Date: Saturday, December 20, 2025 from 9:30 am til 11:30 am

Location: Ragamuffin Coffee Roasters• 111 N Reino Rd, Newbury Park, CA 91320 US

Come join like-minded comrades for a cup of your favorite morning beverage. These gatherings offer a relaxed space to meet members and find out how to get involved, decompress, talk about the issues we face, and stay connected as we close out the year.

No RSVP needed! But if you want to, head over here.

Friday, December 19 – 8:00 PM PST (Online)

Thursday, December 18 – 6:00 PM PST (Online)

Join DSA Ventura County’s Labor Working Group on zoom to discuss the ongoing labor struggles in our communities, from Starbucks Workers United’s indefinite strike, to the tentative agreement our County employees will be voting on in the coming weeks, to the movement for an arms embargo by Labor for Palestine, and the calls for a general strike by May Day 2028.

Please, bring other ideas, campaigns, and your own workplace experiences. An agenda will be posted on slack soon. You will receive the zoom link after you RSVP.

Wednesday, December 17 · 6:00 – 7:00pm (Online)

Wednesday, December 10 at 5pm PST (Online)

Monday, December 10 at 6:30pm PST (Online)

Join DSA Ventura County’s Mutual Aid Working Group for a planning meeting focused on addressing unmet needs in Ventura County. Bring your big ideas, suggestions for coalition partners, and a desire to stand in solidarity with others. We are cookin’ up some ideas, and will post an agenda on our slack.

Sponsored by

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

“The story of America is a story of progress.” – Barack Obama

Throughout much of my education, American history was taught as an inevitable march toward progress. Sure, there were missteps and challenges, but they were overcome through American grit and the unique democratic commitments of our founders. The ending of slavery and rise in the standard of living, for example, were just fruits of the seeds planted in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. 

Even the rise of Donald Trump and America’s rightward slide are only a blip in this overall trajectory. The “Soul of America,” imagines liberal historian Jon Meacham, contains “a perennial conflict between our worst instincts and our best ones.” Despite occasionally giving into our “darker impulses,” there is an eventual course correction toward a more just society. These battles are the engine of history, ending with the victory of good over evil, thanks to the intelligent design of American exceptionalism. 

While the experience of recent events has significantly deflated this narrative, there remains a belief among social democrats and progressives that we must bide our time while the culture catches up to us. Then, we can frictionlessly lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for our own purposes. Improvements in the material conditions of the working class, however, did not come about from a slow progression through a series of stages, but by convulsive breakthroughs of the organized masses.

While the line has gone up for America’s elite, most of us have been cut out of our share. Despite massive increases in productivity, wages have remained stagnant and America’s wealth gap is astronomical and growing. Food, housing, and other rising costs are causing an “affordability crisis,” and household debt is at an all time high. 

The forced extraction of Native American land and Black labor for the primitive accumulation of American capital set the pattern for racialized exclusion from progress that continues its expression in rates of poverty, incarceration, and health outcomes today. Segregation remains prevalent, including in schools and neighborhoods here in Rochester.

The gains of the American working class have not been awarded by our leaders but won through struggle. The end of slavery came about only as the result of war; and while Lincoln’s “paramount object in th[e] struggle [wa]s to save the Union, and [wa]s not either to save or destroy Slavery,” it took the mass self-emancipation of formerly enslaved Black people to make emancipation a cause of the Union troops. Of course, even the promise of freedom – protected during the Era of Reconstruction – was corrupted by the reaction of Southern Redeemers and liberal complicity. The struggle for Black civil rights was continued not through America’s institutions, but in opposition to them, including by organizers from the Communist Party.

In the workplace, the 8-hour workday and the weekend are now seen as a sacred pact between employer and employee. These standards only gained ground from the determined efforts of generations of union members who faced arrest and violent repression on their road to victory. Decades of reduced militancy and targeted disruption have rolled back these wins, violating the pact with part-time work and unpredictable schedules.

These histories are absorbed into the fabric of capitalist realism – deprived of their radical nature and retold as a deterministic unfolding of events. Their advances are only ratified by American institutions to the extent they do not challenge class relations. The capitalist class will always seek opportunities to weaken regulations, slip through legal loopholes, or violate unwritten norms in pursuit of shareholder value. Until the profit motive is overturned in its entirety, we are left endlessly playing defense against the encroachment of capital on our liberties. 

The most egregious measure of stunted working class progress is the gap between the capacity and realization of modern industrial society’s ability to feed, house, and provide means for a dignified life to all. Instead, capitalism funnels surplus value to those at the top, who secure their position with ever more immiseration and endless expansioneven at the cost of planetary sustainability. The choice for our future, then, is between socialism or oblivion. To quote Engels, “if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place.” 

Writing from a Birmingham, Alabama jail, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. responded to white clergymen who criticized his “unwise and untimely” activities. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” says King. Rather than delivering justice, law and order frequently exist to “block the flow of social progress.” 

How long must the working class tolerate its present conditions while waiting for progress to trickle down? As King asserts, “the time is always ripe to do right.” Rather than wait on the indefinite timeline of the elite, the socialist movement must unify the masses and collectively define the terms of our liberation. Progress will not happen unless we are willing to fight for it.

The post Against Progress Narratives: Toward a Radical Push for Change first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Getting Grounded: SNAP Miseries, Farmer Resistance and Solutions

By Elizabeth Henderson

For a few days before it finally ended, the government shutdown cut off SNAP payments to the 42 million people in the “richest country in the world” who depend on government funds to buy enough food to stave off hunger. In 2023, the total number of households in Rochester, NY was 91,471. Of that number, close to one third, an estimated 30,020 households, participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  Most of the recipients of SNAP are children, the elderly, or disabled people, but there are many who work yet do not earn enough to be food secure.  Companies like Walmart, McDonalds, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Amazon deliberately keep wages and hours so low that employees qualify for SNAP. In other words, tax payers subsidize these corporations to the tune of billions of dollars a year. 

The end of the shutdown restored SNAP payments. But that did not change the huge cuts and changes in work requirements in the Big B…s. Bill that will limit SNAP to three months. Most adults up to age 64 will have to fill out paperwork showing they are working, volunteering, or participating in a work training program for at least 80 hours a month – only families with children under 14 are exempt. This previously applied only to adults ages 18 to 54. Veterans, unhoused people, and former foster youth will also be subject to these policies. This bill also bars most legally present immigrants who are NOT lawful permanent residents, meaning refugees, asylees, and others from eligibility for SNAP. Thanks to litigation, these changes will not go into effect right away.  For updates, see on.ny.gov/44APNkD. 

Community response to these cuts has been dramatic! Who keeps us safe? We do! Many individuals, organizations, food businesses, farms and churches organized food give-aways.  For the latest, see the FoodLink Find Food page – foodlinkny.org/find-food.

Farmer Resistance to the On-going Farm Crisis

In the last Getting Grounded where I wrote about the deteriorating finances of many farms in NY and across the country, I promised to write about some of the ways farms are resisting.

I have spent most of my life and energies helping build alternatives to chemical/gmo industrial food production through organic farming and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).  For 50-plus years, organizations like the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) where I co-chair the policy committee, have been building local markets to cut out the middlemen. We are learning how to produce food without damaging the planet, and how to nurture community around food.  We helped create the organic label, the gold standard eco-label that has helped build a market that supports our farms. US government involvement in that label has given us decades of headaches and struggles to maintain its integrity from greedy agribusinesses that sniff profit. 

Mid-sized and smaller farms like mine actually feed most of the world’s people.  In the report A Long Food Movement, ETC Group and iPES-Food document that despite the political and economic momentum behind agribusiness, peasants and smallholders still produce the large majority of the world’s food, with estimates as high as 70% of all food consumed.  For starters, our farms use 30% less energy than conventional farms since we do not use fossil fuel derived synthetic fertilizers. This is consistent with what the ecological economists Herman Daly and John Cobb have long maintained: “If productivity is measured as production per acre or per unit of energy or amount of capital input, it is the small farm that always excels.”

NOFA is a member of a worldwide peasant movement that has been participating in the Nyeleni process since the 1990’s. As Sarah Gilliatt, an organic goat cheese-maker from New Hampshire, writes, “Nyeleni is countering the trajectory that our world has been on from colonialism, to development, to globalization, and now to neoliberalism on steroids within a nationalist stance. This is one trajectory, with each phase continuing imperialist and extractive policies, with a massive transfer of wealth from the global south to the global north.”

Sarah represented NOFA along with “Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, fishers, feminist movements, youth, workers, and activists united across continents to renew the global struggle for justice, dignity, and life” who met for 8 days in Kandy, Sri Lanka. As reported in The Natural Farmer (winter 2026), “This September’s forum was an intentional step toward greater solidarity across movements. The increasing consolidation of political and corporate power points toward a need for even stronger alliances among those who share the determination that we need to make a strong, decisive change of course. The theme of this forum was convergence… More than 700 people from over 100 countries gathered to build shared analysis, devise strategies, and revise the Common Political Action Agenda, which will guide our local work in solidarity and alignment with a global agenda.” 

The meeting issued a final Declaration, “the fruit of an unprecedented collective process: shaped through years of local and regional assemblies, and translated into 18 languages during the Forum to ensure that every voice could be heard and every word shared in equality.

It stands as a common political compass for the movements of the world – guiding struggles for food sovereignty, health for all, social and solidarity economy, climate and gender justice, and peoples’ rights. It denounces the systems of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism that drive hunger, war, and ecological collapse, while affirming the power of peoples to build economies of care, solidarity, and self-determination.

The Kandy Declaration calls on movements everywhere to act in unity, defend the commons, and transform global governance so that it serves people, not profit.

Born from collective wisdom and multilingual solidarity, it is a living roadmap for the years ahead – lighting the way toward peace, dignity, and life for all.

Systemic Transformation, Now and Forever!”

You can read the Kandy Declaration here – bit.ly/kandy-dec. 

In future Getting Grounded entries, I will write about what these lofty words mean concretely for us in Rochester and our region.

The post Getting Grounded: SNAP Miseries, Farmer Resistance and Solutions first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Action timed for before rate hikes negotiations begin at Office Proposed to Close

RG&E is proposing a $624 rate hike and a raise to their profits, while they’ve already blown past their record shut off numbers of last year. They still haven’t implemented the recommendations of the state’s audit, so we still can’t know if our bills are accurate. And they’re proposing to close the walk-in customer service center at 180 S Clinton. 

Metro Justice joined with several other local organizations – including United Christian Leadership Ministry, Roc DSA, Free The People Roc, City-Wide Tenant Union, VOCAL, Being Black in the Burbs, Federation of Social Workers, RocACTS, and 1199 SEIU – and a large crowd of nearly 100 in the bitter cold – to Call for No Rate Hikes, No Shut offs, and Public Power NOW! on Saturday Dec 6 at noon at the RG&E office they’re proposing to close. The timing of the action was set for before negotiations on the rate hikes begin. 

The group delivered this Demand Letter to the doors of the office, along with the demands on an oversized Bill the group presented to RG&E. The Letter was addressed to and also sent directly to: RG&E, the Governor, Public Service Commission, Monroe County Executive Adam Bello, Monroe County Legislators, Mayor Malik Evans, Rochester City Council Members. Attendees posted bills and stories of their experiences on the windows of the RG&E building, and spelled out “No Hikes” with their Bodies. 

QUOTES:  

Christina Christman, President of Federation of Social Workers: “We’re the workers responsible for seeing people having trouble paying their energy bills, and especially when shut offs this year have already exceeded last year’s record numbers, and energy assistance was delayed and is reduced overall,  it’s clear the people of Rochester can’t afford RG&E. Any increase poses an unacceptable rise in energy burden and shut offs. We need to get out of this cycle of unending rate increases and investigate a public utility, and institute a shut off moratorium.” 

Dr. Michi Wenderlich, Campaign and Policy Coordinator of Metro Justice: “We’re here today to say loud and clear to RG&E, the state, and local leaders: No Rate Hike, No Shut offs, Public Power Now! Rochester can’t afford a $600 increase, while we have the 3rd highest energy burden in the country, shut offs this year have already exceeded last year’s record numbers, and energy assistance is reduced! Given the recent audit, We have no idea where our money is going now – they can’t be allowed to take more! We can’t let the burden fall to our neighbors to decide whether to heat or eat – We can’t afford not to replace RG&E!” 

Kim Smith, Political Director for VOCAL-NY: “It’s too damn cold to turn off the heat! Which is why we’re turning up the heat on RG&E! Given the political landscape and all that is happening on the federal level, Rochester residents living at and below the poverty level are in the midst of an affordability crisis. Housing is limited, and with cuts to SNAP benefits and healthcare – now RG&E is proposing a 34% rate hike. With winter upon us so many families will be neglected.  Enough is Enough! When will customer service, satisfaction and needs be a priority? State and local leaders need to act now! RG&E = Rochester Greed & Errancy.”

“In New York, utilities and corporations are polluting our air and hiking our energy bills, keeping their pockets lined with our hard-earned dollars while we pay the price with our health and our lives,” said Stephan Edel, Executive Director of NY Renews. “Instead of delivering energy bill relief for New Yorkers in the form of direct rebate checks, Governor Hochul is choosing to allow corporate utilities to price-gouge us while claiming she cares about our cost of living struggles. Enough is enough. No more rate hikes for corporate profit — we deserve a New York with clean air, lower bills, and good green jobs for our families and our future.”

“Our community, just like many others, are impacted in ways that are lost on rich people. The 19th has recently experienced 2 outrages. RGE has no entitlement to a request of  a 34% increase. The hardship dumped on our community and impact on it places on the working poor, elderly, and neighbors that can survive this hike increase. RGE must be denied this request,” expressed Lentory Johnson of Generational Engagement Matters, and continued: “When we voted for Mayor Evans, Melendez and other council members, we were looking for champions for our community and they are failing. They say they want to build with the community – Well how do you have $500,000 and you don’t think enough of the citizens who are mostly the marginalized and poorest and working poor of this city, and you don’t think we’re worthy to have that study performed? It is now time for them to step up.” 

Tiffany Porter, of Being Black in the Burbs & Accomplices: “In the spirit of our ancestors, who taught us that resilience is not merely enduring hardship but transforming it into power, we say this: For too long, RG&E, a distant, monopolistic corporation, has treated our heat and our light as luxuries they can price-gouge, and our lives as entries on a balance sheet. They raise rates with impunity and wield the shut-off notice like a weapon, even in the freezing cold. This is more than an injustice; it is an inhumanity.

But let us remember: the very wires that carry this overpriced power run through our streets, past our homes, and into the heart of our community. They do not own our right to warmth, to safety, or to a dignified life. Our hope and our power lie in a simple, revolutionary truth: what they have taken from us, we can reclaim together.

We are not just customers to be exploited. We are a community that can own, can govern, and can run a utility that puts people over profit. The fight for a publicly owned, locally accountable utility is the fight to reclaim a basic human right from corporate hands. It is the fight to power our futures with justice, not greed. Join us. Let’s turn off their monopoly, and turn on our collective power.”

Rev. Dr. Dwight Fowler of United Christian Leadership Ministry: “UCLM is working in collaboration with Metro Justice to help bring about a study for a desired replacement of RG&E. The goal is to acquire the funding to do an elaborate study in Rochester (the Frederick Douglas City) – the purpose is to supersede RG&E with a utility company that will provide affordable utilities. We also echo that there should be no rate hikes for RGE, and an end to shut offs!”

Dr. Allen Blair, MD: “I’ve seen strapped ratepayers cut back on medications when money is tight and energy bills are high.  That choice can kill them.  Big utility rate increases will force more choices like this if the alternative is going without heat.”

Roxana Siaca, Community Member: “What’s happening with RGE isn’t “unprecedented.” It’s history repeating itself another chapter in the long American story where corporations extract, exploit, and profit while working people shoulder the burden. We’re told these rising bills are just the cost of living in uncertain times, but uncertainty isn’t the problem. Unchecked corporate power is. It’s all connected. The rising bills. The climate crisis. The widening inequality. What’s different now is this: we’re not alone in naming it anymore. People are talking. Organizing. Exposing. Fighting back. And we’re building the collective power to demand an energy system that serves the people, not the shareholders.”

Full Text of Demand Letter: 

Demand Letter December 6, 2025 from Public Action

No Hikes, No Shut Offs, Public Power NOW! 

From: Metro Justice, United Christian Leadership Ministry, Rochester DSA, Free the People Roc, City-Wide Tenant Union, VOCAL NY Rochester, Being Black in the Burbs, Federation of Social Workers, and RocACTS

To: Rochester Gas & Electric, Governor Hochul, Public Service Commission, Monroe County Executive Adam Bello, Monroe County Legislators, Mayor Malik Evans, Rochester City Council Members

Given the facts that: in May 2025, the last installment of RGE’s previous 34% distribution rate hike went into effect, and that RG&E is now, immediately after their last increase, asking for ANOTHER 34% increase. These new hikes, if approved, would result in a $623 increase to the average household gas and electric bill and, using ACEEE numbers, put 50,000 more RG&E customers in energy poverty. With a median income of ~$46K, this means more than half of Rochester households would be at risk (meaning energy exceeds 6% of income). The hikes also come on the heels of the recent audit showing widespread mismanagement and safety violations by RG&E and its multinational owners, and that it’s unclear where money is going within the company or between the various utility companies that Avangrid owns. The recommendations of that audit have not yet been fully implemented. Even with the results of that audit, RG&E is requesting an increase in their rate of profit, to 10%, even while experts claim that utility profits should be closer to 6%. RG&E/NYSEG also wants to close the walk-in center at 180 South Clinton, and 4 other offices (Sodus, Oneonta, Ithaca, Auburn) in their territory. 

Additionally, RG&E’s Shut Off Crisis is spiralling out of control, and seems to be intricately connected to the ongoing misbilling and accountability crises of the utility. The numbers are startling: 12,217 homes and 1,196 businesses were shut off in 2024, for a total of 13,413 shut offs. This number is triple the shut offs of 2023, and is an all-time high in recent times. And yet, shut offs as of October 2025 already surpass 2024 numbers – with 15,322 total. To add insult to injury, HEAP funds were delayed this year, and are reduced generally – meaning the full need for energy assistance is not being met. 

At the same time, new profit numbers for 2024 show that profits – just a few years ago $89 million, rose to $107 million in 2023, $122 million in 2024, with just a small adjustment to $119 million for the year ending April 2025.[1] And a recent report found that Avangrid profits have increased 185% in the last 10 years – more than any other utility in NY. Meanwhile, Rochester’s energy burden (the proportion of income for energy) is third highest in the country, with 29% of all homes, or 44% of Black and Latino homes, paying between 6-25% of their total income on energy. An updated report from ACEEE shows that a quarter of low income households in Rochester pay 21% or more of their income to RG&E. The rate case also proposes using ratepayer money to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, including false solutions like hydrogen and “renewable” natural gas. As a result, we all pay more than we should in energy bills while the continued use of fossil fuels pushes us towards catastrophic environmental damage, but prioritizes the most expensive infrastructure that bring RG&E and Avangrid the most profit.

We demand: 

1) Of RG&E – Withdraw your rate hike request. Stop executing shut offs. 

• The audit showed that your finances can’t be independently verified, and until all of the recommendations of the audit have been implemented, you shouldn’t even be able to file for a rate hike request. Given your record of lacking service and harm to the community, you also need to stop executing shut offs. Stop endangering our community and making us responsible for your mistakes. 

2) Governor Hochul and the Public Service Commission: Don’t approve any rate increase; Implement a Shut-off Moratorium NOW

• These issues, along with alarming safety and security violations shown by the audit, show that the utilities have not demonstrated responsible use of our funds and do not merit this rate increase or the increased return on equity they seek.
• Especially given Avangrid’s dismal performance, Rochester’s high energy burden, the disproportionate burden on low income households and households of color, and Avangrid’s frequent mistakes,
  • These hikes would make matters worse and impact our most vulnerable disproportionately. They are unacceptable and there should be no rate increase. 
  • There needs to be a shut off moratorium. 
  • The audit also showed that RG&E billing is not accurate. Ratepayers should not be on the hook for bills that we don’t know are correct, nor for unpaid bills /arrears. They should certainly not be shut off for bills that are routinely inaccurate. 
• On profits in particular, there is no sound argument for raising the companies’ return on equity. In fact, utility experts such as Mark Ellis are raising concerns that return on equity for utilities is vastly overbloated, and should be lowered to the actual cost of capital, perhaps with a cushion for administrative costs. This would be closer to 6% than 10%.
• Don’t allow the closure of the South Clinton or any walk in center, and expand walk in center hours at least from 7am to 7pm, or vary times to ensure open hours outside of 9-5. 
• See a full list of demands, formally submitted to the rate case via Metro Justice, here.

3) Of Monroe County and City of Rochester: Write to, and use any means necessary to pressure, the Governor and the PSC to deny rate hikes, to implement a shut off moratorium, and yourselves: use your own power and jurisdiction to finally fund and commission an independent, third-party public utility study to look into alternatives to RG&E and a locally-owned nonprofit utility, so we’re not stuck in this constant cycle of hikes and powerlessness.

[1] See: Regulated Balance for Common on Pages 9 and 10

The post Rochester for Energy Democracy Protests at RG&E December 6 to Demand No Hikes, No Shut Offs, Public Power Now!  first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Author: Mike B

A multigenerational, intersectional hub for Palestine organizing in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

Vision
A free Palestine as part of a liberated world.

Mission
Mobilize and organize the greater Cleveland community to elevate the visibility of Palestine and put material and political pressure on the occupation.

Save The Dates

• PSL Rally – W 25th Market Square, Saturday 3pm. In response to the US’s threat to invade Venezuela, we’re having a rally at Market Square.
• Dec 8th – Game Night at Algebra Tea House. $10 suggested donation going to Ivy’s legal fees.
• Dec 9th – We’re showing PYM’s webinar on US Imperialism in the Middle East and having a discussion afterwards. This, and the next event are great if you are interested but can’t commit to weekly meetings.
• Dec 16th – Starting at 6:30 whole group will meet to reflect on petal work for the year and set goals for the first meeting in January.
• Potluck for second half of the meeting. As a social, this is a great time to meet the larger coalition.

OFF DEC 23 & DEC 30
First meeting back will be Jan 6th

The post Cleveland Palestine Advocacy Calendar: 12/6-12/16 appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.