Monthly Newsletter of the Rochester Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America

The post Rochester Red Star | October 2024 (Issue 06) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

by Rochester Grants Pass Resistance

Editor’s Note: ROC DSA livestreamed this event. A recording is available on our YouTube page, here: YouTube.com/@rocdsa (Note: Timestamped to first speaker).

Housing advocates are holding a press conference to address the devastating Supreme Court decision that  criminalizes homelessness, Grants Pass v. Johnson. In the wake of the ruling, the group Rochester Grants Pass Resistance formed to address how the case could impact Rochester. 

The Supreme Court found that laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and  unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment; allowing municipalities to arrest and fine  individuals for sleeping outdoors, even when there are no shelters available. 

We anticipate that this decision will have a significant impact on Monroe County’s population of  houseless individuals. We note alarming impacts of the Grants Pass decision in other cities: San Francisco  is preparing for more aggressive encampment sweeps that could include criminal penalties, and Portland  has enacted a long-planned city camping ban. We want to protect the houseless individuals living in our  community from facing similar consequences as a result of this decision. 

The press conference will feature multiple speakers who have been directly impacted by homelessness. They will describe why they are unable to access shelter. We will announce our call for legislative action and present a list of demands of the City of Rochester and Monroe County to limit the consequences of this court decision and help our houseless neighbors. 

RGPR is bringing the following demands to Rochester City Council and the Monroe County Legislature to address the potential impacts and protect our houseless neighbors: 

1. Make a municipal commitment not to arrest or fine people for sleeping in public areas.

2. Stop the “sweeps” of homeless encampments, including ending confiscation of individuals’ personal property. 

3. Remove all hostile architecture. 

4. Provide Housing for All: an apartment for each houseless person. 

5. Create No-barrier Shelter: meet people where they are, as they are. 

6. Fund Housing for All: direct tax on rental income or a countywide tax on sale of property.

7. Create a Housing Task Force to advise policy changes (Overdose Prevention Centers, overhaul of  DHS sanctions, MH community-based housing funding, housing vouchers).

Editor’s Note: The event, originally scheduled for ‘Peace Village,’ at 161 Industrial St., was forced to move several times. These updates are shared below.

[Update 9/28 @ 1:20pm] The city blocked off broad street at industrial street (peace village) so the press conference is moving to 1248 north Clinton Ave. Please find us there.

[Update 9/28 @ 1:58pm] We have heard that bringing people to North Clinton will be harmful to the folks in the encampment here. The encampment has been harassed by police often as of late. So we will move the press conference to the corner of Joseph and Loomis at the fenced in lot. Thank you for joining us at 3:15pm, to give you all time to make adjustments to another location. This, incidentally, is what it’s like, in a small way, to be unhoused and pushed from place to place, welcome nowhere, unwelcome again and again.

The post Press Conference to Demand Monroe County Protect Homeless Following Supreme Court Decision  first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

This fall voters face yet another election where we are left to choose between the threat of fascism or the neoliberal status quo. On one hand, Trump represents the threat of mass deportations of immigrants, attacks on bodily autonomy and LGBTQ rights, deepening attacks on unions and workers, racist attacks on people of color, and […]

by Brinn F

The fight against climate change can often seem distant and on a scale beyond what the average person has the power to do. While it’s true that saving our planet is a task that can only be accomplished through collective action, we have an opportunity for that action right here in Austin, Texas. Within the past year, the city of Austin has unveiled a plan to construct a gas plant to be operated by Austin Energy. This unsustainable plan would only further add to the pollution in a city already struggling to keep the air safe and breathable.

It was this proposal that galvanized Austin’s environmentalists to form the Public Power Campaign. This broad coalition comprised people from a variety of backgrounds such as environmentalism, labor organizing, and simply being a concerned resident of Austin. The possibility of the city investing its limited resources towards a non-renewable, polluting source of energy was enough to pull together a diverse base of support.

The most immediate goal of the public power campaign is to prevent the construction of the planned gas power plant. However, the campaign extends beyond that to fight for climate justice well into the future. Beyond stopping the expansion of non-renewable energy, the campaign advocates for the construction of renewable sources of energy here in Austin. Not only would this create a safer environment to live in, it would also give the city access to federal funds under the Inflation Reduction Act. With this plan, Austin has the opportunity to be a national leader by simultaneously creating clean and sustainable energy infrastructure and growing the city budget.

Another priority of the Public Power Campaign is ensuring that the transition to green energy is done in a way that protects Austin’s workers in the long term. An invaluable part of the campaign has been its cooperation with organized labor. A common concern about the push for renewables is that it risks putting workers in the energy sector out of a job. By working so closely with, and being spearheaded by, workers in the field, the campaign’s goals have been tailored to protect labor during this transition. The campaign is fighting to prevent Austin’s energy infrastructure being sold off to private interests who are more likely to lay off workers for profit. At the same time, the campaign is pushing for protections to guarantee workers can continue to work in the field once unsustainable sources of energy are replaced by sustainable ones.

There are a number of ways to get involved with this effort. Those in the Public Power Campaign have emphasized that this work can only be accomplished with the continued efforts and support of Austin’s communities. One of the best ways to get involved at time of writing is to participate in the upcoming climate town hall hosted by the Austin Democratic Socialists of America. The town hall will take place on September 29th at 2:00 PM located at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection Parish Hall. Beyond attending Public Power Campaign events, representatives from the campaign encouraged people to support candidates who advance climate justice such as Mike Siegel, the DSA’s endorsed candidate for the District 7 council seat. As well as pushing for supportive candidates, a great way to help out is to talk to others about the campaign and its importance for the future health of our community.

In the fight for climate justice, the challenges ahead are significant. The construction of the planned gas plant would have negative effects for both Austin’s health and economy for decades to come. However, the combined efforts of so many sectors of this community have created a real chance to not only prevent this current catastrophe, but to go further and fight for future victories. Only through solidarity and collective effort can the Public Power Campaign help bring about a cleaner, just, and more prosperous future for the people of Austin.

This article was written based on information generously provided in interviews with Austin DSA Members Jay P. and Ramsey B.

The post Public Power Campaign Fights for a Green Austin first appeared on Red Fault.

Unions have relied on staff to encourage members to build the union through new organizing at non-union workplaces, but they could be doing much more.

The post Every Member an Organizer appeared first on EWOC.

How Maryland organizers used electoral canvassing to make voting about something more than the candidate—a tool in the fight for Palestinian liberation.

Metro DC DSA claims to be a “vehicle for the working class”. How can we open the door wider? Some thoughts...

Years ago, a judge found the NYPD's Stop and Frisk practice a form of systemic racial discrimination. The Stop and Frisk program in DC is even worse. Why can't we stop it?

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, September 24 (6:00 p.m.): Emergency Protest – All Out for Lebanon at the SF Federal Building (In person at 90 7th St.)

Wednesday, September 25 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1630 Haight)

Wednesday, September 25 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Independent Outreach (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, September 26 (5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Weekday Mobilization for Jackie Fielder (Meet at 3389 26th St.)

Thursday, September 26 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1630 Haight)

Thursday, September 26 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, September 26 (6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, September 26 (7:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.): Palestine and Socialism Study Group: Session 2 (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, September 27 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, September 28 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Meet at Alamo Square at Scott and Hayes)

Saturday, September 28 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Food Service – Castro (Location TBD)

Sunday, September 29 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Jackie Fielder for D9 Supervisor Mobilization (Meet at Holly Park at Holly Circle & Bocana)

Monday, September 30 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, September 30 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, October 2 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Friday, October 4 (11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Canvass (Meet in person at 876 Valencia)

Saturday, October 5 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach Training (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Emergency Protest TODAY: All Out for Lebanon!

There is an emergency protest today (Tuesday, 9/24) at 6:00 p.m. at the SF Federal Building at 90 7th St. in response to Israel’s attack on Lebanon this week.

Heavy Israeli air raids have killed 324 people, including 24 children, and seriously injured over 1,200 people. In response, the Bay Area is mobilizing a protest to show our solidarity with Lebanon and the Lebanese people, demand an end to Israel’s violence and escalation in the Middle East, and an end to the United States’ ongoing complicity in Israeli war crimes.

Palestine and Socialism Study Group

Looking to learn more about the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle with like-minded comrades? Been skeptical about whether socialist theory has anything to offer to the movement? Join DSA SF’s Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group on Thursday, September 26 at 7:30 p.m. to discuss these questions and more.

This event is the 2nd of 3 sessions in this series. In the last session, we covered some of the historical realities that underpin the Zionist movement and the establishment of the state of Israel.

This session will focus on frameworks outlined in Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and The Right of Nations to Self Determination. Join us in a political discussion about how these frameworks can inform the current movement to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.

This will be a hybrid event at 1916 McAllister St and on Zoom.

Volunteer with the Dean Team This Week!

We have ONE WEEK before ballots drop, so we’re pulling out all the stops! Come volunteer with the Extreme Dean Team this week. We have five different opportunities for you to show up and show out:

• 9/24: Turnout Tuesday (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister)
• 9/25, 9/26: Phonebanking (5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1630 Haight)
• 9/28: Canvass with the DSA (Meet at 10:00 a.m. at Alamo Square at Scott and Hayes)
• 9/29: Rally for Rent Control and Affordable Housing with Yes on 5 and Yes on 33 (10:00 a.m. at Raymond Kimbell Playground at Geary and Steiner)

Door Knock with the Jackie Fielder Campaign This Sunday!

Come door knock with the Jackie Team this Sunday, September 29th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Holly Park (Holly Circle and Bocana) and get out the word out about her campaign! We’ll be talking with our neighbors in D9 about what makes Jackie great and stacking voter IDs. Come out and help us get a socialist elected to represent District 9!

No Appetite for Apartheid in SF!

Inspired by long-standing Palestinian boycott tactics and the BDS call, the Palestine Solidarity Anti-Imperialist Working Group are canvassing local stores and asking them to pledge to become Apartheid-Free by dropping products from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and colonization of Palestine. It’s time to turn up the heat on this apartheid regime and take apartheid off our plates!

Want to show your support? Sign our Apartheid-Free Pledge so business owners know how popular this movement is with their local customers. After signing the pledge, we would love to see you at any of our upcoming campaign strategy sessions and canvassing days. Check dsasf.org/events for updates.

Benefit Concert for Gaza

Join your DSA SF comrades and our coalition partners on Saturday, October 5th at a benefit concert for Gaza, in support of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people facing this ongoing genocide. This will be a night of Palestinian art and culture, with performances by Ramzi Aburedwan & his Dalouna Ensemble featuring Ouday Al Khatib. All proceeds of the event will be donated to the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance (MECA). MECA has been instrumental in providing emergency assistance to families who have fled their homes. Discounted early bird tickets are available until this Friday!

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

[Friedrich Engels’] three classical laws of dialectics [are]…the law of “interpenetrating opposites,” the interdependence of components; the “transformation of quantity to quality,” a systems-based view of change that translates incremental inputs into alterations of state; and the “negation of negation,” the direction given to history because complex systems cannot revert exactly to previous states.
Stephen Jay Gould (1976)

Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories.
Leon Trotsky (1939)

More important than the specific histories and theory we read is learning how to think and how to study a problem. Analysis that hones how we understand what we read improves our strategic and tactical decision-making.

For Marxists, this is the dialectical method, rooted in Marx’s theory of historical materialism. 

Historical materialism is the simple idea that human history develops based on the ‘objective’ way that human societies reproduce themselves: how they produce the ‘stuff of life’, meaning commodities (food, clothing, medicine, housing, etc.) and the services that modify and distribute those commodities. This does not mean that our economic systems determine everything. That was rejected as an interpretation almost as soon as Marx’s method came into being: 

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its results, [for example]: constitutions…[legal] forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants…philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas – also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. 
(Engels, 1890)

The outlook that Engels is criticizing here is sometimes called “mechanical materialism” and sometimes “economic determinism,” and is related to concepts like “vulgar Marxism” or “class reductionism,” which ignore the dynamic way that historical materialism considers systems as a whole.

The historical materialist outlook does not deny the influence of peoples’ conscious choices. It just tries to situate those choices within what can logically develop from existing social relations. It assumes that, in the big picture, systems that come into being and survive for any meaningful amount of time must rest on a material base. In other words, human choice and ideas matter, but will be formed in part by, and be constrained by, the material basis of society.

The Method of Motion

The dialectical method takes the world as it is and tries to understand the existing (‘concrete’) structures and relations as processes in constant motion, with  ’inherent contradictions’ which will influence their behavior. 

Any given factual observation we have of the world is like a photograph: ‘34% of Americans have a bachelor’s degree.’ But a photograph is not only not the full story; to some degree, it is a lie, because the world is always in motion. Its motion defines it. Observing human beings, ecosystems, social groupings, and societies at a given moment does not tell us everything about them, and in fact leaves out the most important things, because they are in a constant state of motion or change. 

Nothing in the physical world stays in a steady state, nothing in the world is completely independent, and nothing in the world can ever completely revert to an earlier form. Everything is constantly changing – is always interdependent – and therefore will always look both similar to and different from its own earlier states, along with the world around it. Our experience that things are in a steady state is just the limit of our powers of observation. 

We treat a tree as a single object, but in fact a ‘tree’ is incoherent without soil, oxygen, and sunlight; we have labeled a particular observable phenomenon as a “tree” but in fact a tree is just a momentary expression of a physical process we happen to observe in a certain way. If we ‘saw’ in millennia rather than days, we would barely even notice a tree, or a flower, or a person, all of which would briefly flicker into and out of existence; but we could lovingly watch forests, hills, or reefs grow and take shape before they erode and disappear.

Thinking of things as existing in a steady state, as having an ‘absolute’ nature, is sometimes called ‘idealism.’ or ‘metaphysics”; it is a still photograph. Nothing in the physical world, that results from or acts in the physical world is in a steady or static state. Everything has to be understood by how it changes over time, and how it relates to the ongoing processes to which it is connected. 

Who are you? You are the culmination of millions of years of evolution, thousands of years of reproduction, your personal experiences, the things you’re observing and learning each day. You’re not exactly the same tomorrow as today. Defining ‘you’ by how you are on any given day actually misinforms. 

The dialectical method tries to understand the component parts of social phenomena, while also understanding how those component parts all relate to one another and to other systems. It assumes interdependence, motion, and change. It therefore never assumes anything comes into being on its own, or simply as a result of conscious decisions, but instead that it must have emerged as a result of webs of social relations, historical processes, and even dumb luck. 

Evolution and History

The historical materialist and dialectical method have a close relationship with Darwinian understanding of systems. 

For example, among the observations of ecological systems that Darwin developed was that at any given moment, any ‘new’ biological species will look, to a significant degree, like its preceding form. This is because every species, while it is ‘evolving’ over thousands of generations, still has to continue to survive in its given habitat. Every change between one generation and the next – between parent and child – will have to be small. Big leaps are unlikely to survive, because every species has been honed over millennia to fit into its ecosystem. 

Even after drastic ‘speciation’ (divergence into different species), the similarities to a common ancestor are obvious; bodies retain many of the same structures, because the body has to survive. Consider:

As different as these species are, their forelimbs share all the same parts, but developed slowly over time into different proportions and, eventually, different functions – not by accident, but because they share a common ancestor. Even if the changes happened through accelerated periods, at no point was there some ‘big leap’ where completely new internal structures were introduced. 

The dialectic method, too, studies how developments in human societies contain some elements of the systems that came before it, but honed, altered, or developed to accommodate new conditions and the ideologies that accompany those changes. One example is in legal systems. The U.S. legal system is based on the English common law system in place at the time of the American Revolution; although the U.S. Constitution and principles of bourgeois democracy changed much about the existing system, it was still built up from that system. In turn, the English legal system derived from feudal Anglo-Saxon legal concepts, blended with French traditions after the Norman conquest – which themselves came from Roman law and Celtic and Gaulish traditions. This is why legal jargon has so many French terms: mortgage, jury, larceny, parole, estoppel, plaintiff, tort, chattel, and bail are all Norman words. 

The history of revolutionary governments is, in one sense, a history of revolutionary parties struggling with how to deal with the fact that a system that currently exists cannot just be rebuilt from scratch, but needs to work with the ‘bones’ already in place. They therefore try to figure out how to apply the correct pressures to change the system rapidly. Again, this is because societies are not steady-state organisms, but systems in constant motion from one moment to the next, needing to produce and consume. They need to change while also continuing to function. Even if you want to radically redesign a creature, it must continue to eat and sleep and reproduce from one day to the next or else it will die out. 

None of this means that radical change is impossible. It just means that systems we intend to change rather than destroy will always need to be built up based on what is already there, and that we need to understand their modes of motion, their interdependence with other systems, and their internal contradictions – the adversarial pressures within themselves – so that as we apply force to change them, we are doing so in a way that will develop them in a particular direction (or, in some cases, hasten their destruction). 

In short, the dialectical method teaches us how to study the processes of change. It takes nothing for granted; it is infinitely curious about why something came into being, where it came from, what it’s made of, and where it can conceivably go based on how it is composed. It is a science of thinking that rejects the idea that a photograph can tell a whole story, and instead pushes us to study the laws of motion that explain why and how something goes from A to B – and, eventually, to C.

The post Improving Our Analysis: The Dialectical Method and Historical Materialism appeared first on Midwest Socialist.