North KoreaBoard

Apologies for not posting much on the RMB lately comrades!

‘Overpopulation’ alarmism marginalizes those most vulnerable to climate change

A belief in African and South Asian countries over-breeding the earth into catastrophe has a lengthy history steeped in scientific racism, imperialist arrogance and western paternalism

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/overpopulation-alarmism-only-marginalizes-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-people/

Liberals are definitely going to condemn this as impeding on sacred principles of free speech, right?

Instagram says it's removing posts supporting Soleimani to comply with US sanctions

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/tech/instagram-iran-soleimani-posts/index.html

Zulanka in NK wrote:

In this short piece Harry Haywood, one of the most important figures of the NCM (in my view one of the most important Marxist theorists to come out of the US), takes a perspective I haven't seen echoed elsewhere. He suggests that the NCM's adoption of Three Worlds Theory was a central part of their failure, marred with a logic that pushed them towards support for imperialism and idealism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/haywood/1984/04/11.htm

I always wondered what Haywood's thoughts on Three World Theory was. Glad to see he took a good position.

So the PSL recently put out a surprisingly good article on the Bernie Sanders campaign, now I certainly don't agree with everything it has to say, I certainly wouldn't characterize Bernie calling on people to go for the only viable option against a literal fascist as a betrayal, and the idea that Bernie Sanders has had no legislative impact at all is simply not true, I'd also have liked if it went into just what Bernies purposed executive orders and executive appointments would mean for working and oppressed people in this country and around the world; because while the article does go over the potential limitations of a Bernie presidency and how hard it would be for him to get things through Congress, it doesn't give a similar amount of space covering the potential of what could do

It is great to hear though that the PSL won't run in contested swing states if Bernie gets the nominee

"Sanders is running against Trump but his main foes come from within the Democratic Party elites, and thus his campaign presents itself as an insurgency against the Democratic Party itself.

The adversarial relationship between the Democratic Party and the Sanders campaign is a widely recognized fact. Sanders himself said at his very large closing campaign rally ahead of the Iowa caucus, “We are taking on the entire political establishment, both the Republican and the Democratic establishment.” Failed presidential candidate and longtime leading imperialist John Kerry was overheard by an NBC news analyst talking on the phone about “the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole.” Rahm Emanuel , former Chicago mayor and Obama’s chief of staff, warns of “a rupture in the party that is irreparable.” Sources close to former president Obama say he will only intervene forcefully in the primary on one condition: if Sanders were to win in Iowa and start to gain momentum. Stopping Sanders is now their top priority.

Another issue that all socialists must consider is the extent to which this race is being shaped by both major parties as a referendum on socialism in the United States. Trump is organizing his 2020 campaign around the fight to save the country from socialism. He called Sanders a “communist,” who is “far beyond a socialist.” Of course he is not the first Republican to use false anti-communist attacks to attack the Democratic nominee. That was a characteristic of the right-wing campaigns against Obama too, despite him being a center-right neoliberal candidate. But what makes this year different is that for the first time in modern history, the Democratic Party is mirroring these talking points against its own candidate, emphasizing that socialism can never win in the United States.

The Sanders campaign is, at this moment, the vessel for a progressive, vaguely socialist insurgency within the confines of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has consistently acted against the interests of working people in the United States while trying to present itself as the only option for progressive values. It is a brake on the development of an independent and militant movement in the country. Socialists who understand the Democratic Party is a ruling class party that can not be reformed should support this insurgency."

https://www.liberationnews.org/the-bernie-sanders-campaign-and-building-the-movement-for-socialism-in-the-us/

I think this quote from the article is particularly important

"But socialist tactics have to be considered and decided based on the state of class-consciousness of the entire working class, and appreciation of where we are in the historical process, and what is most essential at our current juncture"

Right now the struggle is within the Bernie campaign, his 2016 campaign and his 2020 campaign have done more to move people in this country to the left then the communist movement as a whole has managed to do for decades, and we as communists should support this movement, and we should build from this, make sure that we get a Bernie presidency so that he can force real meaningful change, and from there build a genuine political revolution that goes beyond even the most radical of Bernie's proposals past or present, and as he said we need millions of people out on the streets demanding real change

Workers juche liberation front of korea wrote:

How to make more glory for eternal DPRK?

What brings you to the region comrade?

위대한 김정은동지 우리는 끝까지 당신께 충실하겠습니다!

What is up my fellow lefties, it is I, Martyn Kiryu, bursting into your RMB and begging for votes for the upcoming Central Committee elections. Please give my campaign a read and feel free to TG me about anything.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-EWEiPkII3E2-mqIIFzqZQ-UGkvv6H89cDrG5GtOle0/edit?usp=drivesdk

Sign ups are here:
https://theredand.black/forums/topic/925-february-2020-%E2%80%A2-central-committee-nominations/

Good luck everyone!

Greetings, comrades. I would like to get involved in North Korea. How can I go about this?

Revolutionary Socialists for Bernie Sanders

I am a revolutionary socialist and I am supporting Bernie Sanders for president.

Check out Revolutionary Socialists for Bernie

So that there is no misunderstanding about my position from the outset, let me state clearly …. I believe that we need a revolution in order to achieve Socialism.

Socialism is a brand-new society based on planning, cooperation and justice in which the vast majority rule on the basis of a collectively owned economy that produces for people’s needs. Socialism is not a reformed capitalism with socialist characteristics in which the capitalist class retains power through its stranglehold on the planet’s wealth.

Bernie’s version of Socialism, Sweden, is not mine. MASS ACTION’s version of Socialism is more like Cuba.

Capitalism – the worldwide profit for the capitalist class before everything else system – is to blame for the environmental crisis, white supremacy and world war.

Capitalism, therefore, must be ended. Destroyed. Reforms are possible under capitalism, but, as a system, it cannot, ultimately, be reformed. The working class needs to overthrow the capitalist class in order for us to have the power (political, social and economic) to save the planet and the human race.

Again, for us to have a society for the 99 percent – for there to be any future at all – we need a revolution.

Whereas, we are not on the precipice of the revolution we need. Whereas, we are at the beginning of a great awakening as we head toward the Great Crisis* for the planet, revolutionaries must find ways – whatever the difficulties and hardships – of being with the masses when they are organizing in movements that present a challenge to the established order. The fact that the progressive Sanders movement is located in the elections – the virulently undemocratic U.S. elections – must be no impediment to any genuine revolutionary heart. There is no area of the struggle that is not a struggle!

The Sanders Movement

The movement behind Sanders is massive, youthful, progressive and increasingly being joined by people of color and other oppressed people. In fact, his campaign has become more progressive in many areas. The Sanders movement is also – in a very broad sense – a socialist movement.

Should revolutionaries join a progressive and socialist movement that is not revolutionary? The question answers itself. Of course, we should!

Sitting around or ignoring a major, sustained mass movement like Bernie’s army and waiting for a revolution to happen is not revolutionary. Attacking people in a movement for not being revolutionary is not revolutionary. Standing apart from a movement because it is not revolutionary enough is not revolutionary. Etc.

We must and will maintain our political independence from Bernie Sanders and the social democrats who are under the dangerous illusion that an oppressive system can be reformed, but we will do so in real solidarity with the electoral movement led by him.

Defense and Support of the Sanders Movement

That the new movement is “socialist” or proto-socialist – despite it being more liberal than socialist in its aims – is clear to the bankers, tech barons and media bosses who control society. That is why Sanders has and will come under fierce attack now that it is clear to all that his campaign is a campaign that can win.

The just aspirations that have crystalized around the Sanders campaign – the demand for a redistribution of wealth and justice for the poor and oppressed – represent, at this moment, the main mass challenge to the status quo. Wishing that the movement was more mature, more militant, more consistent, more revolutionary is understandable. But we cannot change this situation from without. We must be with the people when they are in mass motion for change and join the battle against our common oppressors.

Sanders very well could betray us whether he wins or not (history is replete with the capitulations and defeats of social democracy). He campaigned for Hillary and called racist war criminal John McCain a good man, remember. In the past, he has voted for wars. He has been shaky on immigrant rights to say the least. He voted for Joe Biden’s racist crime bill. He basically joined the imperialist campaign against socialist Venezuela. He has voted on numerous occasions to support apartheid Israel. Etc.

No one can be faulted for not wanting to tie themselves to Bernie Sanders. It is completely understandable for revolutionary socialists to run their own candidates. MASS ACTION is with all those who resist endorsing Sanders while standing on progressive ground and carrying out initiatives, protests movements and grassroots campaigns. This is precisely why MASS ACTION will retain its political independence and do the work of patiently and methodically exposing the incompleteness of non-revolutionary Socialism. Our main allies in the struggle for liberation and Socialism are doing the work of mobilizing street resistance.

Sanders is not only a social democrat, he is a parliamentarian first and foremost, not a genuine working-class leader who is on the front lines against war, racism and bigotry.

That does not change the fact that we must – despite Bernie’s inadequacies and contradictions – rally to defend the Sanders movement from the establishment as if we were risking our very lives to stop an infant from being strangled in its crib.

Reality: Sanders has a target on his head and must be defended from the ruling class assault.

Revolutionary Strategy

Whether Sanders wins or loses the presidency, revolutionaries must be able to show workers, the youth and others that they were willing to be a part of trying to get him elected despite our many differences with his version of Socialism.

What if, for example, Sanders wins? We must be with the Bernie movement so that the tens of millions who supported a president Sanders for progressive reasons will know us, listen to us and turn to us when things get tougher and our analysis, strategy and tactics will need to be sharp as knives. The masses are unlikely or less likely to listen to revolutionaries who did not support or remained apart from the Sanders movement.

If we are not with the campaign, we will have lost an epochal opportunity.

Be clear my friends. It is an indisputable fact: the Bernie Sanders movement (along with other movements like BLM, #NoDAPL, the Teachers Revolts, and #MeToo) represents the historic reemergence of a progressive upsurge of the masses on the U.S. political stage. It represents – is a very new beginning of – the reemergence of Socialism in the United States.

All socialists, progressives, workers and oppressed people should support the movement behind him by supporting Bernie Sanders for president. This position, in fact, should not be controversial.

The Democrats

“But Sanders is running for the democratic party nomination and the democratic party is a capitalist party dominated by people who serve the interests of the white supremacist, imperialist U.S. capitalist class,” you say. That’s true. And it is something that needs to be in the very front of our minds.

Though Sanders is friendly, very friendly, with politicians of both parties and has been more than loathe to break with the democrats, he is no way, at least right now, a trusted part of the establishment. That is why he is the most popular politician in the United States, despite the fact that he bowed to the democratic party machine and stumped for warmonger, reactionary Clinton in 2016. Millions of people are seeking relief and change in the Sanders campaigns.

Maybe asking the question regarding the problematic of the democrats and the Sanders campaign in a different way will help us gain some clarity.

What if Bernie Sanders were black, running on a similarly progressive program and running for the democratic ticket? Or, what if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running for president on the democratic ticket?

Under certain circumstances, revolutionaries can and even must support particular democratic party candidates. Think about it: what would it mean to say that one should never support a person running on the democratic party ticket in a racist, imperialist country in which only two parties are allowed?

The fact that Bernie Sanders is running for the democratic party ticket is a significant contradiction, but not a deal breaker. The democratic party leadership is going to do whatever it can to stop Bernie. This struggle may even break up the party (which would not be a bad thing). Shouldn’t revolutionaries be a part of this historic and mass struggle at this crucial juncture in history? Yes, they should!

Join the movement. Like and share Revolutionary Socialists for Bernie now.

* The Great Crisis is made up of the planet endangering and intricately interrelated crisis we face: the environmental crisis, white supremacy, global capitalism, the immigrant/refugee crisis, World War III and more.

https://www.mass-action.org/Revolutionary-Socialists-for-Bernie-Sanders.html?fbclid=IwAR2PkiUvUDb1TRVGoVZsuGSZEb6O6qlYDflKCyuDl8bhZzkKD4YxheeYXwU

Che triumphant wrote:

Revolutionary Socialists for Bernie Sanders

Another take:

The Bernie Sanders campaign and building the movement for socialism in the US

The Democratic Party establishment and the major capitalist-owned media have been waging a low intensity war against the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign for the past year and it is not working too well. Now these attacks are escalating. If Sanders continues to succeed, the floodgate of scurrilous and demonizing assaults will open, just as happened to Jeremy Corbyn in Britain.

For the past 12 months, almost all of the ruling class centers of power have been arguing that Sanders is a socialist and thus “too left”; that his medical reforms “are too expensive” and will break the bank; that he “can’t beat Trump”; or, in the aftermath of his heart attack, that he is not “healthy enough,” which goes along well with the mantra that he is “too old.” At the last debate CNN and Elizabeth Warren conspired to set up Sanders as “sexist,” yet another argument to add to the list. These attacks on Sanders have not worked.

What’s the real reason the ruling class is so alarmed?

What has become crystal clear is that the Democratic Party establishment and its echo chambers in the “free press” clearly would favor four more years of Donald Trump over Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist, in the White House. One must take a moment and ask: Why is this? By European standards Bernie Sanders would be an acceptable center-left politician. He would not be perceived as a danger to the existing social order. What is the U.S. ruling class so afraid of? Why is the Democratic establishment trying to destroy the Sanders campaign?

The ruling class and its two political parties rightly fear that a new, truly radical and even pre-revolutionary mass movement can quickly sweep through the country as it did in the 1930s and at the end of the 1960s. The Sanders electoral campaign itself is not that, but insofar as it is exciting and raising the expectation of millions who want to win substantive reforms by fighting the billionaire class, it presages what is to come. Sanders, the individual, may turn out to be an accidental political figure who spent a lifetime in the hallowed halls of the bourgeois Congress barely causing a stir, but whose presidential campaigns became a vessel and a catalyst for something more enduring – a movement of millions of people who are demanding radical solutions to the grievous injustices caused by plutocratic capitalism.

The ironies of history

The country is badly in need of a mass, energized movement for radical change. It may be an irony of history that such a radical break from the established order could take shape from within arenas and institutions that constitute a center of ruling-class political legitimacy. But history is filled with such ironies.

Nascent radical mass movements throughout the centuries have often first taken shape where the line of least resistance appears in the old order. Here, the path of least resistance is the elections. People in the United States are familiar with elections. The process, symbols and iconography of the elections are accepted as places for heated discourse and heated debate. It is the main political form that can imbue a political program with instant “legitimacy.” In every school, it is where children are taught they must try to make change — a point reinforced every day in the media.

The notion of making change through other means such as workplace action and street protest, let alone more militant forms, is almost exclusively learned through interaction with people’s movements and with radicals. From the standpoint of those fighting for radical and revolutionary change, a fundamental lesson is that the U.S. electoral form of government has functioned more than anything as a deception — a way of giving the illusion of choice that masks the dictatorship of the capitalist class. That is still its main function.

Socialist tactics

But socialist tactics have to be considered and decided based on the state of class-consciousness of the entire working class, and appreciation of where we are in the historical process, and what is most essential at our current juncture. Just having the conviction as revolutionary socialists that the capitalist system fundamentally cannot be reformed, and that the Democratic Party would sooner come apart than be transformed, is not sufficient to draw out a tactical orientation. The question is how to fight alongside and to an extent merge with masses of people who are in their own process of struggle, so that such conclusions can be tested and proven in real life.

For our purposes here, the point is that it is not surprising that the mass reawakening of anti-capitalist and pro-socialist consciousness would register profoundly in the electoral realm, the path of least resistance. For tens of millions, it feels more legitimate and more possible to identify as a socialist or promote a socialist candidate in an election cycle rather than at a militant street protest or barricade. Given the relative smallness and limited influence of the revolutionary socialist trends in the United States, with whom these tens of millions have largely never interacted, how could it be otherwise? That the form of this struggle is currently inside the Democratic primary contest in some ways obscures its potentially radical or even revolutionary next manifestations.

The ruling class and its “thinkers,” however, are keenly aware that such trends can morph quickly into a truly mass, militant movement against a system dominated by billionaires. The ruling class, because of its role in society, is more acutely class conscious than the classes over which they dominate. They fear more than anything a new consciousness arising from the mass of the people who, should they begin to first stir and then move together with new demands, could become an irresistible force.

So far, the dynamic surge of the Sanders campaign reflects both the nascent mass movement for radical change and further stimulates this phenomenon inside the United States. The last year has witnessed a wave of mass protests all over the capitalist world. The subterranean yearnings for radical change are starting to burst out into the open, above ground, and they are rattling the existing social order and the ruling classes from Chile and Ecuador to Sudan, France, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond.

This yearning for change has not come all at once. It has been developing for nearly a decade. The Occupy movement in 2011 showed the potential for it when it burst onto the political scene. It spread like wildfire before it collapsed under the weight of both state repression and the folly of anarchist tactics. The Arab Spring started with the same impetus and the same dynamism but it too collapsed for multiple reasons, including the absence of an experienced revolutionary leadership capable of circumnavigating such troubled waters, the inability to stir the countryside and the opportunist intervention of imperialism.

Three years later, the rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited another new national movement against racism and for Black freedom and equality. Rebellion and resistance are in the air once again in 2019 and 2020 in the United States and around the world – and the ruling class and its two political parties inside the United States are scared. The billionaires and bankers do not actually fear Sanders the person at all, but they do fear that his campaign is becoming a springboard for something much larger and more radical. The Party for Socialism and Liberation believes that this is the primary basis to evaluate the Sanders campaign and determine socialist tactics to intervene in the current political struggle.

Sanders’ insurgency against the Democratic establishment

Sanders is running against Trump but his main foes come from within the Democratic Party elites, and thus his campaign presents itself as an insurgency against the Democratic Party itself.

The adversarial relationship between the Democratic Party and the Sanders campaign is a widely recognized fact. Sanders himself said at his very large closing campaign rally ahead of the Iowa caucus, “We are taking on the entire political establishment, both the Republican and the Democratic establishment.” Failed presidential candidate and longtime leading imperialist John Kerry was overheard by an NBC news analyst talking on the phone about “the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole.” Rahm Emanuel , former Chicago mayor and Obama’s chief of staff, warns of “a rupture in the party that is irreparable.” Sources close to former president Obama say he will only intervene forcefully in the primary on one condition: if Sanders were to win in Iowa and start to gain momentum. Stopping Sanders is now their top priority.

Another issue that all socialists must consider is the extent to which this race is being shaped by both major parties as a referendum on socialism in the United States. Trump is organizing his 2020 campaign around the fight to save the country from socialism. He called Sanders a “communist,” who is “far beyond a socialist.” Of course he is not the first Republican to use false anti-communist attacks to attack the Democratic nominee. That was a characteristic of the right-wing campaigns against Obama too, despite him being a center-right neoliberal candidate. But what makes this year different is that for the first time in modern history, the Democratic Party is mirroring these talking points against its own candidate, emphasizing that socialism can never win in the United States.

The Sanders campaign is, at this moment, the vessel for a progressive, vaguely socialist insurgency within the confines of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has consistently acted against the interests of working people in the United States while trying to present itself as the only option for progressive values. It is a brake on the development of an independent and militant movement in the country. Socialists who understand the Democratic Party is a ruling class party that can not be reformed should support this insurgency.

After the primaries

If Sanders fails to win the nomination or has it stolen from him, he has pledged to support the party’s pro-ruling class nominee in the general election. He did the same in 2016 when he campaigned for capitalist war hawk Hillary Clinton. If Sanders again abandons his own movement by supporting a ruling class candidate in 2020, the movement should refuse to follow him; it should refuse to be a tail to the kite of either wing of the capitalist political machine and the military-industrial complex. It should continue building its own grassroots base and promoting the socialist movement in confrontation with the reactionary Democratic Party elites. That would make it a genuine resistance movement not only to Trump but also his super-reactionary war-mongering foes in the Democratic Party leadership.

In response to the attacks against Sanders, his campaign has moved to the left on domestic issues and grown in popularity, while broadening its base of support among young people, working-class voters overall, in Black and Latino communities, among women, the LGBTQ community and other sectors of society. These sectors seek radical solutions to the grotesque levels of inequality that are the fundamental feature of late-stage capitalism. One such grotesque feature is evident in the fact that Jeff Bezos “earned” an additional $12 billion on January 29 — one single day — at the same time that the media reported soaring levels of homelessness among working families.

Simultaneously, in the face of the establishment’s attacks and pressure, Sanders has either embraced the ruling-class narrative on Venezuela, China and Russia, or has offered little or very little real opposition to the dominant foreign policy positions of the imperialist establishment. Sanders undoubtedly hopes this will make him more “respectable” in the eyes of the corporate media, but the deeper effect is to lock the budding mass socialist consciousness to the imperialist status quo, keeping that potentially radical sentiment from moving too far left in the direction of internationalism.

What does critical support mean?

Socialists can join the insurgency against the Democratic Party establishment without becoming Bernie Sanders followers or uncritically parroting any and all positions adopted by him. Critical support to the Sanders campaign means that when Sanders takes reactionary positions there should be no holding back on open criticism.

Sanders’ foreign policy positions are not anti-imperialist or socialist. Yes, he has a toned-down, softer and more liberal foreign policy than the other Democrats. Undoubtedly, governments in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and among Palestinians would consider a Sanders presidency a big step forward by the standards of who his competitors are, and the conduct of previous presidents. But his foreign policy accepts and promotes the narrative of the empire and supports imperialist sanctions against targeted countries.

For instance, when Sanders was one of just two members of the Senate to vote no in June 2017 on a new sanctions resolution against Russia, North Korea and Iran, he made it clear that he was working within the Obama-approved framework and was not taking a radical departure from the ruling class consensus. He explained in a video to prove that his vote should not be considered an outlier or radical shift: “While I support sanctions on Russia and North Korea, I voted against the sanctions bill last week because it contains sanctions on Iran that I believe could endanger the Iran nuclear agreement. This agreement was President Obama’s most important foreign policy achievement, and President Trump has made clear his intention to destroy it. Progressives must get mobilized to protect it, just as we did with the Affordable Care Act!”

The PSL’s socialist presidential campaign & building a mass movement for change

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is running its own socialist campaign for president. This campaign will promote a genuine socialist and internationalist program and thereby provide a real definition to socialism. Gloria La Riva is running for president and her running mate is Native activist and political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who has been unjustly incarcerated for 44 years.

Our campaign is reaching out across the country to explain the urgency of the struggle for socialism as the only answer to the existential threats to life on the planet due to climate change, the growing war danger, and deepening poverty based on job destruction. These existential crises are all based on capitalism, a system that puts the insatiable quest for profits for a small ruling class over all else.

The PSL’s program has similarities and differences with that of Sanders. We wholeheartedly support the far-reaching reforms he demands, including improved Medicare for all people, elimination of student debt, dismantling the system of mass incarceration, full abortion rights and more. Winning these much needed basic reforms will require building a mass, militant working-class movement. Even if Sanders were elected president the capitalist centers of power would do everything, and we mean everything, to prevent these reforms from being implemented.

Sanders as president would not succeed in implementing these reforms absent a large mass movement. Every significant reform in the capitalist system was won through the hard-fought struggle of the people. It was not a gift from Franklin D. Roosevelt that gave us unemployment insurance, social security or the right to unionize in the 1930s. It was mass strikes, general strikes, sitdown strikes and factory seizures and the building of mass organizations of the unemployed. Likewise it was a radical mass movement in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, which ended the legal status of apartheid in the United States for Black Americans; and also led to the adoption of Medicare that provided access to health care to the elderly. The ending of the Vietnam War, winning the right to abortion, the passage of marriage equality and the adoption of anti-discrimination measures protecting LGBTQ people — all were the consequences of determined movements by masses of people.

The PSL, like the Green Party and other independent campaigns, will not be allowed to participate in the presidential debates — no matter how many states we get on the ballot. The electoral system is rigged to ensure that only the two ruling-class parties are given a competitive chance to win. The two parties also make ballot access extremely complicated, expensive and subject to expanding obstacles for third-party candidates unless they are a toy of one billionaire or another.

What to do now

Although we are not Democrats, we encourage those voting in the upcoming Democratic Party primaries to vote for Bernie Sanders.

Members of the PSL will be going out to Sanders campaign events to connect with the most radical and committed layers of people drawn to his program and to build relationships that will last far beyond the current election cycle. This is consistent with our Party’s orientation to the 2016 election.

If Bernie Sanders fails to get the nomination, he says that he will campaign for whoever is the candidate in the general election. The PSL will not follow that advice. We will urge people to vote for the La Riva/Peltier ticket instead wherever they have achieved ballot status either as PSL candidates representing the Peace and Freedom Party in California or on other progressive third parties’ ballot lines in other states.

If Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, in spite of the Democratic Party establishment’s war against him, the PSL will not run candidates in battleground swing states. If Bernie Sanders were to win the Democratic Party nomination and then shift his campaign stance and orientation to the right to appease sections of the ruling class and the Democratic Party leadership elites, we will retain our independent capacity to evaluate, criticize or condemn such moves. Appeasing reactionaries in the ruling class only facilitates the growth of right-wing and ultra-right politics.

In the event of a Sanders versus Trump general election, the La Riva/Peltier campaign running outside of swing states will still make an important contribution to the radicalization of popular consciousness. In a period of intensifying class struggle, independent organization and clarity on the meaning of socialism — and how to achieve it — becomes more necessary than ever.

Tactics can never be absolute, designed for all situations or last forever. On the contrary, revolutionaries must combine a rock-hard adherence to core principles with tactical suppleness to advance the movement for socialism under varying conditions and on shifting terrain. For now, the Sanders campaign represents a dynamic insurgency promoting radical social changes in the face of increasingly stiff headwinds from a criminal ruling class that fears the loosening of its absolute grip over U.S. politics and the economy. We support the insurgency against the reactionaries.

https://www.liberationnews.org/the-bernie-sanders-campaign-and-building-the-movement-for-socialism-in-the-us/

Workers juche liberation front of korea wrote:

Yo Bernie you better not stop at abolishing ICE, student debt or the CIA. Abolish the USA.

H*ll yeah, unfortunately though we’re not at a point where that’s an electable position to hold though lol

📰 GENERAL UPDATE ON TLA's REGIONAL HAPPENINGS 📰

We have had perhaps one of the most eventful terms these past couple months! The 16th General Assembly has passed a whopping eleven legislative motions. Several of these include the dual citizenship legislative package, extending electoral citizenship status to residents within the NSLeft pact, as well as no longer counting a partial term as a complete term.

In foreign affairs, we have gained two new embassies with Refugia and The Red Fleet. Additionally, the NSLeft Solidarity Pact underwent massive changes, providing new opportunities for our community to engage with other comrades in the alliance.

Role play has seen a surge of interest, with a focus on simple yet engaging world-building. One of our most notable accomplishments in our new role play was organizing an Olympics competition, which was loads of fun for those involved. For our last Assembly Day celebration, TLA's Ministry of Events held a poetry writing competition which I will provide the link to. Some great work in there, if I do say so myself haha!

Needless to say, there's a lot going on in The Leftist Assembly. Thank you to all those who have been with us since the beginning and a big welcome to our new friends.

Edit: 🤦🏽‍♂️ So in my rush, I forgot to provide the link to the poetry competition dispatch. 😂 Here it is!

Assembly Day 2020 - Poetry Writing Contest

by Libertasnia

Our fourth regional anniversary is coming up on 14 January, and we are hosting a special event to celebrate this occasion! In response to expressed regional interest, we want to see your best writing skills in the form of poetry.

Details

---

1. We recommend that each poem you submit should be 100-150 words in length.

2. The three categories that submissions will be judged in are:

   1. Community in NationStates

   2. Political world

   3. Real-world life/feelings

3. Our judging panel - New Prague, Cedoria, and Libertasnia - will announce the winners for each category on Assembly Day!

4. The panel's favourite poem from all the winners will be featured for one week in the regional World Factbook Entry

Winners

NS Community

Four Years by Llorens

Four years is a long time for a community like ours,
‘The strong’ remain, while Tryzub rests in the stars.

Healing what was a chaotic divorce,
With unity in diversity helping it stay the course.

A leader caused havoc in a wild spring,
Stability and reform emerged an everlasting king.

The absurdity of a not-so-august incursion,
Its isolation a testament to a history of immersion.

A cavalier of death with creations of beautiful lyres,
A feline peering through a hundred spires.

Rose to hammer, solidarity in command,
This community of ours, it was meant to withstand.

‘Protectors of the revolution, forevermore!’
More than forever, for four years are more.

Political

The Revolution by Papalonia

The sun shone bright on the laboring slaves,
And their resting ruler watched,
From his throne in the shade.

One man spoke of a greater land,
“Soon we’ll be free” he cried,
“From this cruel despot’s demands.”

So they raised their fists and their sickles and hoes,
Shouting “soon we’ll be free,
From our laboring woes.”

Though more wars were to be fought,
The people yet trust,
That they’d soon be free from tyranny’s mighty clutch.

But the suffering and sorrow, the slaughter and pain,
The lives and limbs lost were all lost in vain,
For when the bright sun blinded slaves,
They squinted and saw a man resting in the shade,
And “soon we’ll be free!” he continued to cry,
But the slaves saw through his petty lies,
For they realized that all that changed,
Was the man who sat upon the throne in the shade.

Real World Feelings/Emotional

Windowsill by Greylyn

The rain droplets cascade down my windowsill as I look off into the horizon
I find myself lost inside the maze of recollection as I sift through shards of memories left behind by those who left me in this haze
But the days are longer; the nights are shorter
I’ve got nothing but time and no time at all
And I’ll keep you on my mind as if I had any choice after the fact
Flipping through this photo album, expecting something new
Wishing you’d call me and come back, but you never do
So I’ll sit here and wait beside my windowsill
Watching the sunset on another dismal setting
Am I tone deaf; I ask myself
Can I distinguish between the shades and hues I perceive before me?
Or am I destined to paint the world with the same old color palette?
All I can hear is the echo of the hollow chambers inside my heart beating for something more than what I see
But the days are colder and the rain has turned to snow and soon I am lost in a blizzard of my creation
Am I the architect of my demise?
Release me from this moment that I find myself trapped inside
Stuck beside this windowsill with nothing but these memories
If I could find a remedy, I would do all that I can
But I am just a man afraid of my shadow
Wishing I could go back to before I found myself staring pensively from this window
I wonder if the world will just pass me by, but do I even want to be among the rest?
When we’re all just restlessly searching for meaning and purpose beside our windowsill
Flipping through a photo album; remembering the days past
But these dreams won’t go away
No matter what I do, I know I have to stay awake
I’ve made promises; I have my fight ahead
But still I am drawn to this windowsill
I wonder if you’ll join me as I aim to look beyond
Perhaps we can find a way to both remember the days past and assemble the courage to move beyond
And perhaps that is the true calling of this spot where I remain watching the horizon line
These shards are sharp and cut deep into the very nature of one’s psyche
Reflected to me, I see the bitter truths I’d rather forget
A world on fire and no one to put it out
The people have gone mad and the powers that be feed into the chaos
But perhaps we could all learn something by looking out from this windowsill
Or perhaps we are doomed to perpetual repetition of our worst tendencies

Send submissions to Libertasnia via telegram or Discord DM (@stickypepsi13#6919).

Read dispatch

-Greylyn
Minister of Foreign Affairs

The Democratic Party is fully prepared to steal the primary from Sanders again:
Despite Bernie Sanders’ Zionism, anti-communism, and pro-imperialist positions on many issues, millions of poor and working people at least see him as the best option for improving their material conditions. He’s the most viable candidate who supports universal healthcare, free college, and other policies that would benefit the country’s proletariat. So in a truly democratic system, he would be able to become president. But the Democratic Party has made this next to impossible.

https://medium.com/@rainershea612/the-democratic-party-is-fully-prepared-to-steal-the-primary-from-sanders-again-51b7b1130a8d