Talk:Socialist Alternative (United States)

Improving citations

I've added a number of cites and cleaned up all references to follow the standard citation format. There should be additional sources detailing more of the article, but I think that this article should be able to remove the citations needed for verification tag sometime soon. Socialist Alternative has had a lot of coverage in small local press around Boston, Minneapolis and Seattle where they have moderate sized branches, and independent but not unbiased coverage from opposing left-wing organizations, so I think the article should clean up nicely. Cadriel (talk) 20:49, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Electoral Participation Table

I think it's about time for some kind of table, listing every SA candidate, the position they were running for, and their performance in the election, as PSL's page has here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation#Electoral_participation . What do you guys think?Liberal92 (talk) 03:09, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Serious issues with the references

Most of the provided references point to the organization's website. As such, they do not meet the requirement of being third-party sources. As it stands now, the article reads more like a promotional piece than like an encyclopedia entry. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 04:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Lot of puffery going on here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.60.131.249 (talk) 04:49, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

2020 and things haven’t changed. The lede is awful - basically it’s what the subject wants to say about itself. This is never allowed for corporations! What has it been like this for 7 years? Boscaswell talk 23:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Issues on page

I am addressing the issues related to the tags that i added to the article but until they are addressed I will leave the tags up. - SantiLak (talk) 04:50, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

2016 general election candidate?

I do not see anything post-primary. Do they have a candidate or have they endorsed one? Perhaps Stein again? 84.10.116.167 (talk) 20:46, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Membership numbers

I noticed that the membership statistic in the infobox was removed recently for being uncited, and then re-added by JesseRafe on the grounds that "there shouldn't be cites in infoboxes, anyway." I'm not sure of the exact rules on citations inside infoboxes, but since JesseRafe has been an editor for 13 years, I'll take his word on that.

However, I still think there are strong grounds for removing this number. Socialist Alternative, as far as I can tell, has never formally published its own membership numbers, and generally keeps them a secret. From my personal experience as a former member of the organization, I can say that as of 2017 they had about 1,100 members (this isn't publicly verifiable, though). They've likely lost some members to DSA recently, so 850 is probably in the general ballpark of being correct, but it can't possibly be verified, and there aren't any sources listed in this article that provide recent membership information. Shouldn't we be leaving out unsourced, publicly unverifiable data? Montgolfière (talk) 04:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Removing it is fine. If a source gets cited, it should be inline in the body of the article. The infobox should reflect the cited information from the body of the article. So should the lede, both of these rules are rarely strictly followed. My rationale for leaving the figure, while uncited, was that it was profoundly reasonable. It was not hyperbolic or a joke number, in fact, quite modest, so I thought it was very likely accurate. JesseRafe (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Lede: self-description

In the all-important 1st para of the lede is a quote from Socialist Alternative itself. But the quote is very generic- it could be attributed to almost any politician. But SA is a Marxist Trotskyist organisation. Trotskyism: committed to permanent revolution. Marxism: very limited private ownership. This is a whole different ball game to merely “fighting against injustices”. Therefore, I’m going to delete the generic quote, even tho I have nothing substantive to replace it with, unless others disagree.

I wish I had did have something acceptable to all to replace it with, but there is very little written in conventional sources about SA. It was for that reason that I added the quote from Dori Monson to the end of the lede (not the opening para). It was all I could find! I’ve since moved that to the end of the Trotskyism para, as another editor queried it under undue.

Can I point out that filling the political positions section with mere campaign stuff could easily be said to be undue, as none of it gets down to brass tacks, meaning: what do Socialist Alternative actually want? Perhaps the quote I added to the lede and have since moved is the most accurate summing up there is in the whole article. So IMO it should still be in the lede. Boscaswell talk 23:04, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

  I added the quote from the Dori article to replace the generic quote. Trotskyism pre supposes Marxism so only one is neededVahvistus (talk) 12:52, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I’ve removed the self-description from para 1 of the lede as wiki articles on political parties don’t include them, but left in the piece which Vahvistus wrote about socialism and it not being possible for capitalism to be made to work for the working class, as this is clearly correct. It doesn’t, however, distinguish it from other far-left parties, but the word Trotskyism does, to an extent. Another editor reinstated the Marxist description, so that must remain in. I was going to reinstate it anyway, on the basis that as we are writing this for laymen, it has to include both Marxist and Trotskyist, since most wont know that Trotskyism presupposes Marxism. There can be no reason to exclude this other than not wanting anyone looking up the article to be told that SA is Marxist. Further, the quote which Vahvistus edited in is not really a replacement for the one which I’d moved elsewhere, as its meaning is very very different. Boscaswell talk 07:54, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Removed content solely sourced by primary sources

The content below is interesting and useful, but supported only by primary sources. If someone can find secondary, it should be re-added:

Extended content

Occupy When the encampment at Occupy Minneapolis began to depreciate, Socialist Alternative shifted its focus into an anti-foreclosure campaign. Jobs Not Cuts Socialist Alternative initiated a national campaign called Jobs Not Cuts in the fall of 2011 in reaction to the debt ceiling crisis and subsequent Budget Control Act passed by the Congress in August 2011. The bill called on the federal government to make $2.1 trillion in cuts to the federal budget and issued the formation of a Supercommittee to decide how these cuts would be made. The goal of the campaign was to hold a national week of action from November 16 to 23 in protest against these cuts and advocating for a mass public works project that could create jobs. Part of its demands were that the United States ended military involvement and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dramatic tax increases on the wealthy in order to fund the project. 15 Now After the election victory of Kshama Sawant and inspired by Proposition 1 in Sea-Tac, Socialist Alternative launched the 15 Now campaign. According to the campaign, their mission was to "empower working people and activate them into fighting movement" to win a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Led by Socialist Alternative, 15 Now in Seattle built a local campaign based on neighborhood action groups and won the endorsement of several major unions like SEIU, ATU, AFSCME and IBEW as well as community groups and national and local left-wing activists including Noam Chomsky, Tom Morello and Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report. It launched a signature drive to push an amendment to the Seattle City Charter for a $15 an hour minimum wage because a winnable ballot initiative was considered the best tool in order to get the wage instituted, but the decision to pursue a charter amendment saw the loss of support of many of 15 Now's labor allies. On May 1, 2014, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced his proposal for a $15 an hour minimum wage to be considered for adoption by the Seattle City Council. 15 Now considered that this included what the party called many "corporate loopholes", but despite a fierce campaign, it eventually supported Kshama Sawant voting in favor of the Mayor's proposal as they had lost the resources necessary after many of the labor unions stopped supporting the movement. On June 2, the $15 an hour minimum wage was voted into law in the city, making Seattle the city with the highest minimum wage in the country at the time. Since 15 Now's work in Seattle, they initiated several different campaigns across the country, notably in Portland, Oregon, Minneapolis and Boston. #Movement4Bernie In January 2016, Socialist Alternative launched an initiative in support of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders's campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. This campaign was called #Movement4Bernie. According to the organization's website, "to achieve Sanders' demands for $15 an hour, single-payer healthcare, tuition-free college and the end of mass incarceration it will take an organized mass movement."

SocDoneLeft (talk) 00:40, 31 July 2024 (UTC)