Like many of you, our primary feelings right now are those of anger and urgency. We are isolated in our homes, or continuing to work in essential jobs made dangerous, as we watch COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise. Amidst this deadly pandemic we are witnessing a new stage in the emergence of the far right. White supremacists, encouraged by the President and our congressional representative, Elise Stefanik, are beginning to violently challenge our already precarious and frail democracy.

Both of the bourgeois parties have rallied together to protect big business and the political establishment. This could potentially cause a fallout between the Republican party, Trump and his white supremacist supporters, and boost the growth of the radical far-right movement. We will see increased calls for militarization and policing. Calls will be made for “unity,” signalling a rightward turn for the Democratic party as they reach across the aisle to work with conservative colleagues to restore the legitimacy of political institutions. We must be prepared to present an alternative.

High Peaks DSA is vehemently anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist. We believe that building a better society depends on true democracy, representation, economic justice, collaboration and care. Fascism, racism, and capitalism are the antithesis of justice and community care. Cornel West offers inspiration here. He reminds us to “never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” Fighting for justice is uncomfortable, confrontational and messy, and it is loving. This is the instinct that we organize from.

These past couple weeks have been hard. We are tired, but we can feel energy starting to creep back in. It is tempting to wait it out, and wish against our better instincts that Joe Biden’s inauguration will bring more normalcy, but we know that no such thing will happen. As we wrote in June, after the world erupted in anger at the unjust murder of George Floyd, “the system is not broken, it is working as it was always intended to. Our system was born when colonists brought the first African slaves to work this land for their own financial gain over 300 years ago.”

The same is true of the Capitol Police’s response to the white supremacist spectacle on January 6, 2021. The system that colluded to allow them to ransack the Capitol has been 300+ years in the making and will not disappear overnight. It is imperative that we continue organizing locally, to counter white supremacy and fascism in our community, to organize ourselves as the working class in order to challenge the power structures enabling white supremacy, which cannot exist without our labor, and to build support structures that can care for each other through sustained hardship.

In the spirit of solidarity and organizing during these tumultuous times, we hope you will join us in the following:

1. Our members’ meeting tomorrow, January 20th at 7 PM. We will discuss events of the last few weeks & the local priorities moving forward.
2. Our next Public Meeting will be on Wednesday, February 3rd, and will be focused on how you can get involved in local campaigns for justice as we move into a new political era.
3. The Tempest Collective’s: “Fighting the Far Right in the Biden Era”, featuring speakers from Santa Cruz and Chicago DSA chapters, labor organizers, and more.
4. Advocating for the health and safety of the most vulnerable.  Check out this really big news from our friends at RAPP (Releasing Aging People in Prison)!

The post What’s Next? appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

The spirit of black radical traditions, at their best, can turn the world upside down and help usher in a political economy of dignity, voice, and decision-making power for working-class communities. Liberationist streams of black radical spirituality are as contemporary as Alice Walker’s call for democratic socialist womanism, as old as Reverend George Washington Woodbey’s Black Baptist socialism and beyond. This discussion between Rev. Andrew Wilkes and Rev. Sekou, artist, author, and public theologian, is part of an ongoing series on faith and socialism. In this conversation, Rev. Wilkes and Rev. Sekou talk about the ethical and religious streams within black radical traditions and the implications for our times

Whereas Marin DSA believes that safe and secure housing and shelter are basic human rights

Whereas Marin DSA is committed to housing and tenant struggles throughout Marin and has been since our local’s inception

Whereas the commodification of housing is at the root of the Bay Area’s and Marin’s housing crisis

Whereas our unhoused comrades lead the struggle for housing in Novato manifested in their work at Camp Ambition and Camp Compassion

Whereas the residents of Camp Ambition aim to take land out of the private housing market and put it under direct control of the people who live on it through the use of a community land trust

Whereas the residents of Camp Ambition have been harassed by the Novato police department, and had their tents and tires slashed by vigilantes

Let it therefore be resolved that Marin DSA stands in solidarity with our unhoused comrades, and will give all possible support to our neighbors living in Camp Ambition and Camp Compassion

Passed in our January General Assembly, Date: 2021-01-02

In this age of relentless corporate media propaganda, working class media institutions that are actually rooted in the socialist movement are crucial for the struggles ahead. Tonight Marian Jones and Sarah Leonard join us to discuss their new socialist feminist publication: Lux Magazine. We’ll hear about how Lux came about through organizing and why its socialist feminist analysis not only helps us understand the crises we’re living through, but provides an intellectual framework to build a better world.

http://lux-magazine.com/

https://ezsubscription.com/lux/subscribe

Twitter - @readlux 

Metro Atlanta DSA forcefully condemns the coup attempt by supporters of Donald Trump that occurred in the United States Capitol building on January 6th. We echo the calls for Trump to resign or be removed from office as soon as possible. We call for the expulsion from Congress of all GOP politicians who encouraged this attack and we urge all our members and supporters to pressure their legislators to support Representative Cori Bush’s resolution to do so.

Since announcing his candidacy for president in 2015, Trump has organized a campaign of hatred, violence, and terror against working people. We saw this throughout his campaign, at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and in the repression of the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020. We saw further escalation in this week’s attack on the Capitol building by a mob of white supremacists and far-right terrorists.

This attack was a convening of far-right activists and militants from across the country, called to D.C. by Trump himself. The crowd was made up of professional internet personalities, small business owners, neo-nazi militias, and even a Republican legislator from West Virginia. Despite aesthetic appeals to “liberty,” this movement is fundamentally opposed to the constitutionalism and rule of law of modern liberal democracy. 

Trump’s presidency is an extension of a wider neofascist movement fueled by the decay of capitalism in a dwindling empire. Squeezed between the pandemic, the climate crisis, and the declining rate of profit, the small capitalists and fascist militias are on track to grow increasingly hostile to both the liberal democratic state and the working class at large. Appeasement is not an option – the only effective counter is a mass movement of the working class fighting for truly democratic control of our society. Metro Atlanta DSA is committed to building this movement to defeat the fascists and the wealthy elites.

David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have been defeated in Georgia. Working people showed up and voted in record numbers to reject the GOP and their cruel agenda. With Democrats on the cusp of taking power in the White House and both houses of Congress, our immediate task as socialists is to demand that the new Democratic Party government take bold action to empower working people and isolate the forces of reaction. If President-Elect Biden and Democratic Leaders Schumer and Pelosi truly intend to oppose fascism, they must tear it out at the root. We demand they pass a People’s Bailout for working people and that they move to swiftly expel the far-right coup instigators from Congress. Anything less will effectively enable the fascists to regroup and begin planning to take the House in 2022 and elect a Trump 2.0 in 2024.

This election was a referendum on COVID Relief. Congress must send all USA residents $2000 survival checks, in addition to retroactive compensation of $2000 per month for the entire span of this pandemic. To both address the immediate unemployment crisis and avert the worst of the climate catastrophe, we demand a Green New Deal to put Americans back to work and achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030. We can create good paying union jobs for all building green infrastructure for a clean and habitable planet for future generations. Finally, we must pass the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act and establish a single-payer Medicare for All system, so that people are never forced to choose between their healthcare and their rent.

The dramatic upset in the Georgia Senate election can in large part be credited to an unprecedented electoral mobilization by organized labor. The hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, with support from other unions across the country, knocked 1,500,000 doors in the Senate election. Without their intervention, the Republican Party would still control the US Senate. Joe Biden owes it to the trade union movement to pass bold pro-labor reforms. Congress must establish a $15 minimum wage tied to inflation, pass the PRO Act, repeal Taft-Hartley, ban right-to-work laws at the federal level, and permit unions to organize through card-check.

We are under no illusions about the Democratic Party. Their neoliberal elite leadership has betrayed working people to serve wealthy corporate interests over and over again, and they will do it again as soon as the opportunity arises. Neoliberal rule from 2008-2016 is what gave us Trump in the first place. Our only recourse is to organize ourselves as working class people in a mass movement for justice and equality. We now have an opportunity for bold federal action, and we must seize this moment to build a vibrant movement for socialism that can overwhelm the forces of reaction. Join us in this fight – a better world is possible.

Join Metro Atlanta DSA today.

Chaos has erupted in Washington D.C., our capital, on January 6th, 2021 as a faction of pro-Trump Republican protestors have stormed the Capitol and entered the Capitol Building virtually unchallenged by authorities. One woman is reported to have been shot and killed in the violence that has ensued within the Capitol as the D.C. National Guard has been activated, and 200 Virginia State Troopers sent in response to this madness as Vice President Pence as well as the Senate have been evacuated from the premises. Looting and rioting are occurring now as general disorder has taken over. What we are seeing here is the example of the complete decay of capitalist society expressed in its political form: the form of polarization. As much as we have seen a shift towards the left and towards a revolutionary attitude growing within the masses in the past few decades, so have we also seen a growing trend towards far-right reactionary ideas. This is what has always happened historically in times of great social upheaval, when an old system must die and a new one must take its place: on the one hand, we see people ready to answer the call to revolution, and on the other, those who become more entrenched in defending the old order and in the reactionary thought that accompanies such an endeavor.

Also highly important to note regarding this phenomenon is the complete lack of the level of police repression and violence that we all would have expected if these protestors had been part of, say, Black Lives Matter, or god-forbid they had been socialists or communists! That would have been a massacre! We have already seen how the state has responded to peaceful BLM protests across the country (should we call into example the actions of the police in Portland, Oregon not a few months prior to this event? Where police dragged peaceful protestors into unmarked police vans and protestors were met with the most ferocious violence and repression on the part of the police), and yet what are we seeing here? We are seeing “polite” requests of men such as Pence for the protestors to “stand down” and Trump’s plea for them to “stay peaceful”! Where are the rubber bullets, the tear gas, the batons of policemen to break the bones of those they strike? They are nowhere to be found. These mobs were allowed to enter the Capitol Building, the epicenter of American political power, with virtually no opposition on the part of the authorities. Would this have been the case if these mobs had not been pro-Trump Republicans—had they been “other groups”? We can most assuredly say this would have not been so.

The attitude adopted by the rural working class--which has been completely neglected by the left in many regards--has led many of them to participate in such actions as those that we are seeing before us. They recognize just like many other workers the crisis of society, and their frustrations and criticisms against the bourgeois state are in many respects valid. They, however, look to figures such as Trump, which to them embodies strength and leadership against the “establishment”, and in this respect they have been misled. Trump is merely a servant of the bourgeoisie, as are all other politicians of the twin parties of American capitalism, albeit a somewhat rogue and uncharacteristic one in contrast to the more formal Democrats and even other Republicans. It is this illusion which many rural working class people hold that we must strive to deconstruct and explain the falsities of so that we, as revolutionaries, can educate the workers and lead them towards correct analyses and conclusions on the matters at hand in our country and in the world. This is of vital importance for the revolutionaries of today. We must take action both in educating people and in fighting against the false ideas and the illusions which have led many working class people to join the mobs which today have taken over the Capitol and caused general mayhem and destruction.

—The Red Republicans

History is on the move. Reactionary Trump supporters seized the Capitol building earlier today in a fascist show of force. What does this all mean? RPM host and antifascist special correspondent Amy Wilson join us to discuss. 

We lost so many people this year, including socialist intellectual Leo Panitch. We’ll share clips from his presentation to the North Brooklyn DSA on the importance of building a culture of socialist political education. 

Later in the show DSA National Political Committee member Justin Charles will also join us to talk about the importance of working class organization for the struggles ahead.

DSA Graphic Design Workshop Agenda

 ZOOM LINK for Jan 3^rd: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/77276225625?pwd=czR1bHZlSVRpR1hwK0Z0bWI4NVdadz09

 ZOOM LINK for Jan 4th: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/73597738848?pwd=bXcySTZ0enJDYzF6R05wYWFiQ2MrUT09  

In the chat please introduce yourself, pronouns, what skill level and what software you use. If you could please turn on your cameras Thanks! 

Feel free to type questions in the chat- we will have someone answering questions along with the presentation and demonstrations!

Day 1  Sunday Jan 3rd 6:30-9pm MST

Introduction 5 mins

What is Graphic Design 15 mins

Ten Graphic Design that will improve your designs Tips  25 mins

Design Project I Instagram post 45 minutes 

(Gimp/Photoshop, Free Templates. RGB color space, pixel perfect file formats, working with type. Instagram engagement tips) 

This exercise is about quickly making eye catching infographics with text.

 Break # 1 10mins reconvene around 8pm MST

Design ethics and Fair Use 10 Mins

Design Project II Print Poster 45 mins

 ( Photoshop,Indesign,  DPI, CMYK color space, Print file formats, Working with images)This exercise will focus on making print posters that communicate messages from afar.

Q&A  10 mins

Closing Day 1

(optional) Overview of Day 2 content for those who can not make it. 15 mins

 Day 2  Monday Jan 4th 6:30-9pm MST

 Introduction 5 mins

 How to brainstorm, work collaboratively, and think creatively 15 mins

 Printing things on a budget.  10  mins 

Design Project III  Using Design a projector to make a giant banner (30 minutes)

(Gimp/Indesign, Tile Printing, Projection tracing, Screen Printing overview)

Question and Answers/ Help and advice on your own work! 30 mins

 Break #3 10 mins

 Design Project IV Memes, Image Macros, GIFS 40 mins

(Gimp/Photoshop, Animation)

 Closing notes.

The post Graphic Design Workshop Jan 3-4 first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

The post SANTA AND METRO DC SOCIALIST ELVES DELIVER COAL TO CONGRESS appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.

Tonight we are talking about how care providers have been treated during the COVID-19 pandenic, focusing on vaccines to explain the role they will play liberating us from the COVID-19 epidemic (especially in our communities of color).

 

This is a deeply personal subject and in this episode we hope to honor everyone’s values and beliefs while grounding this segment in the science and public health knowledge of our guest.

 

Guest Jamese Lamb is an NYC-DSA Bronx/Upper Manhattan branch member and has a doctorate in Nursing from Duke University. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice and you should consult a primary care physician for your own personal care needs or eligibility for the vaccine.