty outrageous that when the US imperialists are were threatening to like that they couldn't mobilize anything to protest this. In New York City, I think you you see very clearly how being tied to the Democrats is going to affect what the DSA is going to do in relation to imperialism. You can't fight US imperialism if you're in bed with one of the main parties of US imperialism. That seems like a pretty straightforward issue. And I think that even for all the other leftists in the DSA who hate US imperialism and want to do something about it, but because they really want to maintain unity in the big tent with the right, who are really just like pretty much like openly social chauvinists. They do not want to take a side against their own imperialism. Yeah. So I guess so at this point, I assume we're not trying to put it forward again.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I think we're going to work up some different resolutions for the next chapter convention.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Yeah. There's also plenty of um things to do resolutions about right now. I mean, we don't know what's gonna happen, but it it looks like like the Iran, the conflict with Iran is obviously not over. And so we don't know what's gonna happen with that. I mean, the US is starving, Cuba threatening the regime there as well. So I think that there's a lot of things the imperialists are doing right now that warrant uh protest and action from the the working class here. I think we could we can be flexible and see what happens, but right.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

We are planning on working on something at some point in the future. There's this Socialist Party of Indiana that's just launched, who are running some independent working class candidates. So there's something we want to work on there. And then, of course, whenever the Ed Hershey campaign officially launches, we're gonna be out there canvassing with him, campaigning for like trying to get people to support his campaign.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

All right. Well, that that sounds really good.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

That concludes this episode of Gimme a Break. You can check out all of our episodes at our Linktree or anywhere you get your podcasts. We're on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, and a bunch I haven't even heard of. You can also make sure you follow the Just Break Already caucus on Twitter at Clean Break Now and on Instagram at DSA underscore just break already. We also have a Linktree, which is the same, linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already, where you can find all of our statements, resolutions, petitions, and everything else we've been up to lately. Please, if you haven't already subscribe to the podcast, share it with someone you know in DSA or somebody who's not in DSA but is interested in socialist politics. And we are always open to your feedback, comments, criticism, hate mail. If you want to come on and debate us and tell us we're wrong, we'd love to have that. Um, although we're gonna prove you wrong. The easiest way to do that is send us a DM. We would be happy to have other caucuses on.