Featured Events

The Socialist Solution to Budget Cuts
Eastside Branch
SE Uplift Center, 3534 SE Main St
Sunday, May 6th, 2pm


After having bailed out banks in the U.S. and around the globe to the tune of $14 trillion, global rulers are forcing the working class to pay the costs of the crisis and subsequent bailout by cutting social spending and laying off workers.
Portland faces steep cuts in the public sector workforce, including city maintenance workers, librarians, and teachers, to name a few. Slashes to the social safety net, from mental health to unemployment, are also hitting the poorest people the hardest.
Join the international socialist organization for a presentation and discussion on the socialist solution to the budget cuts, and get plugged into the Portland fight-back!
RSVP on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/284342961648356/

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander A Study Group Happening Across Portland

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal.

North Portland Study Group:
Saturdays, 11am,Talking Drum Bookstore (446 NE Killingsworth)
March 31 to May 5
One chapter each week.

Portland State University:
Wednesdays, 5-6 pm, Chit Chat Cafe (1907 Southwest 6th Avenue)
April 11 to May 16
One chapter each week.

Copies of the book are available from ISO branches, Haymarket Books, Powells Books, and other sources. Please contact us if you are looking for a copy of the book.

Occupy Education Panel: Rising Tuition, Soaring Debt, and the Growing Campus Fight Back
Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Parkway North Room (next to the cafeteria)
Thursday, May 10th at 5pm


The cost of college tuition has increased at over four times the rate of inflation over the past 25 years. As a result student loan debt is at crisis levels with the class of 2011 becoming the most indebted in U.S. history. This attack on students ability to afford a college education coincides with an attack on Faculty and University staff as their wages and benefits are increasingly subject to cuts while class sizes grow and their control over their classroom curriculum diminishes. In the Fall. students and educators from campuses around the country fought back occupying their universities and brought with them the demands of a student bail out, an end to the attacks on faculty, and public funding for colleges instead of prisons.

Join us for a discussion panel to learn about the ongoing attack on higher education and the possibilities for teachers and students to unite and fight back.
Marcia Klotz, Professor of English at PSU, Co-founder of CORE (Calling on Oregon to Reinvest in Education)
Jennifer Schuberth, Professor of Religion at PSU, Co-founder of CORE
Tasha Triplett, member the Portland Coalition to Defend Education
Tracy Ann Mattner, writer for Rearguard Campus paper
Christina Kane, member of Occupy PSU and the ISO

 

ACTIVIST CALENDAR

Happy International Workers Day!


More than 100 years ago, International Workers Day (May Day) was born out of the struggle for the 8-hour workday in Chicago. This holiday is celebrated by workers world-wide... with the exception of the US. Every year we come out to commemorate that struggle, and to fight for a more equitable world. We hope to see you in the streets, whether you're a worker, student, immigrant, are unemployed, a veteran, etc.

For more info, check out maydaypdx.blogspot.com

Portland State University Branch. Smith Memorial Student Union at 5pm, Room 333


North Portland. PCC Student Center at 4pm


Eastside Branch.
The Socialist Solution to Budget Cuts. SE Uplift Center, 3534 SE Main St. at 2pm


After having bailed out banks in the U.S. and around the globe to the tune of $14 trillion, global rulers are forcing the working class to pay the costs of the crisis and subsequent bailout by cutting social spending and laying off workers.
Portland faces steep cuts in the public sector workforce, including city maintenance workers, librarians, and teachers, to name a few. Slashes to the social safety net, from mental health to unemployment, are also hitting the poorest people the hardest.
Join the international socialist organization for a presentation and discussion on the socialist solution to the budget cuts, and get plugged into the Portland fight-back!
RSVP on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/284342961648356/

Portland State University Branch. Smith Memorial Student Union at 5pm, Parkway North


Occupy Education Panel
Checkout the Featured Events tab for more information!

North Portland. PCC Student Center at 4pm


Eastside Branch.
The Socialist Solution to Budget Cuts. SE Uplift Center, 3534 SE Main St. at 2pm


Organizing meeting for the Eastside branch of the ISO. All are invited to attend.

Portland State University Branch. Smith Memorial Student Union at 5pm, Room 333


North Portland. PCC Student Center at 4pm


 

Introduction to the ISO

About Us

The International Socialist Organization (ISO) is committed to building an organization that participates in the struggles for justice and liberation today— and, ultimately, for a future socialist society.

In Portland we have three branches that meet weekly. The Portland State University branch meets on Thursdays at 6:45pm at Smith Memorial Student Union at Portland State University. The North Portland branch meets on Fridays at 4pm at the Portland Community College Cascade Campus Student Center. The Eastside branch meets on Sundays at 2pm at the Southeast Uplift Center (3534 SE Main St.).

Where We Stand

Socialism, Not Capitalism

War, poverty, exploitation and oppression are products of the capitalist system, a system in which a minority ruling class profits from the labor of the majority. The alternative is socialism, a society based on workers collectively owning and controlling the wealth their labor creates.

We stand in the Marxist tradition, founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and continued by V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky.

Workers' Power

Workers create society's wealth, but have no control over its production and distribution ... (read more)

Introductions to Socialism


War and Imperialism


Reform or Revolution



The Russian Revolution


The Fight against Stalinism


What is Leninism?

... (read more)

Meaning of Marxism

Meaning of Marxism & Where We Stand Study Group

For those that are interested in learning more about the ISO and our politics we regularly host a 6-week study group on Paul D'Amato's Where We Stand articles and his book The Meaning of Marxism.

The Revolutionary Socialist Tradition

Revolutionary Socialist Tradition Video Series

The New York City District of the ISO held a series of study groups on the revolutionary socialist tradition. You can watch some of the sessions online here.

From Marx to the Second International with Brian Jones

Leninism and the Impact of the Russian Revolution

 

10 Books to Get You Started

It is fashionable for pundits to declare every so often that Marxism is dead, but you can’t keep a good theory down. The poverty, class inequality, war and environmental degradation that today’s globalized capitalist system creates on an ever-expanding scale raises questions for which Marxism still offers fresh and relevant answers.

This book is a lively and accessible introduction to the ideas of Karl Marx, as well as other key Marxists, with historical and contemporary examples. The Meaning of Marxism shows that a “radical, fundamental transformation of existing society” is indeed not only possible, but urgently necessary.