Rent Control in the Time of Crisis
Healthcare at the Intersection
Middle Tennessee DSA Demands No Police at Pride
It was illegal to be queer in 1969. Homosexuals – as we were all called then – were labeled dangerous and subversive deviants. We were tracked and surveilled by the FBI, considered security risks by the national security apparatus, and rounded up and driven out of cities and into ghettos. Queer spaces were regularly raided by the police; their arrestees humiliated, brutalized, and even tortured. Many of our people lived in abject poverty, especially those who did not conform to the narrow gender constructs of a hostile society.
This was America on June 28, 1969, when ten police officers entered a bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn with the intent to arrest anyone suspected of “deviancy.” The patrons of Stonewall were divided along perceived gender lines. Cross-dressers, a dated term which included what we now call drag queens and transgender individuals, were separated from the rest and forced to expose themselves to police officers. Women in butch clothing were groped and violated under the guise of frisking; a common practice, as wearing an insufficient number of feminine items of clothing was considered a crime. Anyone found to be in violation of rigid gender norms was arrested on the spot.
When the arrestees refused to cooperate, they were brutalized. When one woman protested her treatment, she was beaten over the head with a baton. As outrage grew among the crowd gathering to witness this injustice, what began as a routine crackdown quickly escalated to two days of violent resistance we now call the Stonewall Riots. It is this event we commemorate every year with the celebration of Pride.
Standing on the shoulders of generations before it, Stonewall marked the beginning of the modern struggle for LGBTQ+ equality and, ultimately, liberation. Though Obergefell v Hodges opened the door to an unprecedented era of queer rights and visibility, reactionary efforts to erase these victories have grown just as pronounced. From a ban on transgender people in the military, to a multitude of religiously justified discrimination bills, to homegrown attempts to roll back marriage rights, all under the watch of an increasingly conservative judicial system, we stand to lose everything we have fought so hard to win.
At every stage of this ongoing struggle, the police, as the sanctioned enforcers of the state, have been our opposition and our oppressors. Indeed, it will be the police who drag us out of bathrooms and business places in shackles, who will harass us when our name or gender markers don’t match our “biological sex,” who will drive us into ghettos when we can’t find work. Why, then, are the police permitted a place at the 50th anniversary of the riot that birthed our movement?
The Nashville Metropolitan Police Department has ridiculed transgender members of our community; fought viciously against community oversight voted by a majority of our city; targets, oppresses, and murders black and brown people; and works in direct cooperation with ICE to tear families apart. We refuse to welcome our oppressors at a table ostensibly set to celebrate our hard-won and still-besieged liberties. It is therefore, in the spirit of the Stonewall Riots that we, the undersigned members of the Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America, call for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s booth to be disinvited and summarily ejected from Nashville Pride.
Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America Queer Working Group
Ca$h for Socialism - How and Why?
Media in Late-Capitalism
The media industry is in peril, but this is felt most acutely for exploited workers and for the audience who are left wanting for real journalism and genuince content. In this show, we talk with @hunterboone, @jamie_elizabeth (from @the_antifada) about the current problems in the media industry, unionization efforts, and the capitalist contradictions in media/journalism.
Buffalo NNAF Bowl-A-Thon
Donate Here: New York Abortion Access Fund
Saturday, April 6th, 2019
2:00 to 4:00 pm
Classic Lanes
1840 Military Rd
Buffalo, NY 14217
We’re lacing up our bowling shoes and getting to work! Help us to #FundAbortionBuildPower. Your participation could be the difference between someone getting the abortion they need, and being forced to go without.
Send a message that you believe we all should be able to access abortion no matter how much money we make or where we live. Join us on April 6th to bowl for abortion access!
Avoiding Green New Capitalism
MoCo DSA Calls For a Moral Minimum Wage for All Maryland Workers
Montgomery County DSA
MoCo DSA Calls For a Moral Minimum Wage for All Maryland Workers
March 19, 2019
(SILVER SPRING, MD) — The Steering Committee of the Montgomery County Democratic Socialists of America released the following statement today: “While we are pleased to see that the statewide minimum wage for most Maryland workers will likely increase soon, we are dismayed with the exemptions and delays contained in the bills passed by both houses of the Maryland General Assembly.
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator determines that a single adult in Montgomery County needs to be paid at least $25.67/hour to afford housing, food, health care, transportation, and other basic needs. A family of two adults and two children needs to earn a combined wage of at least $50.22/hour. Yet, our Governor and General Assembly seem content to allow numerous Marylanders to live in poverty while their employers profit off of their underpaid labor.
The version of the bill passed by the House of Delegates won’t fully implement a $15/hour minimum wage until 2025, and the Senate version won’t fully implement $15/hour for smaller businesses, which make up the majority of Maryland companies, until 2028. Both versions will exempt increasing the minimum wage of tipped workers and agricultural workers — allowing restaurants, for instance, to pay tipped workers as little as $3.63/hour. Therefore, many Maryland workers wouldn’t be paid $15/hour for nine more years, and many others wouldn’t see their wages increase at all.
Perhaps most egregiously, the General Assembly stripped provisions from the original bill that tied the minimum wage to inflation, so that it would automatically increase as the costs of food, housing, and other necessities increase. By not indexing the minimum wage to inflation, the General Assembly has ensured that working-class Marylanders will be forced to fight this same battle again and again as the value of $15 decreases with inflation.
Governor Larry Hogan says he will only support raising the minimum wage to $12.10/hour, and only if our state’s neighbors also increase their minimum wages. When the costs of food and rent and consumer goods increase but workers’ wages do not, the capitalist class is earning more money but is not passing any of its increased profits on to workers. So when we delay increasing the minimum wage for years, this means we are transferring a staggering amount of wealth from workers to the capitalist class.
“We call upon the Maryland General Assembly and the Governor to sign into law a moral minimum wage — one that will increase as inflation increases, and one that pays all workers in Maryland the wages they need to provide housing, food, transportation, child care, and their families’ other basic needs.”
The post MoCo DSA Calls For a Moral Minimum Wage for All Maryland Workers appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.
Gimme a Brake: Brake Light Clinic
Saturday, May 4, 2019
10 am – 3 pm
SEIU/1199 Main St. Office
2421 Main St, Buffalo, New York 14214
Come on out and have volunteers from Buffalo DSA change your brake light for FREE! Free coffee, doughnuts and legal advice while you wait.
This is our 4th Brake Light Clinic and each light replaced reduces the likelihood of interaction with the police.
