We condemn the Quad-City Times article published on February 16th regarding Thurgood Brooks. The characterization of Thurgood is built entirely on a one-sided portrayal, one that is rooted in anti-Blackness. This publication uncritically printed accounts from various officials and executives who described Thurgood as “unprofessional” (Rock Island Interim City Manager John Gripp), “threatening” (Alderperson Mark […]

Peninsula DSA Endorses James Coleman for CA State Assembly (AD 21)

On February 20, 2022, members of Peninsula DSA (PDSA) voted to enthusiastically endorse PDSA member James Coleman in his grassroots, corporate-free campaign for California State Assembly in newly redrawn District 21, which now represents eastern San Mateo County from Brisbane and South San Francisco down to East Palo Alto. Because James favors bold, uncompromising action to effect popular progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage, instituting higher taxes on the ultra wealthy, and increasing spending on health care, education, and infrastructure, he is the best candidate to bring about transformative change for working people on the Peninsula, and he is well positioned to win the primary election in June 2022. In 2020, James successfully ran as a Democratic Socialist against 18-year incumbent and mayor Richard Garbarino, winning a city council seat in his hometown of South San Francisco with over 52 percent of the votes. As South San Francisco’s first openly LGBTQ+ and youngest-ever City Councilmember, James has a track record of looking out for the interests of the working class. So far he has been instrumental in

1. building broad support for the Early Care and Education for All South San Francisco ballot measure campaign (modeled after Portland DSA’s successful measure in Multnomah County, OR) to bring universal preschool to all working families in South City;
2. passing a citywide Medicare for All resolution, which helped secure outgoing CA Assemblymember Kevin Mullin’s commitment to vote Yes on CalCare (AB 1400); and
3. advocating for union-constructed multi-family housing—including mixed-income social housing—to solve the dual crises of decreased housing stock and increased numbers of unhoused neighbors on the Peninsula.

In addition to organizing with PDSA, James was actively involved in Harvard College Students for Bernie Sanders, and in spring 2020 helped transition the group to a Young DSA chapter (Harvard Young DSA). A proponent of bold action on climate, James has also been involved with the Alliance for Climate Education, the Harvard Undergraduates for Environmental Justice, and Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. James Coleman has also earned the endorsements of SEIU California, the San Francisco Berniecrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Courage to Change PAC, Daybreak PAC, Project Super Bloom, Reach Coalition (allyship), Downballot Progress, Run for Something, and current DSA-endorsed elected officials: CA Assemblymember Alex Lee (AD 25), Redwood City Councilmember Lissette Espinoza-Garnica, and San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston.

Considered on its own, the New York Police Department is in the top ten largest armies in the world. Why? As working-class New Yorkers struggle to stay fed and safely housed, the NYPD enjoys nearly unlimited resources and sees no issue with using those resources to oppress and surveil the city’s population. On tonight's show, we speak to Khalil from NYC-DSA’s Defund NYPD campaign on why socialists’ commitment to REAL public safety remains strong. We also take calls live from the WBAI audience.

 

In international news, capitalists and war-mongers are pushing for further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine dispute. We’ll hear from Gerard of the Democratic Socialists International Committee on their recent statement opposing US militarization and interventionism in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and calling for an end to NATO expansionism.

 

Join NYC-DSA's campaign to Defund NYPD: https://www.defundnypd.com/get-involved

 

Read the International Committee's statement in English, Russian, or Ukrainian: https://international.dsausa.org/statements/no-war-with-russia/

 

On this episode, Lee Ziesche shares a brief public service announcement about this month's sky-high ConEd bills. We will be covering this issue more in depth on future episodes, but visit bit.ly/conedbill to learn more about how this situation was created by New York politicians' climate inaction and how DSA is fighting back. 

“The Burlington Progressive Slate has actively supported labor issues in Burlington. From passing the Responsible Contractor legislation to helping AFSCME Local 1343 fight layoffs, wage cuts, and an abusive Airport Director. They have been in the fight with us to build working-class power in Burlington and in the state of Vermont. On behalf of our over 11,000 members, the Vermont State Labor Council AFL- CIO Executive Board endorses Burlington's Progressive Slate of candidates.” - Dwight Brown, the Vice Chair of the Vermont AFL-CIO and a leader in the Burlington school employees union

List of Endorsed Candidates:

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Register to vote HERE

Find your polling place here

“…portraying the struggle ahead of us, but with hope and motivation”

When it comes to the great and near-great powers, there are no good guys.

The fourth module of our Socialist Night School study series on imperialism—“Imperialism Today: An Investigation of Study Series Concepts through Contemporary Case Studies”—focuses on contemporary manifestations of imperialism utilizing case studies that hit especially close to home. Alongside cases on the Greek Syriza movement and the European Union are cases addressing the US relationship with Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

There are many questions to ask, discuss, and answer. How does our understanding of national sovereignty, dispossession through debt, global financialization, and the triumph of neoliberalism inform our conception of imperialism today? Do conventional models of imperialism match contemporary reality — and if not, how do ongoing offenses against Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the periphery of the Eurozone challenge conventional theories? What can and should be done to combat US imperialism both within and beyond its 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 4 (pp. 78-106) of the DSA-LA Imperialism Reader, which includes:

• Linda Backiel, “Puerto Rico: The Crisis Is About Colonialism, Not Debt” (pp. 79-83)
• Richard Seymour, “Syriza: the Denouement” (pp. 84-86)
• Panagiotis Sotiris and Spyros Sakellaropoulos, “European Union as Class Project and Imperialist Strategy” (pp. 87-96)
• Paul Krehbiel, “US Imperialism in Venezuela” (97-106)

Were you unable to attend the first three sessions? No problem! You can review the content from Module 1: Is Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism?, Module 2: America’s Ascent as an Imperial Power, and Module 3: The National Question.

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

“All we are trying to get at is where the Bible touches upon the questions at issue between the Socialist and the capitalist, on whose side does it stand?”

The Reverend George Washington Woodbey was born into slavery in 1854 in Johnson County, Tennessee. A mostly self-taught workingman, he was ordained in Kansas in 1874, after freedom came. By 1902, Reverend Woodbey was living in San Diego, pastoring Mt. Zion Baptist Church and serving on the executive board of the Socialist Party of California.

His first pamphlet, from 1903, carries this dedication: “By one who was once a chattel slave freed by the proclamation of Lincoln and now wishes to be free from the slavery of capitalism.”

He was part of the 1912 free speech fight against a San Diego city ordinance prohibiting streetcorner speeches. Targeted by police and right-wing vigilantes for speaking freely, jailed and beaten, he described the police as the new slave catchers.

His 1904 pamphlet The Bible and Socialism: A Conversation Between Two Preachers, comes from the point of view of someone who “believes all the Bible teaches”and aims “to set forth only what the Bible teaches on economics.” The pamphlet is written as a dialogue between two preachers, one a convinced socialist and the other skeptical of socialism. This format shows the importance of good faith dialogue among working-class people, building on common ground with mutual respect to come to a greater understanding.

Reverend Woodbey reads passages of the Bible that oppose exploitation in the form of rent, interest, and profits–the ways the rich get rich off of the toil and struggles of the rest of us. Speaking on the sin of exploitation, Woodbey says that both chattel slavery and capitalism “take the larger portion of what the poor produce,” which is “wrong” and “the work of the devil.” He shows how the struggle against slavery and the struggle for industrial democracy are part of the same big struggle of labor.

Woodbey’s message to the church was the message of Matthew 6:24: “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” In other words, “the class struggle … exists in the churches as well as in the factory.” In Matthew 19:16-24, Jesus tells a rich young man to sell his possessions because “a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Woodbey writes, “The preacher today is the representative of Christ, and when the rich young man comes to him seeking eternal life is he told to go and get right with the poor? … You tell him God has greatly blessed him, when, at the same time, the Bible denounces him as a spoiler of the poor. You tell him that he can hold on to his riches and get to heaven, while Christ says he cannot, and yet you claim to represent Christ.”

Woodbey: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ is one of these laws which, under capitalism, we are violating continually.” Basing himself on Acts 4:32-35, which says the members of the early church “had all things in common,” Woodbey sees the early church as a “cooperative institution” which over time succumbed to class differences: “So the early churches … were divided into different warring factions at last, by the wealthy class, who finally gained control, and thus … they lost their ideas of cooperation for a time.” Only the socialist “Cooperative Commonwealth” can bring about a world where people can really follow the Golden Rule.

Historian Philip Foner, editor of a collection of Woodbey’s writings and speeches titled Black Socialist Preacher, says, “Since the church was a dominant influence in the black community, more black Americans learned of socialism through the writings included in this volume [which also includes work from some of Woodbey’s predecessors and successors] than all the publications of the various socialist groups combined.”

The Reverend George Washington Woodbey has this message for the world: “Socialism is a part of what the Bible has been leading up to all this time.”

Black Socialist Preacher is available at the Appalachian Liberation Library: https://allibrary.org/.

As recent polls show that Americans have a higher distrust of media than ever before and factionalized varieties of social media have increasingly polarized people, nearly everyone has strong opinions about the media. If you’re interested in exploring and discussing this topic, the Coulee DSA Book Club is beginning Matt Taibbi’s recent book, “Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another,” an acclaimed analysis of how today’s mainstream media lies to people and divides them by manipulating us as news consumers. 

The book club meets Thursday nights at 7 pm and will begin discussing Hate Inc. on Thursday, February 10th. Email us at CouleeDSA@gmail.com to receive a link to the book club to join in.” 

The post Next DSA Book club read: Hate Inc. first appeared on Coulee DSA.

Yesterday two very different visions for the future of New York’s energy system were presented at a marathon 12+ hour long budget hearing on environmental conservation. On one hand, New York’s regulators argued to stay the course and continue to let the market and capital be the primary drivers of building renewable energy, despite the state having missed it’s renewable energy goals year after year and currently only 6% of New York’s energy comes from wind and solar. Community advocates and DSA-electeds had a different view - one where the future is a public good- and renewables are being built at the scale the climate crisis demands and are publicly-owned. 

Tonight we’ll continue our series of interviews with NYC-DSA’s 2022 slate and are joined live by Sarahana Shrestha a candidate for Assembly District 103 in the Mid-Hudson Valley and member of the NY Public Power Coalition who is running under the slogan - the future is a public good.

 

More info about Sarahana: www.sarahanaforassembly.com

More info about Public Power: www.publicpowerny.org