Isolate the Fascists and Bail Out the People
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.
Coup in the Capitol
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
The Capitol Seizure and the Need for Socialist Organization for the Struggles Ahead
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.
Graphic Design Workshop Jan 3-4
DSA Graphic Design Workshop Agenda
ZOOM LINK for Jan 3rd: 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.
SANTA AND METRO DC SOCIALIST ELVES DELIVER COAL TO CONGRESS
SANTA AND METRO DC SOCIALIST ELVES DELIVER COAL TO CONGRESS
The post SANTA AND METRO DC SOCIALIST ELVES DELIVER COAL TO CONGRESS appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.
Nursing Us Back to Health: Striking Care Workers and Vaccine Deployment
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.
Serving Socialism: Restaurant Workers Organizing for Relief And Power
This past Monday, New York City shut down indoor dining at restaurants and bars as COVID cases continue to rise in the city and across the country. Many restaurants were barely surviving before New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year. With little to no government support to make up for the loss of business needed to maintain necessary restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19, restaurants and bars across the city are shutting their doors for good. And of course those most impacted in all of this are restaurant workers.
Today we’ll be talking with Natalia, Paul and Crystal, comrades from here in New York City and across the country in Minneapolis and Austin who are organizing with the Restaurant Organizing Project, and effort to organize restaurant workers for relief and power on the job during COVID-19 and beyond. We’ll talk about the many labor issues that existed for restaurant workers before COVID, how the pandemic has exacerbated those struggles while creating new ones, and how workers are fighting back.
Follow the Restaurant Organizing Project at twitter.com/@restaurantproj or visit labor.dsausa.org/restaurants to learn more about how you can get involved!
Space Coast DSA
Space Coast DSA (SCDSA) Organizing Committee (OC) was originally formed in 2017 on the growing wave of interest in socialism nationwide. After two years we formally adopted a set of Bylaws and in 2019 were formally recognized as an official chapter. We engage in a number of projects as a chapter from protests and tabling events to mutual aid programs and political campaigns. If you’re interested in these endeavours or just furthering your ideological education, all are welcome in our spaces member or not.
North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America Denounces Police Repression in Bergen County, Calls to Defund the Police
December 14
HACKENSACK, NJ — This weekend in Hackensack, protesters gathered in support of the hunger strikers detained by ICE inside the Bergen County Jail, as they have throughout the month the strike has lasted. These peaceful protesters were met with violence by a militarized police force. The excessive militarization of local police to suppress peaceful dissent, the racialized terror and violence they inflict, and the role they play in facilitating the ICE detention and deportation apparatus, all show why we need to defund the police.
Hunger strikers protesting their detention by ICE are routinely retaliated against and lied about by officials, and such retaliation has been extended to the solidarity demonstrators. While the Bergen County sheriff spins false stories about the protestors, as has Hudson County executive Tom DeGise about protests outside his home for the renewed ICE contract, North Jersey DSA rejects these fraudulent narratives. Our members have been on the ground in Hackensack, Jersey City, and everywhere ICE is protested in North Jersey, and we can attest: these actions have been peaceful and led by our own communities.
“This is the kind of movement building that is sending a powerful message to our communities on how we can stop the atrocities of ICE. As an Ecuadorian immigrant who has had family members detained because of their immigration status, I was inspired to see an area I have driven by numerous times growing up — to visit my mom at work a few blocks away, take the bus at the nearby station to go to work, buy groceries and eat with family– become a space of solidarity and strength in a way that I have never seen before, it’s moving.” reflected NNJ DSA co-chair Jorge Maldonado.
Yet when people came out in peaceful solidarity with the hunger strikers at the Bergen county jail, they were met with an outsized number of police in riot gear ready to use violence without hesitation. The violence enacted by the Bergen County police was in stark contrast to the peaceful protest and makes it very clear who and what the police serve to protect.
Bergen County has revealed that protecting profits made from incarcerating undocumented people in terrible conditions supersedes basic human rights. Bergen County and its police force have demonstrated that the rights of citizens and attempts at dissent will be forcibly quashed. It is a textbook study in police existing to serve corporate interests over human rights, in this case prioritizing ICE contracts whose primary purposes are to perpetuate the bloated correctional infrastructure in Bergen, Hudson, and Essex counties. That’s why we need to reallocate their funds to public needs as in schools, housing, jobs and ensuring that not a single human being goes hungry.
North Jersey DSA demands that we use the budgets of the police to enrich the people, not the interests of capital. New Jersey needs to end its ICE contracts and all ICE collaboration, and also defund the police.
Comrades like Ridgewood for Black Liberation, who have done amazing work organizing in Bergen County, have met this violence with peace, and we applaud their work. We stand with all people opposing ICE inside and outside ICE detention.
In solidarity,
NNJ DSA
The post North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America Denounces Police Repression in Bergen County, Calls to Defund the Police first appeared on North NJ DSA.
We Demand a People’s Bailout
When the capitalist media finally pronounced the resounding defeat of fascist Donald Trump, workers around the world breathed a sigh of relief – but only for a moment. Millions continue to suffer through the COVID crisis despite the changing leadership. Workers face mass evictions and unemployment, police repression, and intensifying climate change. The working class must demand that Biden and Harris make real change and break from the neoliberal status quo that brought us Trump and his neofascist movement in the first place.
If the US government can afford to bail out corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in support, it can afford to bail out the working class. We demand COVID relief now in the form of a $15/hr minimum wage and $2000 monthly survival checks. We demand a safe, livable planet for all, and a Green Jobs Guarantee that puts millions of people to work building the green infrastructure necessary to halt climate change and achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030. We demand the passage of the Emergency Healthcare Guarantee Act and a Medicare For All single-payer healthcare system that guarantees healthcare as a right, not a privilege. We demand a People’s Bailout!
In order to win the COVID relief we deserve, we must overpower the billionaire class. We, the Metro Atlanta DSA, know that this struggle must begin with the immediate defeat of the Republican candidates in the January 5th runoff elections. Control of the US Senate hinges on Georgia, and a Republican-held Senate would be a massive barrier to passing even the most modest reforms. We recommend voting against all Republican candidates on the ballot, in order to make progress possible. However, we do not endorse or support any candidates running in the election. If the Republicans lose the election, our next immediate task will be campaigning against the incoming neoliberal capitalist senators to pass real COVID relief for workers.
Throughout this election cycle, we are organizing to combat racist voter suppression, and to help working Georgians cast their votes in the runoff elections. We are holding socially distanced canvasses and lit drops every weekend, making phone calls and sending texts to voters, and raising awareness about the January 5th election while building support for key socialist issues such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a living wage.
If you would like to get involved in our campaign, please join DSA, join our chapter, and check our calendar for upcoming events. We are a volunteer-led organization and we rely on dues and donations from working people to fund our activities. Please consider donating to support our campaign. You can email jan5runoffs@madsa.ga for more information.
Workers will fight for the dignity we deserve. Workers will win. Solidarity.