Why Indiana and the Rest of the U.S. Needs a Revolutionary Socialist Movement
If you mention Indiana to someone on the U.S. Left, they are likely to know two things: that Eugene Debs, the one-time leader of the American Socialist Party, was born there; and that Indiana was a birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. In the first 30 years of the 20th century, these forces fought tooth and nail over the direction of Indiana and American politics: the Socialist Party held an inaugural ratification convention in Indianapolis in 1901, and held its national convention there in 1912, when Debs got more than a million votes running for President.
Meanwhile in the 1920s the Klan elected a Mayor of Indianapolis, held huge state-wide rallies as its chapters spread, and openly promoted the killing of African-Americans, like the famous 1930 lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp memorialized in one of the most savage of lynching photographs.
In recent times, a more muted battle has been fought by the Indiana Left against a new array of reactionary forces. At present the reactionaries are winning. In 2012, revolutionary socialists, trade unionists and radicals flying under the banner of “Occupy Indiana” challenged the state legislature’s efforts to implement “Right to Work” legislation meant to make it more difficult for unions to collect dues and build membership. The challenge included an SEIU hotel workers strike meant to disrupt the 2012 Super Bowl played in Indianapolis. Despite these efforts, Right-to-Work passed.
Since then, the state has been in the vanguard of right-wing reaction on almost every conceivable social and working-class issue. This history tells us that the class struggle is central to all struggles for social equality, and that a vital revolutionary socialist movement is the key to winning ground against the forces of reaction.
For example, after defeating the movement against Right to Work, the state legislature attacked gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. Then Indiana Governor Mike Pence (soon to be Donald Trump’s running mate and vice president) signed The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015 making it legal for a person or business to discriminate against gays and lesbians based on their religious beliefs. In doing so, Indiana sought to protect the rights of petit bourgeois business owners—like the Indiana pizza parlor operator who refused to serve gay customers. The state’s alliance with reactionary anti-union business class forces was a prediction of things to come.
In 2022, Indiana became one of the first states in the country to pass a near-total abortion ban after the Supreme Courts Dobbs decision, legislation more recently upheld by the Supreme Court of Indiana. The abortion ban has had especially devastating effects on poor and working-class people who get pregnant who cannot afford to travel out-of-state (for example to neighboring Illinois, where abortion is still legal). People who get pregnant in Indiana have virtually no place to turn if they don’t have money to escape the state. Then in April of this year, the state legislature passed a law blocking all gender-affirming care.
The law was meant to force transgender youth taking medically prescribed treatments to stop doing so by the end of the year. Like the abortion ban, the law is a savage attack on the bodily autonomy of people who live in the state and will disproportionately affect poor and working-class people with limited financial means to travel or move out-of-state for care.
Not surprisingly, the right-wing Indiana tide has now crested in the form of a proto-fascist middle class movement in Indiana known as “Moms for Liberty”. Originated in Florida, the group is comprised almost entirely of white, middle-class, and affluent suburban women who have attacked one of the most important institutions serving working-class people: public schools. Indiana has at least 7 chapters of the group, which seeks to drive all forms of “wokeness” from public education and public life.
In 2022, it helped elect hundreds of people to school boards across the United States. In Indiana, the Hamilton chapter of Moms for Liberty made national news when it quoted Adolf Hitler on the front page of one of its Newsletters. The quote, from a 1930s Nazi rally, said “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.”
Browsing the Hamilton County Moms for Liberty Facebook page gives a quick snapshot of what bourgeois fascist grassroots politics in America looks like today. Under the auspices of protecting “parental rights,” Moms for Liberty has defended banning books; attacked Pride events and drag queen story hours; and attacked Critical Race Theory in public schools. It has promoted the John Birch Society, a Cold War anti-Communist organization, and advertises a podcast called “Two Guys, 1 Coup,” which is an homage to the January 6th neo-fascist riot in Washington D.C.
Members of the Hamilton County Moms for Liberty also attended the first national summit of the group in Philadelphia the last days of June. Lest we think these ‘grassroots’ proto-fascist attacks on the working-class are out of the mainstream, no less than five presidential candidates agreed to speak at the convention, including Donald Trump and Rick DeSantis.
But for those on the Left, the key question is: what is the state of working-class organizing and the socialist movement in Indiana that can respond to this onslaught?
At the moment, Indiana UPS workers across the state are actively engaged in a potential nation-wide strike against the largest private delivery company in the United States. They are represented by the Teamsters in contract negotiations. In 1997, UPS workers walked out in the biggest strike in the company’s history. It is possible that Indiana UPS workers will also strike given that negotiations with the company recently broke down.
What is clearly needed in Indiana is the same thing that is needed everywhere in the U.S.: a mass working-class movement with socialist politics at the center to drive back attacks on working-class women, working-class children in public schools, and workers everywhere barely able to organize to keep their heads above the rising tide of capitalist flooding.
The socialist movement in Indiana itself is primarily represented by the Democratic Socialists of America, which has numerous chapters across the state. DSA is assisting with a #strikeready campaign in support for UPS workers which has included fundraising activities and solidarity pickets.
The DSA has been much less visible and effective however in the face of the elimination of abortion in Indiana. After making initial statements opposing the Dobbs decision it has not mounted any kind of widescale public campaign to restore abortion rights.
One local socialist I spoke with has been volunteering with the group “I Need an A,” which helps women who need an abortion locate a provider. Until the recent Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana’s near-total abortion ban, some individual doctors were performing abortions mainly on a medical basis. It is unclear now whether or how those doctors will continue.
There has also not been an organized socialist fightback against Moms for Liberty. This, even though the Far Right has been organizing in Indiana for at least the past ten years. The now defunct “American Vanguard”, the fascist group “Patriot Front”, and the KKK have all attempted to organize at the local University campus or through flyering downtown streets. These groups are literally the offspring of the early 20th century white supremacists against whom Eugene Debs and the Socialist movement did battle.
What is clearly needed in Indiana is the same thing that is needed everywhere in the U.S.: a mass working-class movement with socialist politics at the center to drive back attacks on working-class women, working-class children in public schools, and workers everywhere barely able to organize to keep their heads above the rising tide of capitalist flooding.
One such organization in development is the Revolutionary Socialist Organizing Collective (RSOC). RSOC is an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, gender-affirming group of revolutionaries who seek to build an organized fightback against the crimes being committed against the working-class by the state and its allies. You can learn more about the RSOC here.
In the meantime, we encourage people to read puntorojo and join us in the fight to build a better world.
Bill V. Mullen is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Organizing Collective and of the organizing collective for the US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
