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Tonight on our show we will be talking about our host Desiree Joy Frias' home of the South Bronx where capitalist interests and government failures are continuing to cost lives.

 

In the middle of brutal winter weather and yet another Covid spike, tenants are once again mobilizing to defend against evictions and build working-class power with all of New York City’s residents, including the 1 in 12 New Yorkers who live in public or section 8 housing. Last week’s tragic and preventable Twin Parks fire on 181st street in the Bronx and yesterday’s Con Edison explosion on Fox Street less than two miles away are just the latest examples of the ongoing violence of landlord neglect and failures by the federal and local government to provide adequate public housing and public infrastructure. Con Edison is responsible for yesterday’s explosion that killed one, injured seven  and  leveled an entire row home in the South Bronx. This exploitative monopoly spends millions in lobbying fees to fight green projects and remain the sole provider of power to over 12 million customers.  

 

To discuss these preventable tragedy and how socialists are organizing for tenant power, we're live in the studio with RPM comrade and fellow Bronx/Upper Manhattan DSA member Bernard  Goyder and an organizer from NYC-DSA’s Brooklyn Housing Working Group, Isaac. Tonight you’ll learn about NYC-DSA’s Right to Remain campaign to pass Good Cause Eviction, transformative legislation that will protect millions of tenants just like us. Keeping with the uptown theme, we’ll also hear an update on the successful strike by the Student Workers of Columbia.

 

Get organized, get involved, help your neighbor, call your legislator: https://linktr.ee/nycdsa_housing

 

Read more on South Bronx Mutual Aid and others' efforts to support tenants in the Bronx: https://twitter.com/booksandrose/status/1483854067457826822?s=20

Las Vegas DSA condemns, in the strongest terms, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for the cold-blooded murder and subsequent dehumanization of Isaiah Tyree Williams.

At about 5 a.m. on Jan. 10, LVMPD arrived at Isaiah’s apartment complex in East Las Vegas to serve a search warrant for someone else, and murdered the 19-year-old Isaiah, who was not connected to their investigation in any way. Officers announced themselves once when they arrived. Four seconds later, while announcing themselves a second time, officers threw flash bombs through windows, and forced entry through the front door of the apartment. Isaiah, apparently asleep on a couch just inside the front door, returned fire on the armed intruders pouring into the apartment. LVMPD fired 23 shots, killing Isaiah.

After murdering Isaiah and realizing that he was not the person they were looking for, LVMPD immediately began dehumanizing him during their press conferences, listing off the charges he would have faced for protecting himself during an armed break-in.  LVMPD only highlighted that two of their officers were shot, and not how they had murdered a Black teenager. The complicit media repeated these talking points.

These execution raids are common in predominantly Black neighborhoods across the country. Three weeks after Isaiah’s murder, Minneapolis police killed Amir Locke under similar circumstances. This cyclical pattern of injustice must end.

According to MappingPoliceViolence.org, LVMPD has killed 78 people since 2013. This includes Jorge Gomez in 2020 and Byron Williams in 2019. Combined with North Las Vegas and Henderson, over 100 people have died in Southern Nevada because of police deadly force since 2013. Violence is endemic in policing, and our BIPOC community is at a greater risk of harm while police continue to exist.

LVMPD’s budget for fiscal year 2021-22 is nearly $700 million. Via PoliceScorecard.org, the department has received at least $470 million per year since 2010. These funds would better serve our community in the form of free housing, improving our underfunded public school system, and building community-based interventions that address harm without relying on police or prisons.

We firmly believe in defunding and abolishing the police and prisons, and replacing them with services that prevent and repair harm in order to protect our communities. Until then, we support measures that disarm police, redirect police and prison funding to social goods, increase civilian oversight and transparency of police, and offer reparations to victims of police violence that don’t drain from public funds (i.e. paying civil damages from police pensions).

Our thoughts are with Isaiah Tyree Williams’ family, and with every person of color who has to fear that they may find themselves wrongfully victimized or murdered by police. We support Isaiah’s mother, Latia Alexander, in her pursuit of justice and hope our community can soon live without fear of police.

Xcel Energy originally hoped to run their highest polluting electric plant, the Comanche Coal Plant, until 2040. Then hundreds of people wrote in and spoke out at public hearings demanding that they close the plant as soon as possible – 2030 at the latest.

In response, Xcel struck a backdoor deal with the City of Denver to keep running the coal plant until 2035, along with some nasty strings attached.

Luckily the Public Utility Commission is likely to amend or even reject this proposed settlement. We’re co-organizing a rally on Friday April 8th and a phone/email campaign telling Denver City Council to refuse any future agreement with Xcel and instead demand the Comanche 3 Coal Plant close by 2030 or sooner.

Attend the Coal Free Colorado Rally on Friday April 8th

Call or email your city council representative and tell them No Dirty Backdoor Deal for Xcel.

Denver is Turning its Back on its Climate Commitments by Signing the Xcel Settlement

Denver’s electricity provider, Xcel Energy, is trying to lock Colorado into 13 more years of coal while forcing customers to foot the bill… And the City of Denver supported it!

Here’s what’s wrong with the proposed settlement:

1. It agrees that Comanche 3, the largest single source of climate pollution in Colorado, should operate until 2035.
   
   The settlement would require the Comanche 3 coal plant to burn coal until 2035– five years longer than any other coal plant in Colorado. This is the most unreliable power plant in the state, including being offline for nearly all of 2020 because of poor maintenance practices.
   
   The coal plant is the largest source of climate pollution in the state and is located in Pueblo, a low-income, Latino community. This community doesn’t even get the electricity from the plant — just the pollution. When the PUC held a hearing in Pueblo in October 2021, residents expressed overwhelming support for retiring the coal plant by 2030 at the latest.
   
2. It prevents Comanche 3 from ever being closed earlier than 2035.
   
   The settlement would lock in a retirement date for Comanche 3 of December 31, 2034 that could never be changed, even as the plant continues to suffer malfunctions and more and more cheaper, cleaner alternatives become available. The single largest source of CO2 emissions will run for the next 14 years.
   
3. It makes Xcel’s shareholders rich on the backs of Denver ratepayers.
   
   The settlement forces us ratepayers to pay Xcel $658 million to recover costs lost because of their mismanagement. We shouldn’t be on the hook to pay millions to Xcel’s Wall Street investment for their bad business decisions.
   
   The settlement also guarantees Xcel at least $626 million in new company-owned electric generation resources to replace the Comanche 3 coal plant after 2035. The more resources Xcel builds and owns, such as new wind turbines, solar panels, or gas plants, the more money their shareholders make. Typically, Xcel has to allow other companies to bid on new electric projects. For example, instead of setting up community-owned solar farms we would have to get our new electricity through Xcel, feeding their extractive monopoly.
   
4. It assumes new gas plants would operate for at least 40 years.
   
   The settlement allows Xcel to assume that new gas plants would operate for 40 years – long after 2050, the date by which Xcel says it is aiming to be carbon-free. This violates Denver’s plan for 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, and Colorado’s goal of 100% renewable energy by 2040.
   
5. It will massively increase pollution from gas-fired power plants.
   
   The settlement says that the social cost of carbon will be used in dispatch starting in the summer of 2022. This means that gas generation will increase dramatically, to make up for the lost coal generation–because it is impossible for Xcel to acquire new renewables by next summer.
   
   
   Tell your City Council member and the Mayor that the City of Denver to protect people and the climate, rather than corporate profits!

On Dec. 2, more than 100 people registered for a Zoom call hosted by the Public Utility Commission to hear what the public thought of Xcel’s 10-year plan. Scheduled to end at 6 p.m., the event ran well past 7.

Of the dozens and dozens who spoke, only four supported Xcel’s plan. The rest of us called it out for what it is: greenwashing.

Xcel boasts that their “Landmark electric resource plan would cut carbon emissions an estimated 85% by 2030.”

The problem with that target is that it’s too late. The Biden administration’s national goal is 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035; Gov. Polis’ target is 100% renewable energy by 2040. Denver, Boulder, Pueblo, Fort Collins, Longmont, Golden, Summit County, Lafayette, Frisco, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Nederland, and Breckenridge each have set 100% renewable electricity targets by 2030 or 2035.

We’re already in the midst of a climate crisis. We’re feeling it first-hand with the record-setting heat waves, wildfires, mudslides, droughts and air pollution.

Xcel missed its window of opportunity to help avert climate catastrophe. Now the question is, how bad will we allow it to get?

To stave off the worst of the worst, community members overwhelmingly called for the following changes to Xcel’s plan:

Close all coal plants, especially the Comanche Coal Plant, the state’s dirtiest, most unreliable and expensive source of energy, by 2030 at the latest.

Do not pass on the cost of the Comanche Coal Plant to ratepayers. This coal plant was built in 2010 and it was largely opposed then. It was a bad investment that Xcel Energy needs to take responsibility for. The general public already is paying the price with our health and the challenges of an increasingly hostile climate.

Close the Arapahoe and Cherokee gas plants by 2030. Like the Comanche Coal plant, these have been polluting the air of its nearby mostly Latino, working-class neighborhoods, contributing to our severe ozone issue and of course climate change.

Set a 100% renewable electricity goal by 2040 at the very latest — to align with Colorado targets.

The outpouring of support for these demands has been overwhelming. The hearing on Dec. 2  featured voices ranging from ski industry representatives concerned about shrinking ski days, to local business owners wanting to purchase clean electricity, to indigenous leaders highlighting the devastation coal and gas brings to the land and their communities, to parents angry about the planet on which we’re raising, and eventually will pass along to, our kids.

A strong majority of Pueblo residents (30 opposing Xcel’s plan, 7 neutral and 8 in favor) spoke out at an earlier public hearing in October. More than 1,000 residents have submitted written comments to the same effect.

Xcel Tries Striking a Backdoor “Settlement”

This surge in public participation prompted Xcel to have work behind closed doors with the city of Boulder and Denver and other parties to devise a counter-offer.

Originally the plan was to run the Comanche Coal plant until 2040. In this new deal, that closure date would be moved up to 2035. It would also pass on some of the cost of the bad investment to us ratepayers. 

At the Dec. 2 statewide hearing, however, we residents made clear that 2030 is the hard line for closing those coal- and gas-fired plants. We can’t have Xcel making closed-door deals that undermine the strong public consensus on this.

This post was taken largely from EcoSocialist Chair Clayton Dewey’s op-ed in the Colorado Sun, with his permission.

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Thank you to everyone who showed up to the January general meeting yesterday; it was longer than normal but we covered a lot of important voting. We’re proud to announce […]

The post January 2022 General Meeting Recap appeared first on Houston DSA.

In an effort to exert its power over the Americas, the United States has enforced an embargo on Cuba ever since its revolutionary struggle for independence from American imperialism. The blockade is an effort to force regime change against the will of Cuban people who want to improve their society without foreign interference. Despite the immense suffering caused by the embargo to this very day, socialists in Cuba have made remarkable achievements in education and healthcare. DSA members Rolando, Tom, and Patrick as well as Daniel Montero, a journalist from Cuba, join us to discuss the movement to end the embargo and the fight to preserve Cuban self-determination.

Las Vegas DSA condemns the United States Navy’s poisoning of the O‘ahu drinking water aquifer amidst the ongoing military occupation of the Hawai‘i Islands.

Capitalist and colonial interests have made Hawai‘i unlivable for many native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. While we are proud to call nearly 53,000 Pacific Islanders our neighbors and comrades here in Las Vegas — colloquially referred to as the “Ninth Island” — the destruction of their native land cannot continue to go unnoticed.

Those who remain in Hawai‘i already deal with an obscenely high cost of living on the islands, caused by the greed of the white, capitalist class. After the U.S. Navy leaked massive amounts of jet fuel into O‘ahu’s largest drinking water supply and attempted to cover it up, residents are still dealing with chemical smells in their water and rashes from bathing in it. The leak at the Hālawa shaft will be shut down until fuel is removed from the tanks and may not reopen for years to come. For residents of Honolulu, this means that a water supply which used to provide 20% of the drinking water for the region is now inaccessible.

In response, the Navy continues to confuse and gaslight community members about the viability of their drinking water during this illegal occupation of the islands. This fits an ongoing, white supremacist pattern of violence by the United States: a genocide, displacement, and erasure of the Indigenous Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population that once thrived without U.S. aided underdevelopment.

Las Vegas DSA stands in solidarity with the Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community, both in Southern Nevada and on the islands. We echo demands for the shutdown of the Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility, which caused the leaks. LVDSA also calls for the United States to cease military operations in Hawai‘i, the Pacific Islands, and all its colonies.

In addition, we’re calling for members to sign on to this petition, demanding the immediate halt to the construction of the TMT, 30 Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, Island of Hawaiʻi. The TMT will cause harm to the mountain and destroy a sacred place for Kanaka Maoli’s spiritual and cultural practices.

Signed:
Las Vegas DSA Steering Committee

The third module of our Socialist Night School study series on imperialism focuses on how socialists have approached (and presently approach) the relationship between nationalism, self-determination, and socialist liberation. This is a pressing issue for both subjugated nations and working-class people seeking to fight capitalist imperialism from within the imperial core.

So what is the relationship between socialism and nationalism? How does this relationship differ depending on where one resides within a system of imperial domination? What are key lessons we can draw from historical and present-day experiences and struggles of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Indigenous movements in Latin America? What does it mean to show meaningful solidarity across national borders? These are some of the questions we will work through this module.

Recommended Reading

To prepare for this session, we ask attendees to read through Module 3 (pp. 54-77) of the DSA-LA Imperialism Reader, which includes:

• Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Politics of Accumulation: Struggle for Benefits” (pp. 55-57)
• Walter Rodney, “Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America” (pp. 58-63)
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “Indigenous Peoples and the Left in Latin America” (pp. 64-69)
• Ramón Grosfoguel, “Latinos and the Decolonization of the US Empire” (70-77)

If you would like to dive deeper, we recommend turning to the full-length texts by the various authors:

• Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism
• Walter Rodney, full-length version of “Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America”
• Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldívar, “Latin@s and the ‘Euro-American Menace’” (introduction to Latin@s in the World-System)

Were you unable to attend the first two sessions? No problem! You can review the content from Module 1: Is Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism? and Module 2: America’s Ascent as an Imperial Power.

Interested in attending our Socialist Night School sessions? Check our calendar for upcoming session dates.