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Milwaukee is hosting about 50,000 Republicans and former President Donald Trump for the Republican National Convention. But the solidly Democratic city was in years past known for a different shade of political red: socialism.

Across the street from the Fiserv Forum hosting the RNC is Turner Hall, home of the Milwaukee Turners, a German-American athletic group intertwined with socialist values, movements and politicians since 1853. Its now a civil rights and social justice-oriented advocacy organization.

Milwaukee elected socialist politicians including Robert Marion La Follette, a Wisconsin senator and 1924 presidential candidate who was backed by the Socialist Party, and three socialist mayors in the mid-1900s. The Milwaukee County local Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of Wisconsin and the Socialist Party USA headquarters share office space in Milwaukee. And the Democratic Socialists of America have a lively chapter, started in 2016 and playing an active role in electoral politics, Black Lives Matter protests and other movements.

In some ways, the forgotten men and women of America to whom the GOP dedicated its 2024 platform are similar to the working-class voters who in Milwaukee previously embraced socialism, including a brand of Sewer Socialism that cleaned up the city in the early 20th century by fixing sanitary infrastructure as well as offering public benefits.

Milwaukee native and historian John Gurda describes Sewer Socialism as a movement that emphasized practicality, government transparency and public enterprise over ideals and philosophies; Sewer Socialists were willing to be as enterprising as any red-blood capitalist, but for the public good, he said.

Sewer Socialists were practical folks, who were more into infrastructure than revolution, said Marquette University associate professor of history Alison Clark Efford She added that that Sewer Socialism was far from perfect in its infancy Sewer Socialism arguably contributed to Milwaukee becoming a highly segregated city, she said.

In 1910, Emil Seidel was elected Milwaukees first socialist mayor, with Socialists also winning seats on the city council and county board, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Two more socialist mayors followed: Daniel Hoan, elected in 1916; and Frank Zeidler, who was first elected in 1948 and served three terms.

Self-defined socialist politicians are some big names of todays Democratic Party such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republicans have decried socialism to attract working-class voters.

Pamela Westphal, co-chair of the Milwaukee chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said that increasing inflation and inadequate wages are creating an atmosphere similar to that which caused people to embrace socialism in decades past.

Outside Fiserv Forum for the start of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday

The working class are becoming restless and want to see our lawmakers make changes like raising the minimum wage and canceling student debt at the federal level, Westphal said. A lot of folks are turning to socialism due to the reactionary politics of the Republican party and the inaction from the Democratic party.

The Milwaukee area is still a heavily unionized and industrialized city, home to major unionized breweries, factories and power plants.

Teamsters labor union general president Sean OBrien is speaking at the RNC, while the Democratic National Committee has not yet responded to the labor leaders request to speak at the Democratic National Convention. While the labor movement has long been intertwined with Democratic and socialist leaders and parties, the votes of many union members in Wisconsin and beyond may be up for grabs.

Milwaukee Area Labor Council President Pam Fendt said Trumps promises in 2016 to empower workers were taken in good faith, particularly after AFL-CIO national leadership met with Trump to discuss policies. Yet, Trump failed to deliver, Fendt said, and the crowning achievement of his presidency was a tax-cut for the ultra-rich, which cut government revenue and ultimately damaged public infrastructure funding.

Fendt pointed to an analysis by the U.S. Treasury showing union members are 12% more likely to vote than non-union voters.

We dont judge people by an R or a D beside their name, but whether they have concrete plans to empower workers, Fendt said. In our recent history, there have been fewer and fewer Republicans whove exhibited that.

Gurda said people are still today seeking concepts traditionally at the core of the socialism that defined the city a century ago: a sense of mutualism, a sense that were all in this together its all of us, and government works for all of us.

In this age of polarization, shrinking budgets, and antagonistic state legislature, he continued, thats certainly in danger.

Kacie Kress is a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.

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Milwaukee, the city hosting the Republican National Convention, has roots in socialism - Lake Geneva Regional News

Fighting the far right, fighting for socialism

A Tubeworker and Off The Rails public (Zoom) meeting

Thursday 1 August

15:00-17:00

Log in via Zoom here.

The French far-right party National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) was pushed into third place in recent elections by the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire, NFP) and the electoral alliance of President Macron. But RN remains a significant threat, and one which cannot be confronted solely on the electoral terrain. How much of an alternative does the NFP offer?

We'll hear from French transport worker trade unionists active in the revolutionary socialist New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, NPA) about the fight against the far right, and for working-class politics.

Thursday 1 August 15:00-17:00 Log in via Zoom here

Following the discussion, well hold an editorial meeting to agree the contents for the next edition of Tubeworker bulletin. All Tube workers, directly employed and outsourced, are welcome.

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Tubeworker/Off The Rails online meeting, 1 August, 3pm: Fighting the far right, fighting for socialism: a discussion with French transport worker...

Fascists on the rise in France - Le Pen, the RN, and the Popular Front

Frances New Popular Front (NPF) is showing that it is fully immersed in an old and failed set of politics.

The left wing coalition has withdrawn candidates running against vile and reactionary government figures in the second round of Frances elections.

The excuse is that this is worthwhile and necessary to block candidates of the fascist RN party. But the result will be to rehabilitate proven enemies of the working class from president Emmanuel Macrons neoliberal and repressive regime. This will lay the basis for a further surge of fascist support.

The NPF is supporting precisely those who smoothed the path for fascist leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella.

Nobody should trivialise the threat from the RN, or the importance of defeating it. Everyone has to fight for Not a single vote to the RN,

But the left should by now have realised that Macrons onslaught against migrants and Muslims, the relentless removal of rights, and support for the cops savagery legitimised Le Pens views.

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Party and Class the politics of revolutionary socialism - Socialist Worker

Sir Keir Starmer takes his place at the head of a Labour government on a collision course with the British working class. He owes his landslide victory entirely to the hatred with which the Conservative government of the last 14 years was viewed, the thoroughly undemocratic first-past-the-post system, and the fact that widespread left-wing sentiment has found no organised socialist expression.

These factors have placed a new reactionary monster in power, far to the right of any previous Labour leader, with little more than a third of the popular vote on a near record-low turnout. Tony Blair took several years to earn his reputation as a criminal for his participation in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and as a Thatcherite social arsonist for his encouragement of inequality and privatisation.

Starmer begins his premiership with blood on his hands from his endorsement of the Gaza genocide and the Ukraine war, already voicing fierce opposition to the social demands of the working class, and committed to police repression of anti-genocide protesters. He speaks, in the language of the political right, of uniting the country and placing country before party. But the country is rent in two, and former chief prosecutor Starmer and his government stand on the side of the banks, the corporations and the military-security apparatus.

The question many workers and young people around the country will be asking themselves, just a couple of days after handing Rishi Sunaks Tories an unprecedented electoral defeat, is: How do we get rid of their replacements? Starmers own personal majority in his local seat, and those of many of his ministers, were slashed by half or more even on election night.

Significant votes for independents, and to some extent the Green Party, show the desire for a political alternative. But the candidates receiving these ballots are representatives of the totally bankrupt protest, pacifist, pseudo-reformist politics which has defined opposition to the political establishment for decades and created the present sense of impasse and frustration.

As in Europe and the United States, there is a danger that this drives workers to the far-right in their search for a way out. Although the Reform Party largely gained its support by hiving off the extreme right of the Tory base, its 14 percent vote total is a warning that the rise of Trump and Le Pen is rooted in a global process of betrayals of working-class interests.

The only way forward is through a struggle against pseudo-left politics. Workers who are serious about a fight for socialism in the UK must above all draw the lessons of the Corbyn experience.

Winning two commanding victories in the Labour leadership elections of 2015 and 2016, Corbyn had an overwhelming mandate to destroy the Tory Party mark two run by the Blairites. Instead he gave every Labour MP protection inside his broad church party, where they plotted to slander and expel his supporters, sabotage his chances of election and remove him from politics. Starmer began his march to power from Corbyns own shadow cabinet.

Had Corbyn taken up a fight against his sworn opponents, the whole constellation of British politics would have been transformed. The former Labour leader won close to 13 million votes in the 2017 election, versus Starmers slightly more than 9 million. But he has maintained his prostration before the Labour Party to this day, even after being expelled from its ranks for standing as an independenta step he had to be forced into taking, and only at the eleventh hour.

Interviewed by the Evening Standard ahead of the election, Corbyn explained that he would of course be glad to see Labour win and that he would back the party in parliament on the good stuff it does. His campaign in Islington North was carefully limited so as not to conflict directly with Starmer.

Once again, Corbyn sat on the potential for a mass movement against the Labour Party. Trouncing Labours Praful Nargund, winning 50 percent more votes, he could have spearheaded a national movement against its candidates among workers and young people who instead voted anti-Tory and reluctantly for Starmer, looked to a disparate array of independents and Greens, or refused to vote.

It was, is and always will be Corbyns choice not to do so because the alpha and omega of his politics is to prevent any clash between the working class and his beloved Labour Partyan organisation with more than a centurys history of betrayal of workers struggles and aspirations. He maintains a personal following for this position by relying on the pragmatism of electoral politics and cynicism towards the possibility of overthrowing capitalism.

Such debilitating conceptions must be broken with. They play far more of a role in keeping the Starmers of the world in power than any of their own non-existent strengths.

As if to prove the point, in just a few days time, Starmer will be flying to Washington DC to take part in a NATO summit of the political walking dead. He will join French President Emmanuel Macron, whose Ensemble party will likely have been barely kept in government by the grace of the New Popular Front. The senile US President Joe Biden teetering on the edge of forced removal as the Democratic candidate and the discredited German Chancellor Olaf Scholz complete the house of cards at the heart of the imperialist alliance.

But these invalids are nonetheless planning for a war and wartime austerity of staggering dimensions. The topic of discussion will be how to fight the next stage of the war between the imperialist powers and Russia in Ukraine and how to fund it through the ramped-up exploitation of the working class and the destruction of public services. Plans for conscription and state repression will also be high on the agenda.

For its part, Labour has already committed to an increase in defence spending costing tens of billions and a modernisation of its nuclear weapons, including building four nuclear submarines, costing billions more.

This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of todays world political situation, which comes down to the crisis of leadership in the working class. The ruling elite is taking enormous risks out of the desperation of its weak and crisis-ridden social position, but if a revolutionary movement does not wrench power from them, they will plunge society deeper and deeper into barbarism.

Workers and young people are tasked with building that revolutionary movement. In Britain, broad opposition to the Gaza genocide must be made the starting point for a struggle against the Labour government and its programme of imperialist war.

The Socialist Equality Party will be taking up that challenge. Our election campaign is aimed at breaking the conspiracy of silence maintained by the capitalist media, the major parties, the trade unions and what passes for the left over the acute dangers facing the working class, and at building a socialist alternative to Starmers party of genocide and war. It was based on a rejection of, and 9-year record of struggle against Corbynism.

That perspective has been totally vindicated. It must now be taken up by all socialist workers and young people throughout the UK.

The World Socialist Web Site is the voice of the working class and the leadership of the international socialist movement. We rely entirely on the support of our readers. Please donate today!

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Build the socialist opposition to Starmer's right-wing government! - WSWS

Happy Fourth of July, I guess.

Not feeling so patriotic after the one-two punch of the disastrous Trump-Biden debate on June 27 and the Supreme Court turning our presidents into unimpeachable monarchs on July 1? Same, buddy.

On the (very small, dim, fleeting) bright side, its a great time to talk about socialism. And its always a great time to talk about games, which is why Im revisiting Molleindustrias Democratic Socialism Simulator. The turn-based decision-making sim, which was released in February 2020, lets you play out presidential actions as if you were a democratic socialist elected to the office. (Yes, Democratic National Committee, I know youll never let that happen. Youve made that very clear.)

The scenarios are presented by political actors illustrated as animals, like the lobbyist who looks like a shark or the activist who looks like a panther, which helps keep this game from becoming more depressing than it is informative. As you make decisions like whether to forgive student debt and whether to openly support unionization efforts, a slew of metrics and graphs at the bottom of the screen display the impact of your choices.

Your decisions dont just impact the tangible things like budget, though; you also have to keep eyes on the amount of power youre providing the populace, how your choices are impacting the environment, and which voters you might alienate with your rhetoric. You have to keep enough seats in Congress to be able to pass decisions, too. In short, if you go full commie, youll lose the next election or be overthrown. If you go hard on the free market, the same will happen.

But the aim of the game to get reelected and complete two full terms of presidency isnt necessarily the point of playing. At least not now, four years after the game was released and after months of rolling disappointments from literally every branch of the U.S. government.

Im thrilled to report that the only parts of Democratic Socialism Simulator that are no longer relevant are things that have actually come to pass. The games developers couldnt have known about the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when the game was released in February 2020, despite the in-game quip Who knew America can topple its own government?

The devs also couldnt have known that President Biden would actually pull out of Afghanistan unceremoniously, or that expanding the Supreme Court would be something liberals are seriously talking about, or that wed be flirting with recession for most of the last four years, or that wed really expand our operations in Yemen.

Its ultimately a shame to watch the game walk you through all the infinite options that would better the United States and its people, and lay out why and how theyd be effective, and then click out and go back to a reality where neither political party adequately represents the people.

But I still think this game is a great way to teach people in your life about the merits of democratic socialism. Even as someone whos relatively well versed in socialist political philosophies, there are scenarios in Democratic Socialism Simulator that Id never thought of myself, like providing workers the first buying rights on companies that are being dissolved.

On my most recent replay (each playthrough takes anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on how long you take to make choices and how quickly you lose), I proudly made it into a successful second term with plenty of cash and seats in Congress. But I lost focus halfway into my second term not because I turned 84, but because I had to flip the laundry and I ended up being overthrown for spending too much money trying to make America as socialized as possible before my presidency ended.

The best part of the game is its replayability. Even after running the sim tens of times, I still occasionally see a scenario or character I havent before. So if youre sitting around being depressed about the state of our great nation this Independence Day, maybe consider escaping to a version of it where you can actually effect change and have your voice heard.

The game is free on the App Store and $2.99 on Steam, Itch.io, and Google Play.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that Biden removed troops from Iraq in 2021. The president withdrew troops from Afghanistan at that time.

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Democratic Socialism Simulator is a reminder of the DNCs weaknesses - Polygon