In 2023, DSA chapters nationwide carried out a campaign called “Strike Ready” to build connections with UPS Teamsters and prepare to support them on the picket lines. When the expected strike didn’t happen it was easy to declare victory, but the campaign had never really been tested. It demonstrated that it was possible to organize in preparation of a strike in parallel to the union itself, but what this would lead to was still unknown. 

The contract negotiations between Boeing and IAM were closely watched for years in our chapter and others. The 33,000 IAM members at Boeing constitute one of the largest bargaining units in Washington state, and Boeing is the state’s third-largest private employer. Our plan developed in the final months of negotiations: get people interested, build a list of interested people, and keep them informed. Strike support at the picket lines was the main objective: bring people out to join the machinists on the line, talk to them about their fight, let them know that it’s shared across unions and across the working class. Unlike other organizations, we wouldn’t bring literature or recruit on the lines, but we would show up.

At 12am on Friday the 13th in September, the strike began after votes to reject the tentative agreement and to strike passed by overwhelming margins. Seattle and SnoCo DSA members were on the line in Everett at midnight, in a huge crowd that was just one of the Everett plant’s many picket locations. We drew on our planning to bring a large number of SDSA members to the picket line in Renton the next day, spreading out across 2-3 different picket locations when we outnumbered the actual strikers at one.

What became evident very quickly after the beginning of the strike was that attendance at the picket lines was different here than in past strikes we’d worked to support. UAW 4121 members might have 3 main picket locations, Unite Here 8 struck at a few Homegrown locations or hotels at a time. IAM picketed at over a dozen locations in each city (Seattle, Everett, Renton, and Auburn), with each site so far away from the next that you often couldn’t see them. Machinist shift organization to keep up 24/7 coverage meant that there were usually only a few people at each site. While it was impressive to show up in large numbers, we’d usually only encounter a small handful of IAM members each time.

The scale of the strike also made other forms of support somewhat daunting. Many picket lines have an abundance of donuts and snacks, and IAM is no exception. Anyone who’s been to one of the halls has seen the evolution of a combination snack depot and food pantry over the weeks of the strike, on a scale that’s simply beyond DSA’s ability to make a dent in. The scale of the strike support payments going out to the strikers is a good example of the scale: each week, strike support payments total more than DSA’s national annual budget!

So much of our lives are structured around monetary transactions, more-so every year as the neoliberal snare squeezes tighter. Breaking out of this intellectual trap means thinking of value separate from money, and identifying concerns in the same way that an organizer would in the workplace. Once you see the areas of need, you can start brainstorming how to address them in ways besides throwing money at the problem.

For example, we saw at Unite Here 8 pickets over Labor Day weekend that the supplies from the union would sometimes leave out one or two important items. It could vary every time, but there were a lot of little crises on the line as signs broke, materials blew away, wagons hauling supplies back to a car overflowed, etc etc. In response, we put together a kit of gear that we could bring to pickets to solve a lot of these issues on the spot: staple gun, various tapes, bungee cords, scissors, first aid kit, and more. It’s rare that a picket site hinges on any of these issues, but repairing a stack of broken signs or producing a roll of duct tape at a crucial moment helps keep momentum up (and makes us look like we know what we’re doing!).

Another issue came from those same snacks and donuts mentioned earlier. Although the pickets were supplied with actual food besides the snacks, first from sandwich shops and later from the hall kitchens, they were still largely focused on practical and immediate energy. PB&J or egg salad sandwiches and all the chips you can eat are fine, but they don’t feel like a meal.

We tend to think of ourselves as individuals, only able to contribute as individuals; a whole society thinking like the peasants in Marx’s proverbial sack of potatoes. The connections between individuals, the community and solidarity which we can build, lets us act far beyond our individual means. On the individual level, this looks like luck: one of our members was lucky enough to know some farmers, and lucky enough to be in the room when they were wondering where to donate extra produce after the farmer’s market season ended. Our member proposed donating this to an IAM hall kitchen, and after some back and forth, a plan was hatched: we’d pick up a load of fresh produce from the farmers each week, and deliver it to the hall, where kitchen volunteers would use it to prepare heartier, healthier food for picketers. While this plan worked great, it’s not necessarily something that could be replicated in the future, but the key is this: take opportunity when it is presented to you, and make opportunity where it doesn’t exist yet. Unions are popular, and even people who might never accept an invitation out to the picket lines or to a DSA meeting still like to feel that they helped. By looking for a need and identifying how we could address it through personal relationships and community, we were able to make this program of food delivery happen.

Strike support has another value beyond the line itself, and it’s one that can feel a little impolitic to mention. It’s nice to win! It’s nice to be part of something that wins! By getting involved with a strike, by showing up and doing what we can, by contributing according to the strike’s need and to our abilities in the best way that we can, we can share in the victory when the strike resolves. Reaching out and drawing upon our own communities can not only let us do more, it can also spread this feeling around to those who might be a little less politicized in their day-to-day lives. As Walter Crane’s The Workers’ Maypole (1894) declares: the cause of labor is the hope of the world. What’s better than sharing a little hope?

Featured Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Workers%27_May_Pole.jpg 

The post Building Community & Seizing Opportunity: Seattle DSA’s Strategy to Support Machinist Pickets appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

Discontent is high in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) as a rank-and-file campaign seeks to vote the new contract down.

By Connor Wright

BOSTON – Last Friday, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) signed a tentative agreement with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), outlining a proposed contract that would last through 2026 if approved by rank-and-file letter carriers. NALC members have been working without a contract for almost two years.

The leadership of the 200,000-member union released a summary of the tentative agreement (TA) on Saturday. It includes raises of 1.3% per year, annual cost of living adjustments (COLA), and small increases in base pay for some positions. The raises and COLA will also be paid retroactively for the roughly 600 days the current contract has been expired.

The proposed agreement is now pending approval from NALC’s membership. Ballots are slated to go out in mid-November. A simple majority is needed to approve the TA.

The new contract is not guaranteed to pass. Friday’s announcement sparked a wave of discontent among members, according to local carriers who spoke to Working Mass. Almost immediately, a national NALC Votes No campaign was set up, calling for members to vote down the TA for a chance at a better contract.

“The Tentative Agreement between NALC and the USPS, announced on October 19th, is unacceptable,” the campaign website reads. “After 600 days of negotiating and promising an ‘historic’ contract, our union leadership has failed us.”

The campaign cites multiple reasons for rejecting the TA. The 1.3% raises fall well below inflation, amounting to a pay cut; the COLAs are small and tied to already low base wages; healthcare payments are even higher than last contract’s; and the use of “City Carrier Assistants,” a lower-paid second tier of the union workforce, is left unchanged.

Multiple groups within NALC oppose the TA and have thrown in with the No campaign. Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) – a group that aims to “transform our union into a democratic, fighting union” – seems to be the driving force behind the campaign. Concerned Letter Carriers, another rank-and-file network, has also endorsed NALC Votes No. Even some top union officers are calling for a No vote, opposing a deal largely negotiated by current NALC president Brian Renfroe.

For years, there has been widespread dissatisfaction among NALC’s rank and file over weak contract gains and harsh working conditions. Those issues came to a head during the union’s last national convention, when BFN clashed with the union’s current leadership, demanding that the union open up bargaining to rank-and-file members and strengthen its demands in negotiations with USPS.

The letter carriers have a history of militancy. Famously, in 1970, rank-and-file NALC members launched a massive wildcat strike over brutal working conditions. The 8-day strike remains the largest wildcat in U.S. history, and laid the groundwork for decades of more militant, democratic unionism at the Postal Service, after rank-and-file strike leaders wrested leadership of the union from a corrupt old guard.

Strikes by federal workers are illegal, and national workplace action doesn’t seem to be on the horizon this time around. But the NALC Votes No campaign hopes to draw on the legacy of the 1970 strike.

“We’ve been here before,” one local NALC member told Working Mass. “Whatever it takes to get them to listen to us – that’s what we’ll do.”

Unions have relied on staff to encourage members to build the union through new organizing at non-union workplaces, but they could be doing much more.

The post Who holds the power in your workplace? appeared first on EWOC.

San Jose Against War, joined by SVDSA, held a rally on October 6, 2024 to mark a year of Palestinian resistance to genocide.

Today, a nuclear-armed state rains down terror on an oppressed population of natives, behind a multi-billion dollar shield of rockets protecting its settlers. Built on the ethnic cleansing of almost a million natives, the occupying state imposes a system of apartheid and ethnosupremacy over its claimed territories, placing its own settlers’ rights above the natives’ democratic will. Despite the natives having an internationally recognized right to resist their subjugation and pursue self-determination, other major powers refuse to recognize this – saying only the occupier has a “right to self defense.”

We could have written a similar introduction about any number of colonial and occupied groups. White Americans and Indigenous people – who were similarly genocided under the guise of “manifest destiny.” Hindutva supremacists and occupied Kashmir – where Kashmiris have been denied their internationally recognized right to a plebiscite and self-determination.

As Israel today continues its genocide on Palestine and begins to destroy Lebanon, we must be clear as socialists that we oppose not only Israel’s actions, but also the racist, colonial ideology underpinning it all. Just as DSA has previously taken stances on anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism, today we commit to organizing around dismantling Zionism in our local governments and communities.

At our end-August chapter meeting, Silicon Valley DSA unanimously passed a resolution reinforcing our chapter as an anti-Zionist organization in principle and practice.

Zionism, as defined by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century, has always been a settler-colonial project intended to dispossess natives – to create “a wall of Europe against Asia… an outpost of [Western] civilization against [Eastern] barbarism.” Armed with the lie of “a land without a people for a people without a land,” Zionists regularly terrorized Palestinians alongside the British, and built their own segregated systems during the years of the British Mandate. During the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948, Zionists prevailed in ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians to form the state of Israel – against the consent of most natives.

In opposing Zionism, SVDSA seeks to end all forms of oppression and ethnosupremacy, in line with our prior opposition to caste discrimination and white supremacy.

Since October 2023, SVDSA has mobilized to call for a ceasefire, helped pass ceasefire resolutions at the Democratic Party and local levels, initiated Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, and educated our neighbors about Israel’s genocide. We recognize that, as U.S. taxpayers, we are directly paying for the destruction of Palestine – to the tune of $3.8 billion in annual military funding, and a further $10+ billion in arms approved just this year. Redirecting these funds alone would give $1250 per year for every American child in poverty.

Following the lead of other DSA chapters, including DSA SF and East Bay DSA, we drafted a resolution to fully commit our chapter to anti-Zionism, and place ourselves firmly on the side of the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

The adopted resolution clearly defines anti-Zionist expectations for our membership and endorsed candidates. With the passage of this resolution, Zionist positions — such as opposing BDS or the Palestinian right of return — are considered to be in substantial disagreement with Silicon Valley DSA’s principles and policies. Supporting Zionist lobby groups — such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) — is also now a violation of our principles, because we recognize how these lobbies disingenuously provide political cover for Israel’s genocide. Members who commit these violations can be subject to expulsion, as is the case with violating any other DSA principles.

Along the same lines, our endorsed candidates must now publicly support BDS, disaffiliate from any Zionist lobby groups, and — when elected — politically support the Palestinian cause and oppose Zionist legislation.

Our resolution against Zionism is a product of our diverse chapter. Just as we firmly rejected any conflation between Hinduism and ethno-nationalist Hindutva in opposing caste discrimination in 2023, so too do we reject any conflation of Judaism and Zionism. We recognize and commend the long history of Jewish anti-Zionist and non-Zionist organizations – such as Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the 20th-century socialist Jewish Labour Bund, and the modern Jewish Labor Bund – as well as the efforts of our own anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish members.

We expect our anti-Zionist resolution will make us an even stronger ally in the struggle for a free Palestine, and commend the work of several local organizations and coalitions fighting towards this end, including Palestinian Youth Movement, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, CA15forPalestine, Vigil4Gaza, Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine, and San Jose Against War. We look forward to working more closely with our allies, who have made it clear that DSA nationally must explicitly connect the fight against Zionism with our socialist and anti-colonialist principles.

We commit to making Palestine central in our ongoing struggle against global capitalism, settler colonialism, and U.S. imperialism. Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!

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The post SVDSA Unanimously Passes Anti-Zionist Resolution appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.