Join us for our annual chapter convention!
Mark your calendars!
Our next chapter meeting is Saturday, July 20th at 10am. It will be an hybrid meeting, you can attend in-person at the Ventura Diversity Collective or online via Zoom.
This meeting will serve as our annual chapter convention. If you would like to vote in, or, volunteer for a chapter leadership position please RSVP!
This year we face an unprecedented challenge. Our chapter’s steering committee is currently at a critical juncture. We are in urgent need of new leadership. As of now, only two members are committed to continuing on the committee. Without additional volunteers to step up and take on leadership roles, we face the very real possibility of having to dismantle our chapter. The work we do is vital. Our efforts to promote social justice, economic equality, and democratic socialism in Ventura County depend on a strong, active steering committee. Your passion, ideas, and dedication are what drive our movement forward. Without a full committee, we cannot maintain the momentum necessary to achieve our goals. We are calling on you, our members, to consider taking a leadership role in the steering committee. Your involvement is crucial. By stepping up, you will help ensure that our chapter remains a vibrant and effective force for change in our community.
DSA Statement on 2024 Election: Drop Out Biden
Last night’s debate made clear what DSA and the hundreds of thousands of voters who supported Uncommitted in the primaries have been saying for months: Biden must drop out.
Biden was elected in 2020 because young people, people of color, and the working class rejected Donald Trump’s far-right politics. It was these voters who prevented a second Trump term with the highest turnout in an election in decades.
Yesterday, these same voters witnessed a man who is unfit to lead. During the debate, both candidates repeatedly fought to appear the most pro-cop, pro-war, and anti-immigration, and ignored questions on issues such as childcare, racial justice, and democracy. Even before this debate, Biden’s support for genocide in Gaza, his enactment of racist immigration policy, and his failure to improve the livelihoods of the working class as millions of Americans continue to struggle economically have made him a pariah to the base that carried him to office.
If Biden is the nominee in November, Trump will be president in January, and corporate Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.
Make no mistake, a return of Trump would be disastrous for the working class here and abroad. Democratic Party elites have cynically coronated an eighty-two-year-old who is aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide. This is not the candidate for the moment to defeat Trump, prevent the rise of fascism, and fight for democracy in America. The thousands of people who were essential to Biden’s victory in 2020 and turning out the vote have been alienated by the horrors in Gaza and Biden’s complicity in them. Biden must be replaced by a candidate who will stop the genocide in Gaza and will stand with the people of Palestine, who will fight for working class people, and who can stand up with the masses against both fascism and the capitalist class.
In this election, your vote is between Democrats and Republicans. But you have another choice: to fight back. Join a working class movement that can take on both the far right and the centrist status quo Democrats. Join us to fight against fascism and For Our Rights: In 2024, Workers Deserve More!
Our political system was not built for us; it was built to hoard wealth and power for the ruling class, which has led to the situation we’re in today. We are fighting for a real democracy that belongs to the people, for an economy that meets the needs of the working class rather than the rich, and for an end to the United States empire. Both parties of our ruling class support genocide. Only a party of the working class can stop them. DSA’s For Our Rights program declares our mission to “unite workers into a powerful political movement to win the battle for democracy,” overthrowing our ruling class and building a new, democratic system of government meant to serve the people rather than the rich. Workers deserve better, and if we fight, we can win.
Tell the Democratic Party leadership that Biden must step aside!
And join DSA today to fight for a better world, an end to war and genocide, and the future that we all want.
The post DSA Statement on 2024 Election: Drop Out Biden appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Fighting for Our Democratic Socialist Soul in Coalition Work
By all accounts, Maryland DSA chapters helped to build Listen to Maryland into one of the strongest uncommitted campaigns in the United States to date — denying Joe Biden more than 60,000 primary votes to demand an end to the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza. For DSA, it was both an operational and strategic victory — all four Maryland chapters coordinated at the closest level they ever have and tens of thousands of people received literature that brought many new members into our organization. However, despite these successes, Maryland’s campaign and ultimately the broader uncommitted movement, is a textbook example of DSA working as a junior coalition partner within a liberal framework: DSA contested an important battle in Maryland, and did commendably, but we also bore witness to the ways in which coalitional organizing can constrain socialists from leading with our political vision.
From Michigan to Maryland
Shortly after the inspiring results of the Listen to Michigan uncommitted campaign in their state primary in February, members of Greater Baltimore DSA began having conversations about what an uncommitted campaign might look like in our state. Maryland’s primary was late, and we had time to lay the groundwork for a more extensive field campaign than existed in Michigan, where organizers only had a few weeks to contact voters. Greater Baltimore DSA reached out to chapter leadership from the other DSA chapters in Maryland (Metro DC, Frederick, and Southern Maryland) about what it would look like for our locals to work collaboratively on a state-wide campaign.
Our chapters eventually joined a wider coalition called Listen to Maryland that Unity Lab PAC, a prominent Muslim civil rights-focused electoral group, organized and led. The coalition also featured the respective electoral arms of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, Our Revolution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and other local progressive organizations.
With DSA’s help, Listen to Maryland’s primary goal was to push voters to choose “uncommitted” for President. When Maryland went to the polls on May 14 for the Democratic primary, more than 64,000 voters, or 9.8% of the primary electorate responded to our call. In Baltimore City, uncommitted received 14% of the vote, and more than 18% from voters who cast ballots on Election Day, one of the strongest showings for an uncommitted option in any black-majority municipality in the nation, including Detroit (9%), where the uncommitted movement first originated.
Reflections and Lessons
By most metrics, Maryland’s uncommitted campaign was a relative electoral success. Over the course of the campaign, we raised $25,000 in grassroots donations from individual donors, and directly contacted more than 500,000 voters. DSA led the campaign’s field program, knocking on over 35,000 doors and reaching thousands more through public canvassing operations at the many public festivals and farmers markets that dot the state in the month of May. More impressively, we managed to do that on a shoestring budget of just a couple thousand dollars allocated to us for printing costs. Our later financial analysis revealed that we had one of the most extensive field programs of any uncommitted campaign in the country despite spending far less money than several peer campaigns.
The campaign has also provided a foundation for expanding our Greater Baltimore DSA’s Palestine solidarity work. In the aftermath of the campaign, Greater Baltimore DSA is launching its local No Appetite for Apartheid initiative to press local businesses to take pledges to boycott Israeli products. We have activated many people we brought into DSA’s orbit through our Listen to Maryland canvassing. For example, we directed 40 unique volunteers in our chapter, many of whom are new to DSA and signed up over the course of the campaign.
Though the campaign was an important step forward for Palestine solidarity organizing in Maryland, several issues emerged in the coalition that conflicted with the political work DSA wanted to model with the campaign. In particular, the need to defer to the coalition limited our responsiveness and the militancy of our political message.
First, we had delayed announcing our uncommitted campaign, because we wanted the campaign to be led and shaped by Muslim and Arab voices. Rather than issuing a public statement and beginning to set up field operations once we had finalized our cross-chapter coordination, we waited several weeks for other organizations to commit to a statewide uncommitted campaign.
Once the Listen to Maryland coalition finally organized, Unity Lab PAC staff often had primary discretion over the coalition’s branding, social media strategy, and messaging, because a lack of structure within the coalition often prevented conflicts from being resolved, leading to inaction. The coalition’s 22-person steering committee included one member of Metro DC DSA as well as three members of Greater Baltimore DSA (including myself) and met to plan once a week. However, the coalition lacked an agreed upon process for taking votes internally and resolving areas of disagreement. Even when differences were spoken, they often defaulted to inaction in an effort to avoid conflict. For example, some coalition leaders felt that we should avoid using the word “genocide” in our promotional materials, as this might turn off certain segments of the liberal electorate, leading to conflicting messaging. “Genocide” was not used on our campaign literature or in our phonebanking script, though it was used in a victory lap post put out by the coalition the day after the primary.
Thanks to the dedication of the organizers, volunteers, and donors behind Uncommitted Maryland, we were able to mobilize 10.4%, or 47.3K, voters to vote #uncommitted.@POTUS, we are just getting started. Stop arming Israel and end this barbaric genocide now.
— Vote Uncommitted Maryland (@ListenToMD) May 16, 2024
Watch this space. pic.twitter.com/b9ONRhTpxt
Disagreements over messaging, even when minor, were often symptoms of greater differences in our organizations’ orientations towards the Democratic Party within the coalition. The PAC staff’s messaging placed a strong emphasis on touting that uncommitted activists were “longtime Democrats”, and that there was a “chasm between Democratic leadership and its voters.” In contrast, my own analysis as a socialist considers that the chasm overwhelmingly exists between the Democratic Party itself and the working class. As one of the communications leads for the coalition, I rejected requests to publish a campaign video on my personal social media accounts because of a line in the script that read “America cannot afford another four years of Donald Trump”.
That said, I do not want to overstate these political differences or place any blame on these organizations for having different analyses from my own. Certainly, the coalition was united in its demand for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US funding for Israel’s apartheid regime — but, led by Democratic Party activists and members of Democratic interest groups, the coalition often shied away from rhetoric that more aggressively charged Biden and his party with the blame for the Gaza genocide, and inevitably ran on a weaker ideological message.
What is relevant and actionable is how we as DSA representatives within the coalition did not make enough effort to maintain our political independence in our messaging and orientation towards our base and the broader electorate. On the whole, DSA was timid and hyperconscious of what it means to be a primarily white organization on a campaign we all agreed needed to be led by organizers that were directly impacted by the genocide in Gaza. While this was an important consideration, we weren’t conscious enough of meeting the needs of the moment and adapting our orientation towards our coalition partners when the conditions required it.
Roots of Our Reluctance
Our fear of leading with our politics was a direct consequence of our colossal failure to produce Muslim and Arab leaders from within DSA that could be protagonistic political leaders for the campaign. Identifying this failing is not to say we did not have Muslim and Arab leaders already. The Metro DC comrade in coalition leadership is a member of Maryland2Palestine. One of the members of Greater Baltimore DSA’s Steering Committee is a Muslim public school teacher and was one of our field leads and played a significant role in the operations of the campaign. I am part Iranian. However, the rest of our representatives in coalition leadership were not Muslim or Arab. Unlike Connecticut DSA, which recruited young Muslim grassroots leaders and used the phrase “No to Genocide Joe” in their materials, our inability to recruit Muslim leaders pushed us into a reactive, supporting role in the coalition rather than a leading one.
The polls are OPEN for the Connecticut Democratic Presidential Primary! Join us and #VoteUncommittedCT to send a message to Joe Biden: we will NOT be complicit in Israel's genocide
— Connecticut DSApic.twitter.com/0clLrVZ9s9
(@ConnecticutDSA) April 2, 2024
(@ConnecticutDSA) We were right to be careful not to speak over others, but, in my view, missed the mark on hashing out what asserting our politics looks like and conceded ground to coalition leaders on many of these areas of ideological disagreement rather than arguing for our positions.
Our failure to develop Muslim political organizers of our own also made it more difficult to navigate the differences between civil rights NGOs like CAIR or Justice For All and grassroots organizations like Maryland2Palestine, the latter of which largely aligned with our more forceful positions and were supportive of the uncommitted campaign but were not significantly involved in steering the campaign’s direction. We could have been a stronger voice and connecting force for these positions that are a part of the wider conversation but were not well-represented within the coalition. We also did not address the contradictions presented by following the lead of Muslim-led NGOs in our Palestine messaging, but not elsewhere. CAIR has supported book bans in Maryland schools, a repeated point of controversy within the coalition. We would have benefited from having an understanding of how and when we should have disagreed with our coalition partners from the beginning, which would have also helped us maintain our political integrity and our ability to advocate for our positions.
We also need to consider how to maintain our commitment to democratic and member-led decision-making in coalitions with nonprofits and NGOs that are not governed by the same internal, member-led democracy that we know in DSA. These coalitions make it difficult to employ tactics and political messaging that advance the socialist struggle, because these forces operate within the same liberal ecosystem that supports the Democratic Party and are often beholden to the same capitalist interests. As socialists, we seek to upset that ecosystem entirely.
Uncommitted campaigns have taken many different forms across the country. In some states, like in New Jersey and Connecticut, it has been led, shaped, and directed by DSA and socialist forces. In Maryland and many other states, a broader coalition between DSA and liberal forces has taken on the uncommitted banner. In states which fall into the latter camp, uncommitted seems to have taken on a broader tactic of aiming to pressure the Biden Administration into supporting the demands of the anti-war movement in order to shore up support with the Democratic base going into the general election. This is best exemplified by former congressman Andy Levin, who has said “I feel like [uncommitted] is existential for Joe Biden’s political survival.” That vision deviates from put forward by DSA — No Money for Massacres; No Support for Genocide.
Disaffected Democrats may certainly be a segment of the electorate most naturally attracted to the uncommitted campaign and its immediate policy demands. However, if DSA intends to carry forward the uncommitted banner through the remainder of the primary calendar and beyond in order to build a political movement in firm opposition to the establishment’s war machine, we must be ready to confront the reality that these voters may not be the only demographic we need to win over — and they may even present certain challenges to our vision of Palestinian liberation in our lifetimes.
The post Fighting for Our Democratic Socialist Soul in Coalition Work appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Milwaukee DSA Stands with Public School Board Amid Privatizers’ Recall Stunt
For immediate release
Jun. 20, 2024
The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) opposes the efforts to recall members of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors as privatizers seek to further undermine the public school system.
The recall effort comes as several board members, including DSA-endorsed member Missy Zombor, supported necessary funding measures to continue vital school services despite pressures from the Republican-led state legislature to further cut education funding.
“This is a political game, and it is the city’s families and public educators who will lose: Milwaukee DSA recognizes this recall as an attempt by school privatizers to further undermine the public education system in Milwaukee and beyond, turning that system into a profit-making venture instead of a necessary hub for quality learning,” Milwaukee DSA Co-Chair Pamela Westphal said. “Now more than ever, the children of Milwaukee need the social and educational benefits of public education to enrich their lives, we must stand up and fight back against privatizers who are trying to break those social bonds.”
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has already threatened to withhold millions in state funding from Milwaukee’s students over delayed financial reports from 2023, leading to the resignation of the district’s superintendent and comptroller.
“Some of the biggest failures of the United States’ domestic policies of the past 50 years have involved selling off our public services to those seeking to exploit the working class for profit. Milwaukee DSA recognizes this as an avenue for harm, not growth,” Milwaukee DSA Communications Officer Greg Brown said. “People in Milwaukee who want to see better education outcomes in our community should focus on building a robust public system with proper funding and public control instead of further stripping that system of its resources for privatization and profit, a common goal of the leaders of this recall effort.”
Milwaukee DSA publicly endorsed Zombor in her 2023 election and is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, just society and sustainable environment.
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Setting A Larger Table | Live Panel
Statement Re: COS DSA Supports Restorative Justice & Survivors of Abuse
We are issuing this statement as a chapter to address recent events and the misinformation that have permeated the local community leading to rifts among various organizations. WARNING: This statement concerns past incidents of sexual assault and abuse.
For years, rumors have circulated accusing both Colorado Springs DSA and the Chinook Center of being apologists and defenders of people who have committed sexual assault. Not only is this blatantly untrue, but it is a misrepresentation of the core situation that led to these rumors. That being said, we empathize with those who have encountered these rumors and we understand why people have reacted strongly to the false allegations. We wish to acknowledge that this spread of misinformation has itself been a source of great harm. It has caused unnecessary pain to our members, other Chinook member organizations, and the community at large. This pain has especially been felt by the many survivors of abuse within these circles who have to encounter this false information. We are coming forward with this statement to put a stop to this harmful cycle of misrepresentation and manipulation of public perception.
In order to be thorough, transparent, and direct, we will recount the situation as it was observed by people directly involved and who were also directly impacted/victimized by the core situation.
WARNING: Non-detailed mentions of sexual assault and abuse. During the summer of 2020, Chinook Center leadership was made aware of allegations of sexual assault and abuse of Chinook community members by an individual named Patrick. This individual had been involved in various movement spaces, but upon these allegations of assault and abuse, he was kicked out of the Chinook community and clearly told he was not welcome at Chinook. SW, who is a member of the Chinook executive team, made an inappropriate comment on Facebook questioning why the victims didn’t go to the cops. He meant to ask, as he later explained, whether he and others should pursue some sort of vigilante justice against Patrick, seeing as the police hadn't been involved. While these comments were not questioning the validity of the allegations, they still had a harmful impact on survivors within the Chinook community and concerns about SW’s comments were raised to Chinook leadership. SW made additional comments in numerous places that were similarly upsetting and these comments were also brought forth to be addressed.
In response to these concerns, Chinook leadership held a community trial where SW was confronted by the concerned community members. The result of the community trial was a restorative justice process with SW, including a meeting with survivors from within the Chinook community. He has taken full accountability for his comments and understands the ways they could be misinterpreted and hurtful. The survivors of Patrick’s abuse and other survivors impacted by SW’s comments were satisfied with the outcome of SW’s restorative justice process and atonement.
A former Chinook community member who was not a victim of Patrick’s felt unsatisfied by the community’s response and left, saying that Chinook (and its member organizations, including Colorado Springs DSA) is full of rape apologists. The rumors since then have led to the serious misunderstanding that this community member was a victim of SW, when the reality is that SW was held accountable for writing upsetting Facebook comments, and not any form of abuse. It is not the position of Colorado Springs DSA to defend or attack the actions or reputation of any individual within this situation, but it is our position to stand by the community process of accountability, restorative justice, and the outcome of that process.
Most of our members were neither involved in nor aware of these events, since they occurred in the early days of the Chinook Center when our chapter was still in its early stages and very small. While most of us cannot speak directly on the described events, we have been debriefed by those COS DSA members who were present throughout this process, including some who were directly impacted and harmed. Those harmed were satisfied with the resolution of this situation and we have followed their lead in standing by community-led justice and accountability work.
As an abolitionist feminist organization, Colorado Springs DSA firmly roots our values in supporting survivors and following their lead in matters of community justice. We therefore stand by the results of the restorative justice process. Like the Chinook Center, Colorado Springs DSA is committed to building community spaces that move away from carceral systems. Being abolitionists means that we reject the logic of punishment and disposability and commit ourselves to the challenging work of repairing relationships when harm has been done. There is no established framework for transformative justice and many in the community are not familiar with the principles of abolition. When punishment and incarceration are the accepted norm for dealing with situations of harm, it can be difficult for people to understand what justice and accountability look like within abolitionist communities.
In adherence with the principles of abolition, Colorado Springs DSA has honored the wishes of the survivors who experienced harm by accepting the outcome of the Chinook Center’s accountability process. Furthermore, we will always believe survivors who come forward with allegations of abuse or violence and are committed to investigating any new allegations. Should situations ever arise where accountability is needed, Colorado Springs DSA will be an active partner in helping to build and refine the community’s process.
So, to be clear, we will directly address the false accusations that have arisen from this hurtful situation:
SW is not the alleged perpetrator of sexual assault in this situation.
The Chinook Center did not skirt accountability for the actions that SW did engage in.
Justice and accountability were pursued to the satisfaction of those who were victimized by Patrick and who were hurt by the comments of SW, and they considered the situation resolved via community accountability and restorative justice. As an abolitionist organization, we stand by these non-carceral forms of community justice.
The person who was unsatisfied by the outcome of this process was not a victim of the situation, but was a bystander who has been misrepresenting the facts and perpetuating false allegations against Chinook and SW in spite of the survivors’ objections. Instead of following the lead of the survivors and respecting their wishes for the situation to be laid to rest, the rumors have continued to be spread throughout the leftist community in Colorado Springs. The resulting rumor mill has made the abuse survivors targets of community shame and blame, which has perpetuated their revictimization.
Although the members of the broader community have understandably reacted to the false information with anger and outrage, they have not been given the true facts. Instead, their good intentions have been manipulated and weaponized in ways that have created a rift in the leftist community. To be clear, we are not assuming the intent behind these rumors, but we must address the impacts of this situation regardless of intent. These rifts and the misinformation that fuels them make all of us on the left vulnerable to state attacks. We cannot and will not make accusations, but we will note that the weaponization of misinformation and the deepening of division have been a known tactic of state oppression. The state has repeatedly utilized covert interference and infiltration of leftist communities to sow mistrust and hostility between individuals and organizations. As an organization that has been targeted by CSPD and the FBI with surveillance and infiltration, we feel we must sound the alarm on circumstances that make all of us on the left vulnerable to manipulation and security breaches. This statement is not only a rebuttal of individual actions, but a warning against allowing the state to tear our community apart and thus dilute our organizing power. Our greatest defense is the trust we can build amongst one another, and we are taking this step towards building and repairing trust by being fully transparent about our observations and our positions on the circumstances of our community’s past. However, more repair work is needed within the community to build upon our initial step forward and to heal the harmful impacts of this misinformation and the backlash that has followed.
Every time these rumors recirculate, it is extremely distressing to the survivors of the original situation and is revictimizing them through retraumatization. This in itself is a huge injustice. Colorado Springs DSA and other Chinook organizations have also been regarded as guilty by association, and the backlash, as seen most recently, has been retraumatizing and harmful to abuse survivors within our orgs – including those who were never involved in the initial situation. They continue to be impacted by the hostility directed towards us and the defamation of our organizations. To limit future retraumatization, sources including this statement will be compiled into a physical binder at the Chinook Center. The binder will include resources addressing this situation, the Chinook Center’s policies surrounding restorative justice and community support, and other resources to continue building upon the work our organizations have already been doing.
We prefer to presume innocence of intent by those in the leftist community in COS who have been involved in perpetuating this false information, but which has fueled the hostility against our orgs and individual members. However, if these allegations continue and if our orgs and members continue to be targets of character assassination, we will regard these actions as willful malintent moving forward. These actions would go beyond defamation and would constitute the perpetuation of harm and injustice towards those who were victimized by the original situation, and the many survivors in our community who want peace and restoration.
Colorado Springs DSA also wants to reaffirm our commitment to standing by survivors of violence and abuse. Our leadership committee is predominantly composed of female and nonbinary persons who hold queer, BIPOC, and survivor identities. We will always start by believing survivors who come forward with allegations of abuse or violence and are fully committed to investigating any new allegations that should ever arise. We know that we keep us safe and we are fully committed to making sure that our members and the broader community have a safe and affirming environment to organize for our collective liberation. We believe that the only way to achieve liberation and build a successful revolutionary movement is to center intersectionality and the dismantling of heteropatriarchy and white supremacy within our anti-oppressive work. We recognize that abusive power dynamics and misogyny have a long legacy within leftist communities, and we are vigilant in addressing these cultures and helping our people to do better.
We hope that by coming forward, we can begin to bring about healing in the community and repair the damage that has been done. Our chapter and individual members have suffered enormous reputational damage through this latest resurgence of the old rumors, and we are taking this first step towards laying the foundation for repair, but we cannot do it on our own. We know that we are stronger together, and we hope that those who have received the false information in the community can approach us in dialogue and restoration.
Colorado Springs DSA
The Communist Horizon of Social Housing
By Nick P.
The term “social housing” has gained traction on the US Left today. Prominent political currents in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have become more comfortable using the term to gesture vaguely at some more just allocation of housing than what currently exists. For example, DSA’s “Building for Power” (B4P) campaign encourages DSA chapters to “…work with tenants and/or tenant unions as well as building trades unions to retrofit social or other tenant housing,” operating under the assumption that social housing is an existing thing that can be improved upon.
Notably, the Housing Justice for All coalition in New York state lists only two examples of such “social housing.” B4P then suggests that DSA chapters “…can work with building trades unions […] on building projects that create a state-owned developer corporation to build green social housing.” Setting aside whether this “builds power,” one is compelled to ask what exactly is meant by “green social housing?” As socialists and communists, do we distinguish between social housing and “green” social housing, being only in favor of the latter? We appear to be in a conceptual muddle.
Not only does “social housing” get trotted out by liberal organizations to justify minimally reformist changes to housing, but fundamentally, there is no proposed theory of how we ought to properly socialize housing. That is, there is a failure to grapple with capitalism as the root cause of the misallocation of housing. Communists should therefore ask themselves: how are we to understand social housing?
To begin, we must ask: what is housing? Housing is first a home; a necessity for the production and reproduction of dignified human life – in other words, the shelter provided by housing exists first and foremost as a use-value. But second, housing is a relation between a person and society. Housing is where every interaction between individuals and society begins and ends. Capitalism distorts this relationship first through enclosure – by depriving non-landowners from the use of land (as a home or for subsistence) – and second through the extraction of rent – by subjecting land and its use to the imperatives of the market, including improvement, surplus value, profit, etc. Capitalism thereby transforms housing into a commodity, realizing its exchange-value.
Thus we can see most acutely under capitalism the relationship between housing and society: the inadequate distribution (or artificial scarcity) of housing means that some (those with access to housing) can participate in and contribute to capitalist society, while those that are forcibly excluded from housing (often under the auspices of “market logic”) are left to languish in misery. The capitalist allocation of housing impinges on the social value of individual humans and entire categories of people, racialized and otherwise. Thereby we can see how the unequal allocation of housing promotes the reproduction of capitalism as such.
The question, therefore, is how to change this relation, not only in a prefigurative way that anticipates the end of capitalism, but in a way that actively undermines the weaponization of land by capitalism against the dispossessed masses.
What, then, is social housing?
Let us be clear: social housing is a horizon, not a liberal-technocratic policy prescription. If housing under capitalism is exclusive, extractive, and monopolized, then a communist perspective on social housing should aim for the abolition of exclusivity, extraction, and monopolization in housing – and in society writ large.
This requires the reintroduction of a political imaginary and a set of political aims and methods to achieve them that follow from a rigorously applied ideological disposition. Social housing, thus conceived, is not a concession from the state or a means to “curtail the excesses” of capitalism, but an integral part of the “real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”
That is to say that social housing cannot be realized through piecemeal, reformist and opportunistic strategies of legislative and electoral meandering, but only through the mass organization of the dispossessed, proletarian class. In what follows, we elaborate on a communist perspective of social housing.
Social housing must first be a redistribution of land from landowners to the landless. This means that social housing cannot be passive; it cannot simply make housing “available” and “affordable” (One must ask: available to whom? Affordable by what standard?), though it must be both of these things. Social housing must be active – it must expropriate the basis of all life on earth (land) from the clutches of capitalism and deliver it straight into the hands of the dispossessed, through which it may be sustained and rejuvenated. Capitalism requires the private ownership of land, upon which the very possibility of surplus value extraction is based. If any “social housing” does not dare to challenge this fundamental relation of the capitalist mode of production, then it is not worthy of the name. Furthermore, social housing must collectivize land ownership, not simply transfer a deed from private landowner to state landowner.
Second, social housing must be democratically controlled. By this we do not mean to trade in bourgeois, strictly pluralistic notions of democracy – instead we mean that social housing must authorize those who directly depend on the provision of the housing in question to decide the fate of their community. Social housing does not offer an equal seat at the table to developers, investors, or city councilors. Social housing prioritizes and makes real the collective will of tenants.
Third, social housing must guarantee livelihood, not simply a life. By this we mean that social housing cannot protect tenants from extractive and punitive rents alone, but must also protect tenants from exploitative wages and deteriorated conditions of life-making. Social housing must create the conditions for tenants, now in possession of the basic necessity for the reproduction of social life, to produce a wholly new economic arrangement.
In the long term, this must be the sublation of the wage labor relation – and by extension, capitalism. In the short term, this should mean the creation of communities that can be operated and sustained by the people that constitute them. By extension, social housing must be deeply ecological, maintaining the land for future generations and abolishing the “metabolic rift” that capitalism provokes between humans and nature. Furthermore, for social housing to promote livelihood, it cannot reproduce carceral relations between communities and the state. A heavily policed, state-owned apartment is not social housing.
Fourth, social housing must dismantle alienation and build community. A distinguishing quality of housing under capitalism is that of alienation – tenants, living next to one another, suffering the abuses of the same landlord, are made to feel alone and isolated. They leave their homes to suffer the same abuse and alienation in the workplace. Social housing must create the conditions for tenants to realize their collectivity both at home and in society at large. In this way, social housing should actualize the political subjectivity of the dispossessed. Social housing cannot be the same alienating tenements provided by capitalism with a stamp-of-approval from the state.
In sum, we understand social housing to exist in relation to the material conditions of society. Social housing cannot live up to its name if it is predicated on imperial resource extraction, the wage labor relation, the heavily-policed nation-state border, and so on.
That is, social housing cannot be fully realized under capitalism.
To the claim that “reforms may be made that improve housing conditions”, we reply: “Reform is not the goal of communists.” Our goal is the abolition of capitalism and the subsequent liberation of humanity. We will consider all paths to this goal, but the paths must be pursuant to this goal. We do not argue that reform is not important in the short-term, or that the changes brought by reform are meaningless to those subjugated by landlords and wage labor.
However, we maintain that reform is not sufficient to carry us down the path toward the goal of communism. We implore our comrades to consider social housing as a destination along this path, and resist the temptation of deviations when they come at the cost of our independent power.
What, then, will move us toward our goal? Nothing less than the mass organization of tenants, in the places where they live, fighting back against the depredations of landlords. If we want to achieve social housing, then our task should be clear: organize the tenant movement in whatever way possible. Knock doors in your neighborhood, talk to your neighbors, form tenant councils or associations, use your collective power to deprive landlords of the ability to dictate our lives.
Just as the social organization of production by capitalism can be viewed as its Achilles’ heel, so too can the social organization of housing – in buildings, apartment complexes, neighborhoods, and so on – be viewed as the basis for the transformation of one of the crucial linchpins of the social reproduction of capitalism. In the same way that transforming the mode of production would dissolve the basis of capitalist political economy, so too would the transformation of the mode of reproduction dissolve the basis of the capitalist allocation of housing. In the last instance, then, social housing is nothing less than the invention, through practical, social experimentation, of the basis for communist reproduction.
In this vein, we find much to agree with in the definition of social housing provided by the Alliance for Housing Justice. However, we must acknowledge that neither B4P, Housing Justice for All, nor the Alliance for Housing Justice, situate tenant organization – the only lever of collective power that can feasibly overturn the capitalist allocation of housing – as the vehicle for establishing social housing.
Communists should reflect on this fact, both insofar as it distinguishes us from our political contemporaries, and insofar as it orients our tactics and strategy. With the goal of dismantling capitalism and in its place erecting a more just, collective society based on the “free association of producers” (one might modify this: “…producers and tenants”), we should see tenant organization as indispensable and primary in a political organization with finite capacity such as DSA. Through this struggle, we shall create the conditions for social housing to flourish as the vehicle of communist social reproduction.
(Illustrations provided by Katy Slininger)
Caption: Rally to Defend Cargill Tenants Union in Putnam, CT
Defending Portland Association of Teachers from the criticism of their Palestine activism
In the months since October 7th many labor unions have struggled with how to speak out in solidarity with Palestinians, in the face of backlash from workplace management, within their rank and file, and from external critics. The pressure to stay silent is great and the consequences have included losing jobs, funding, and entire careers.
In a June 17th email to supporters, a day after being endorsed by the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), Jesse Cornett, City Council candidate in District 3, accused PAT of “hate speech” for using the phrase “from the river to the sea” at an event. PAT was already facing heavy backlash against a posted (and now-removed) curriculum on Palestine, which was the focus of numerous local news articles in the Oregonian, Willamette Week, and others. We strongly disagree with Candidate Cornett’s political position, and stand with Palestinians and PAT.
In the context used by the Portland Association of Teachers, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of other organizations and events, the phrase “from the river to the sea” has been used as a call for Palestinian self-determination and an end to decades of occupation and injustice. This phrase long precedes the events of the past eight months. Attempts to claim that the phrase is evidence of bigoted beliefs are either misinformed or made in bad faith. Not only does Cornett’s attack smear generations of Palestinians struggling under occupation, it erases the nearly 40,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. His reference to the right-wing-led censure of Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, as justification for his position is deeply cynical and offensive.
Portland DSA stands with the Portland Association of Teachers’ right to free speech and vehemently oppose any person or organization which tries to repress their speech, especially on this urgent issue of the genocide in Gaza. We will not ignore calls from our Jewish comrades in Jewish Voices for Peace, who have eloquently laid out their positions in this letter of support for PAT. We encourage you to read the entire letter and share it with others, especially those who may not be aware of the Jewish movement for peace. Portland DSA ultimately decided that since we are a multi-ethnic and secular/multi-faith organization that it would not be appropriate to undersign the JVP statement, which included phrasing such as, “As Jews, we believe that everyone has a right to be safe. And here we ask Jewish students and parents to make a distinction between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable.”
Portland DSA supports educators in asserting their political/moral obligation to contradict the one-sided, pro-Israeli perspective shared by the US government, mainstream media and news outlets, and a vast number of US institutions with financial ties resting on the success of Israel’s genocidal mission.
While the US spends billions of dollars on aid and weapons for Israel (over $12b this year alone) our public school students, parents and teachers are told that funding is not available for supplies, facilities, or fair wages. A major function of suppressing speech around Palestine is to obscure this contradiction and to distract us from the real reason that we can’t have appropriate funding for education: the greed of the capitalist class.
Those of us in the labor movement entered this fight not just to improve our working conditions, and the conditions of the people we serve, but to exercise our collective power over our work and what we make. The recent successes of organizing in the tech industry have resulted in remarkable successes with highly motivated yet un-unionized workers at Intel. Organizing alongside workers with our BDS and labor working groups, DSA played a crucial role in supporting those workers to pressure Intel to call off construction plans for a manufacturing plant in Israel. The labor movement does have the power to impact the events in Gaza, in spite of what capitalist education bureaucrats would like you to believe. Those of us on the left must make our positions public, to share in the work of solidarity and embolden others to do so in the process. It is our responsibility as socialists to stand firmly with teachers and support their right to teach and contextualize the historical and present conflict over land in Palestine through school curriculum, in whatever ways their members collectively deem appropriate.
We unequivocally support PAT in their internal process of developing their classroom materials and trust their experience and expertise as educators as they work to support and nurture students of all backgrounds in their classrooms, without the hostile scrutiny of the press, or politicians hoping to elevate their profile.
Politicians without clear platforms or policy ideas will do their best to create a “controversy” to generate press coverage, demonstrating a lack of political principles. These actions should indicate clearly to us how the candidate would behave once in office, and how they would, or would not, represent the people of Portland.
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-reporters-fired-pro-palestinian-remarks-1837834
Agitating for Liberation: CT DSA’s Palestine Political Education Series
Authors: Fran M, Justin G, Marlon P, Mehrdad D, Nick B, Nick P
Tens of millions across the globe have stood up in opposition to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the broader settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime managed by the Israeli state across the historic lands of Palestine. As we write today, Israel is intent on completing a genocidal expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. It appears that no one is safe from Israeli bloodlust. Indeed, as if to prove the point, on April 1, Israeli occupation forces murdered with impunity seven aid workers of the World Central Kitchen traveling in three clearly-marked vehicles. These killings added to the over 40,000 martyred Palestinians and hundreds of other slain humanitarian aid workers. An end to Zionism is the only viable political solution.
In marches, rallies, sit-ins, obstructions, and other terrains of protest, activists and organizers across the United States have demanded the end of funding and diplomatic support for the state of Israel and the merciless occupation forces it commands. The Connecticut (CT) chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has worked tirelessly with coalition organizations across the state to support the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Notably, CT DSA has organized multiple, simultaneous ceasefire resolution campaigns in cities across the state; helped coordinate a blockade of the Colt arms manufacturing plant in West Hartford; and has undertaken a No Appetite for Apartheid campaign to build a working-class base for the boycott of Israeli products. These activities helped compose the CT Palestine Solidarity Coalition and demonstrate that CT DSA has taken seriously the task of organizing to advance the Palestinian struggle in this crucial moment.
The political stakes of the current moment could not be clearer: either liberation or annihilation. This moment demanded deeper education and analysis on Palestine within our chapter. Therefore, CT DSA organized a state-wide political education program on the Palestinian liberation struggle: the Palestine Liberation Political Education Series. This project was a collaboration between the International Affairs and Political Education working groups. Following an online primer on the history of Palestine and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement provided by the Palestine Solidarity Working Group, we developed two parallel courses: a local, in-person “Introduction to the Palestinian struggle” course, which developed curriculum around Ali Abunimah’s The Battle for Justice in Palestine, and a state-wide, online “Palestine Socialist Classics” course where Ghassan Kanafani’s “The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine” and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s “The Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine” were our templates. The Education Series culminated in a group trip to the Palestine Museum in Woodbridge, CT.
Not only was the deployment of this course tremendously salient given the shift of activities in the chapter toward Palestine solidarity work, but it was also uniquely successful. Hundreds of chapter members, as well as non-members, applied for the course. Dozens of people across the state in New Haven, Hartford, and Danbury attended the local in person sessions. Dozens more participated in the state-wide course that met online. Over two dozen attended the museum trip. In what follows, we reflect on the practical implementation of this political education series across the state in its various formats. We hope that this reflection can serve as a critical analysis of political education as a tool for developing active, theoretically well-equipped cadre that can engage in disciplined and organized struggle in solidarity with Palestine and all oppressed peoples.
The “Introduction to Palestine and BDS” primer with the Palestine Solidarity Working Group
We opened the political education series with an online presentation prepared and delivered by the Political Education subcommittee of the Palestine Solidarity Working Group (PSWG), providing a primer on Palestine and the solidarity movement. The presentation started with a crash course on the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle, grounded in an analysis of Zionism as a settler-colonial movement and an arm of imperialism, and provided an overview of the structures of the apartheid system, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the Palestinian resistance. It then moved on to a survey of points of interventions for the internationalist solidarity movement, including BDS tactics as well as connections between the Palestinian struggle and domestic struggles. The session closed with further organizing resources and a call to get involved.
The presentation was attended by about 30 people and served two main purposes: first, for people who did not have the capacity to engage in a longer reading group, to nonetheless provide an accessible primer on the basic history of the Palestinian question; second, to ground those who planned to participate in either of the longer courses in a shared understanding so that we could rely on a common starting point in knowledge. Attendees shared positive feedback about the presentation’s ability to deliver a large amount of content in a short time, while foregrounding a socialist and anti-imperialist analysis. One missed opportunity, in our opinion, were the final calls to action which were geared toward a chapter with less developed Palestine solidarity organizing than CT DSA. We should have done a better job at coordinating in advance with the PSWG educators about highlighting our chapter’s active campaigns.
The “Introduction to the Palestinian Struggle” Course
In January, 2024, CT DSA convened its “Introduction to Palestine and BDS” course in three cities: Hartford, Danbury, and New Haven. Participants met in-person for four weekly sessions held every two weeks spanning two months. The course centered on discussion of one text: Palestinian socialist journalist Ali Abunimah’s The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Political education committee organizers split the book chapters across the four sessions. They read the book in advance and prepared reading guides containing the curriculum for each session. The reading guides consisted of ground rules for discussions, summaries of the assigned chapters, and excerpted passages from the chapters tied to questions to facilitate the group discussion.
The Battle for Justice in Palestine was a good choice for socialists looking to learn the fundamentals. The book did two things quite well. First, it convincingly presented the contradictions in the norms of Israeli society – namely between its supposed democratic pluralism and its Jewish supremacism – in a way that laid bare the material bases that drive Israel to continued dispossession of Palestinian land and labor. Second, it offered an internationalist analysis, highlighting the global imperialist forces acting against Palestinians and the transnational solidaristic strategies necessary to resist them, namely BDS tactics. In doing so, the book integrated into its analysis how these forces act against other dispossessed populations, such as Black and Native Americans, who experience the brunt of Israeli-designed policing tactics.
The reading guides provided a useful bridge from the text to the discussion. The comprehensive summaries and excerpts offered all participants entry into the conversation, regardless of whether they had a chance to read the chapters. In all three reading groups, these written materials helped structure the discussion around key concepts, keep the text in front of us, and foster conversation between participants with open-ended questions toward an analysis shared across the three locations spread out across the state. Prepared in advance, the questions aimed to allow participants to arrive at answers together by combining the text with their real-world experience. Some participants rightly noted that sometimes, the questions were too dense, making them difficult launchpads for discussion. Some facilitators found it helpful to break down the complex questions into their constituent parts, guiding the group to pass through a series of intermediate conclusions on the way to a final conclusion on a given topic.
Organizers also found preparation of the reading guides to be quite time-intensive. In the future, the committee may consider delegating curriculum development and group facilitation tasks to different members. One potential drawback to this approach would be that facilitators and curriculum developers may not develop the same insights from the readings, causing gaps in understanding. Regardless, in the future, the political education committee ideally will have more hands able to contribute to curriculum development.
Different branches of CT DSA have different levels of development, as well as varying levels of urban density. Nevertheless, all three branches were able to turn out a consistent group of participants for each session, ranging from 8 to 15 people depending on location. Reading groups of this intermediate size helped foster close conversation among peers, while also ensuring the presence of diverse perspectives that advanced our collective knowledge of Palestinian liberation. In Danbury, where the Western branch is based, the course helped build important bridges between CT DSA and the community, which had only previously been mobilized around the Starbucks union drive.
The curriculum effectively directed insights gained through each session into invitations to participants to join CT DSA’s existing Palestine solidarity campaigns, such as No Appetite for Apartheid. Participants were also invited, and became active members of campaigns for various ceasefire resolutions, as well as rallies, phone banks, and other actions. In Danbury, participants even rescheduled a session to attend a town hall meeting in support of a local ceasefire resolution. Course facilitators did a good job of directing people interested in getting more involved. The in-person conversations and social events after sessions helped foster conversations about DSA’s Palestine solidarity efforts and organizing more broadly.
Unlike the model of exclusionary capitalist university pedagogy, socialist political education seeks to build analysis through sincere, communal deliberation. The first goal is to foster conversation – to bring a diverse group together to understand the forces that act against them as well as working and dispossessed people everywhere, and how to organize against them from where they live. Each group compared Palestine to oppressive structures in the United States. We discussed connections between Jim Crow and Israeli apartheid; the U.S. dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Americas and Israeli settler-colonialism; and the cross-training of Israeli and U.S. police forces, including from Connecticut. The goal of the course was to learn from and educate one another on Palestine’s place in our struggle. In that, this course was successful.
The “Palestine Socialist Classics” Course
The second component of this political education series was a more intensive, online, statewide course. The purpose of this course was to help active organizers who may have already been familiar with the conflict in Palestine, its history, its political development, and so on, to cultivate a deeper Marxist analysis. To this end, we decided to cover two key texts from the Marxist tradition in Palestine: Ghassan Kanafani’s The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) The Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine.
This course was practically distinguished from the “Introduction” course in two ways: First, it was held online, and thus made readily available to anyone across the state, regardless of whether they lived. This expanded access to political education content without depriving the political education series of the benefit of in-person community building entirely. Second, the course aimed to develop an explicitly Marxist analysis of the history of struggle against dispossession and colonization in Palestine, and while also allowing participants to solidify their understanding of fundamental aspects of Marxism.
One element that cannot be overstated is the value of turning to texts that provided a historical materialist analysis of concrete events in Palestine. For example, Kanafani’s text demonstrated the application of historical materialism in practice, providing the opportunity to evaluate the merits of such an approach as applied to a specific historical example, rather than attempting to introduce this concept in the abstract. In other words, pivotal elements of Marxist analysis were made tangible and thereby teachable in a way that a course focusing on the concepts alone would not have been able to. Similarly, the PFLP text offered the opportunity to dissect concepts such as “scientific socialism,” the mass line strategy, and the composition of a Marxist-Leninist party capable of challenging global imperialism, as they pertained to the struggle for Palestinian liberation in specific, concrete terms.
While analyzing the fundamental texts of the Marxist lexicon is important to the development of socialist consciousness, it is worth considering how daunting and alienating it can be to design political education content solely around these texts. They are dense, complex, and dated, and thus can be off-putting to comrades that may not yet have had the chance to develop this theoretical foundation.
Relatedly, such political education typically invites the intrusion of the oft-maligned “theory bros,” (the typically white, male comrades who are not quite sure when to stop talking about Marx) which can easily derail otherwise generative conversations in these environments. By turning to texts that emphasized the concrete over the abstract, we were able to learn about the history of Palestine while simultaneously training the muscles of Marxist analysis, and avoided fostering an exclusive environment that appealed only to the most well-read among us.
By nature of holding this course online, it did not provide the same space for building relationships and on-ramps into the organizing work that was happening on-the-ground. This was a necessary concession that we made in order to have a space with a lower geographical barrier to entry. In any case, the course concluded on a strong emphasis for involving oneself in the work, and the texts we chose to analyze, because of their practical emphasis, similarly promoted organizing over armchair theorizing.
The course routinely had 10-12 comrades in attendance, many of whom were not the active organizers we originally anticipated. In some ways, this was a pleasant surprise. Participants who may not have been deeply involved in the organizing work revealed themselves as astute analysts with a wealth of personal knowledge, both through their individual experiences and intellectual backgrounds. This led to many deep, engaging discussions over the source material and identified people in the chapter who could become further engaged in the organizing work.
The Palestine Museum
The final component of our political education series was a chapter-wide trip to the Palestine Museum in Woodbridge, CT. We benefited immensely from having such immediate access to one of only three museums dedicated to Palestinian art and culture in the Western hemisphere. This was an opportunity for building in-person relationships with chapter membership in a low-stakes, social environment that still centered the cause of Palestinian liberation.
In that vein, the trip had a much more diverse turnout relative to our political education courses. More than two dozen people came out for the museum tour; a group comprised of course participants, other DSA members, and, encouragingly, their friends and family. People new to the chapter were exposed to DSA and Palestinian culture in a very comfortable setting, which provided the space for conversations about ongoing work in DSA.
With that being said, this was the least politically explicit component of the course. While much of the art included in the museum has an inherently political dimension as it is rooted in the historical and present experience of Palestinians, and the museum is beloved by local activists and organizers, it is also first and foremost a cultural rather than organizing space. Since DSA did not lead the tour, we also did not attempt to use this as a platform to get our own message across, deferring instead to the museum owner’s tour. Thus, we may have missed an opportunity to offer an onramp for attendees to get involved in the socialist struggle for Palestinian liberation at home and abroad, or to ground the visit in a deeper understanding of the role of cultural production to the Palestinians struggle.
Indeed, one of the participants shared in a feedback survey that the museum visit could have been more effective if preceded by a discussion on the relationship between art, politics, and history, particularly in the Palestinian context. However, what we lost in political content we certainly made up for in the community-building that the museum visit provided, and the ownership of the museum was heartened to see such a large group show up on a Sunday morning and to find out that many of the participants had been learning about Palestine for months.
Aside from the particularities of the museum itself, we found that it was beneficial to engage with Palestinians in our community as a component of our political education series. One can easily imagine other events that could substitute for a museum trip that would still have the benefit of exposing chapter members to their Palestinian neighbors, their history, and their culture.
More generally, the notion of connecting political education to the community in this way is something we will continue to encourage, as it provides a more dynamic space to accomplish the goals of running a political education course (e.g., member engagement, education, and politicization) while simultaneously building relationships with relevant members of the broader community who might similarly become or are already engaged in struggle at some level. Indeed, the museum space was offered to us for hosting future chapter events.
Conclusion
Political education has an intrinsic value in scaffolding the analysis of organized socialists. However, we find ourselves in a time of profound disorganization, which requires that political education be implemented in such a way that rebuilds and reimagines political organization for our times. In running the Palestine Liberation Education Series, we attempted to put this theory into practice. The program served both purposes explicitly: developing our shared analysis of the contemporary and historical struggle for Palestinian liberation, while simultaneously providing an on-ramp into our chapter and the organizing projects taking shape on the ground. CT DSA created a space for people who were already thinking about the Palestinian issue to convene and develop answers to outstanding questions while avoiding “armchair theorization”– precisely because there were concrete projects to be plugged into. Indeed, some of those who attended the reading group later committed themselves to solidarity campaigns like No Appetite for Apartheid, or consolidated into local cadre groups who continued to attend mobilizations for Palestine together, especially in less established branches where that coordination was previously missing.
Today, despite the immense horror of the genocidal occupation in Gaza and Palestine more broadly, our struggle is advancing and winning. We are in unprecedented times, and the fate of Palestine hangs in the balance. Since April, we have witnessed the massive student intifada in support of Palestinian liberation. This protest movement struck at a crucial lynchpin in the ideological apparatus that legitimizes Israel: the academy. By demanding the disclosure of university investments and the divestment from Israeli firms, or firms that otherwise support apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories, the students revitalized the successful legacy from the fight against South African apartheid.
The need, therefore, to continue to engage in this struggle has only become more important. To do so effectively, and to outlast our class enemies, will require both the deepening of our political analysis, and the expansion of our organized base. We believe that the Palestine Liberation Education Series achieved both aims, and we intend to continue improving upon this method of political education within our chapter.
Condemnation of the Israeli attack on Gaza and Solidarity with Palestine
Columbia DSA expresses unequivocal and unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for national liberation. For decades, Palestinians have endured settler colonial violence and apartheid at the hands of the Israeli government. Confined in the world’s largest open-air prison, where 97% of fresh water has been deemed undrinkable.
We now look on in horror as Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, shares videos and images of entire neighborhoods destroyed in Gaza. The Zionists are telling the people of Gaza to leave before they continue their assault but at the same time are denying them freedom of movement. This is nothing less than genocide.
As staunch supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, we oppose the US sending any funds to Israel. Any material support given to the state of Israel is condoning their occupation. We call on all congressional DSA electeds to vote against any funding for Israel that is likely to be brought up for a vote in the coming days.
We support the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves and reject the Zionist narrative that labels any resistance as terrorism because resistance against an occupying force is justified. The blame for any death lies solely on the occupiers. We agree with calls for an immediate ceasefire but calls for a ceasefire that do not address the root cause of the violence, the occupation, ring hollow in the long run. To truly end the violence, the occupation must come to an end. We echo the demands of the liberation movement that all of Palestine must be decolonized, not just Gaza and the West Bank.
We ask anyone who supports Palestinian liberation to join us for our weekly CEASEFIRE NOW! protests at the South Carolina Statehouse on Saturday’s from 2-4pm!
Additionally, if you are able to, please donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians, Hebron International Resource Network, and the Pious Projects.
Free Free Palestine!
Long Live Palestine!
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