This is a chapter statement, voted on at a general body meeting.
Every four years, working class Utahns are faced with the same “options” for president, a conservative Democrat creeping further right, a deranged Republican set on crushing the working class and marginalized people on behalf of our oppressors, and a few minor party candidates more interested in validating their vanity than actually winning. Since the undemocratic electoral college makes it so Utah will almost certainly go to Trump, the national Democratic Party has completely abandoned Utahns who reject the fascist Republican party. Similarly, the ultra-right supermajority in the State Legislature, which is filled to the brim with landlords (including Sen. Kirk Cullimore, who evicts more people than anyone in the state of Utah) and open neo-Nazis (including Rep. Trevor Lee, who self identifies as a “Deseret Nationalist,” a Mormon-flavored brand of Nazism), has undemocratically gerrymandered state and congressional districts so they choose their voters, and working class Utahns are not actually represented in the government. Because of this, the Democratic Party in Utah has stopped even pretending to try. These choices seem impossible, and for many working class Utahns, voting doesn’t seem worth the effort.
If elected, both Donald Trump and Republican gubernatorial candidate Spencer Cox would be a disaster for the working class of Utah and attack the people of Salt Lake City for the crime of being more progressive than the corrupt state government. As described in “Project 2025,” the extreme right Republicans plan to end civil rights for minority groups, destroy the already weak social safety net and public education, eliminate bodily autonomy for women and queer people, poison the environment, dangerously deregulate businesses, and crush dissent and target immigrants and people of color through an authoritarian police state commanded by a Trump dictatorship. Trump and the State Legislature have vocally supported this plan, and Cox silently subscribes to it. Trump, Cox, and the State Legislature want to make Utah unlivable for everyone who is not a wealthy, white, cisgender/heterosexual, Mormon man.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are no real alternative. They have embraced Trump’s racist border wall and Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Harris would repeat destructive policies carried out under previous administrations like mass deportations and global imperialist warfare. She has alienated the progressives and young people who made her vice president in the first place to court the most reactionary forces in our country, such as war-criminal Dick Cheney, architect of the illegal Iraq war and overseer of the torture and abuse of thousands of Iraqis and political dissidents within America. She has no intention of ceasing oil drilling or fracking, and likely will not reverse the deregulation of businesses that defined the Trump years that has made even our basic needs like food more dangerous for consumers. The threat of a Trump presidency is possible because of her deliberate political choices. Should Trump win, it will be entirely the fault of Kamala Harris and the Democratic party that enabled her behavior.
Both candidates uncritically support Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Both candidates serve the ruling class at the expense of the working class. This impossible “choice” is why millions across the country and thousands here in Utah are itching for an alternative.
Salt Lake DSA has made no recommendation to our members on who to vote for president. Many of our members are voting for candidates that support Palestinian liberation, and some are plugging their nose and voting tactically to defeat Trump. How our members choose to vote is the least important thing Salt Lake DSA members will do over the next four years.
As democratic socialists, we understand that the multi-racial working class has been on the defensive for far too long, and it is time we as a class go on the offensive against our oppressors. We reject the false dichotomy of the Republican and Democratic factions of the ruling class. The ruling class wants us to feel hopeless and alienated from each other– and we reject that as well. We choose solidarity. We understand that only a mass movement of the working and marginalized majority can fundamentally change our lives for the better. We must organize in our workplaces, our apartment buildings, our schools, and our communities. We must organize unions and strikes to build worker power in a state that has the 5th lowest union density in the country. We must carry out campaigns to build working class power and defend our rights outside of and from the corrupt State Legislature. We must organize boycotts against Israeli goods, and work to overturn Utah’s unconstitutional ban on citizens’ right to criticize the genocidal state of Israel. We must hold protests, sit-ins, and marches. Everything we must do as a class to achieve our liberation will require powerful labor and tenant unions, student groups, parent groups, and community coalitions. It will also require running more candidates for office that understand the problems the working class faces and want to build a party of our own to solve those problems.
Salt Lake DSA is building a party that fights for real working class democracy, abolition of the carceral state and white supremacy, dignified union jobs and wages, Medicare for all, education for all, housing for all, a just transition to a climate conscious economy, an end to the U.S. war machine and exploitation of the Global South, a free Palestine – and the transformation of our economy from capitalist exploitation to collective liberation. Workers in Utah deserve more; we deserve a party of our own, and Salt Lake DSA is building the party the multi-racial working class of Utah deserve.
Regardless of what happens or who wins tonight, the sun will rise tomorrow morning; and as long as the sun continues to rise, Salt Lake DSA will continue to organize and fight for the working class and all marginalized people in Utah. Join us in fighting for our future.
