Tonight, we’re talking to Claire Valdez, a NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for Assembly District 37 in Queens about what being endorsed by NYC-DSA and UAW Region 9A means to her, how she plans to bring her union organizing experience of becoming ‘more powerful than the boss’ to the halls of power in Albany and much more. 

There are currently 8 socialists endorsed by NYC-DSA serving in Albany in the Senate and Assembly. If electoral organizers get their way- that number could be 11 next year - the largest socialist block ever elected in New York.

NYC-DSA has voted to endorse three new-insurgent candidates this year- Claire in Queens, Eon Huntley in Brooklyn and Jonathan Soto in the Bronx. 

As we do every year, we will talk to all of the new-dsa endorsed candidates here on Revolutions Per Minute and tonight is the first in that series of interviews with the NYC-DSA’s 2024 slate. So stick around to hear from Claire, a union organizer running for Assembly District 37 in Queens - stretching from Long Island City, Sunnyside and Maspeth to Ridgewood. 

To learn more visit  https://claireforqueens.com/ and to sign up for a canvassing shift https://claireforqueens.com/events/

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, 2/20 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): What is DSA? (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, 2/21 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): HWG Reading Group – Mean Streets (In person at 1916 McAllister; Zoom)

Thursday, 2/22 (6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): DSA SF x League of Pissed Off Voters Pub Crawl on Divisadero

Thursday, 2/22 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): February Tech Workers Meetup (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, 2/23 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Special Edition Office Hours with DSA’s National Political Committee (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, 2/23 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Gumbo Dinner with the NPC and Dean Preston (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 2/24 (11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.): February Office Cleaning/Organizing (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 2/24 (11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group (HWG) Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 2/24 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): HWG Sock Distro (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 2/24 (7:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.): [Hosted by East Bay DSA] Social: Meet Your National Political Committee! (In person at 2344 Webster Street, Oakland)

Wednesday, 2/28 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): DSA SF Labor Night School: Why the Working Class? (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 3/2 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Tenant Organizing Movie Night – Redevelopment: A Marxist Analysis (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, 3/6 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): HWG Reading Group – Mean Streets (In person at 1916 McAllister preferred; Zoom)

Thursday, 3/7 (6:00 p.m. – 7:40 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom)

Saturday, 3/9 (11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): HWG Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 3/9 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): HWG Sock Distro (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

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

Events & Actions

DSA SF and EBDSA Merch Design Competition!

DSA SF and EBDSA are hosting a design competition! Submit your design and it might get featured on our next DSA sweatshirt! The winner will get a free sweatshirt with their design along with a DSA SF enamel pin and an EBDSA poster!

Entries are due by February 28th. The full rules and submission form are available at ebdsa.us/merch-contest.

Apply to Join the 2024 Convention Planning Subcommittee!

The 2024 Convention Planning Subcommittee is tasked with setting the timeline, putting together the agenda, leading the coordination, and handling the logistics for the chapter’s 2024 Annual Convention in June. We are starting early because its a big operation! The cadence will be light at the beginning of the process and naturally pick up the pace as we get closer to the main event!

Comrades with event planning experience are especially encouraged to apply! This is also a great place for newer members who are interested in jumping into the chapter to get involved. You’ll have plenty of support and see how the sausage is made for one of the biggest productions and most important cornerstones of our chapter’s democratic practice.

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.

Questions? Feedback? Something to add?

We welcome your feedback. If you have comments or suggestions, send a message to the #newsletter channel on Slack.

For information on how to add content, check out the Newsletter Q&A thread on the forum.

The following is a recording of a speech delivered by Lokotah Sanborn at the December rally for a ceasefire in Palestine outside of Bath Iron Works in Maine. For more coverage of the protests against the ongoing genocide in Palestine by the Pine & Roses Editorial Collective see:

1. Portland Rallies for Palestine After Rafah Bombed and Maine Coalition for Palestine Blocks Traffic, Protests Genocide in Gaza, By T. Sinclair 
2. Pro-Worker, Anti-War, by Isaak Spain.
3. Letter to the Editor: Portland’s Ceasefire Resolution is Good First Step, by Sam Spadafore.

The post Lokotah Sanborn Speaks at Bath Demonstration appeared first on Pine & Roses.

On Tuesday, February 13, Cuban ambassador to the United States, Lianys Torres Rivera, met with a room full of activists at the Teamsters Hall in South Portland. Delegations from Maine Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party of Maine, Veterans for Peace, and Let Cuba Live were all present as were unaffiliated friends and family. Ambassador Torres Rivera explained that Cuba was experiencing a second Special Period, the first having occurred after the loss of aid from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Isolation caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic–-especially the loss of tourist revenues–-and an economic embargo enforced by the United States devastated the Cuban economy. 

Torres Rivera explained that Trump tightened the sanctions back to a Cold War level in 2016. While President Biden could ease those sanctions significantly with a pen stroke, has chosen not to. Congress could act to eliminate sanctions whole-cloth but refuses to do so. However, dozens of cities and many trade unions have passed resolutions to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and to end the economic blockade.

Torres Rivera implored activists to continue this work, to make sure that your town, your union, your state, your representatives, and your senators adopt or support similar resolutions. The passage of these resolutions is big news in Cuba and people appreciate reading about solidarity with Cuba in the United States. However, the resolutions alone are not enough. The Cuban people need material support. This material support can come in the form of opening trade relations with Cuba, cultural programs, or academic programs. Portland could trade fish with Cuba, which is currently struggling to maintain certain fish populations due to climate change and overfishing. Brunswick could strengthen its sister city relationship with Trinidad, Cuba and invite the townspeople to learn about life in Trinidad. The University of Maine system and the private colleges could initiate academic relations with Cuban universities and biotech companies in Maine could partner with researchers in Cuba who are developing treatments for Early Onset and Mid Stage Alzheimer’s (NeuralCIM), Lung Cancer (CIMAvax), and other critical medical treatments (diabetic foot ulcers, vitiligo, psoriasis, etc). 

The Cuban people are going to make it through this new Special Period, regardless of its relationship with the United States. Torres Rivera recognized however that a good relationship with the United States will drastically reduce the time needed to recover from the current economic crisis. The ambassador emphasized that Cubans believe that Americans are a good people who want peace. She encouraged activists in attendance to begin the work of building solidarity in Maine in whatever form possible. 

As activists in Maine DSA, we must not allow for our comrades in Cuba to face this special period alone. We must show that we have them in our hearts. We must continue our international solidarity work, including our efforts to turn the tide on genocide in Palestine and supporting our comrades in Cuba by fostering economic, cultural, and social connections. If readers are interested in getting connected with Cuban Solidarity work please email steering@mainedsa.org, and we can connect you to these growing activist networks.

The post Cuban ambassador visits Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.

On January 25, 2024 the Steering Committee of ROC DSA voted unanimously to withdraw as a member organization from the Police Accountability Board Alliance (PABA). The following statement was sent to the PABA to announce this decision, and is now published here to communicate our reasoning to membership and the community, and to encourage reflection and growth.

Rochester Democratic Socialists of America (ROC DSA) has stood in solidarity with the broader Rochester community in the fight for the Police Accountability Board (PAB) from the beginning. Our chapter campaigned, knocked doors, and spread the word when the creation of the PAB was on the ballot. We have been a member organization of the Police Accountability Board Alliance (PABA) from its creation. ROC DSA believes in the PAB and the importance of the work it strives to do in this city.

Despite the critical role of the PAB and the need for independent police oversight in Rochester, ROC DSA has made the decision to resign as a member agency of the PABA. This decision was not made lightly. Over the last several years, the PABA has become a challenging and, at times, deeply toxic environment. Our organization’s departure is far from the first and, unfortunately, it will almost certainly not be the last. We urge the leadership and remaining members of the PABA to take a critical look at the state of the alliance and find the lessons that must be learned. This city needs the PAB, and the PAB needs a functional PABA.

While we will no longer participate in the PABA, ROC DSA remains a staunch supporter and ally to both the PAB and the unionization efforts of the PAB staff. It is our hope that the PABA leadership can course correct and truly become the alliance that this community deserves.

Rochester Chapter
Democratic Socialists of America

The post Chapter Statement: Letter of Resignation from the Police Accountability Board Alliance first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

This piece is intended as the formal motivation for the resolution: Endorse House Our Neighbors Initiative to Fund Social Housing (I-137)

House our Neighbors (HON) is a coalition of housing advocates and organizations that began in 2021 as an effort to defeat business backed efforts to pass an amendment to the Seattle city charter enshrining sweeps of homeless encampments.  Fortunately, King County Superior Court struck the amendment from the ballot on legal grounds. 

With Seattle facing an unrelenting housing and homelessness crisis, the HON coalition decided to run an initiative to establish a model of social housing. The initiative, I-135, established a new Public Development Authority (PDA) to acquire, build, and manage housing in the City of Seattle.  The housing will be open to residents making less than 120% of the area median income, with residents paying no more than thirty percent of their income on housing, and prohibiting financial eviction.  All housing built and acquired will be permanently public, and governed by residents of the housing. New housing would be built to passive house standards with union labor. This campaign was successful, establishing the new Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority (PDA) in February of 2023. 

SDSA joined the coalition and contributed significantly through efforts led by the Housing Justice Working Group (HJWG) by:

• Collecting over 4000 signatures to qualify the initiative for a vote by Seattle voters.
• Hosting over 40 signature gathering events.
• Knocking on over 3500 doors during the get out the vote campaign.
• Using public data to identify likely renters used to send texts to over 200,000 Seattle voters.
• Contributed $3,000 to HON.

As HON’s policy and advocacy director, Tiffani McCoy, stated, “We recognize the vital need for solidarity across movements, and know that we couldn’t have accomplished this monumental win without the dynamic organizing of SDSA.”

Due to the limitations of the citizens initiative process in the State of Washington, the initiative did not include funding for the PDA to begin to acquire and build housing. HON determined that the optimal means for obtaining the funding is through a new  ballot initiative. The initiative will need 26,521 verified signatures of registered voters in order to secure a place on the ballot. Given validation rates, it will likely be necessary to gather at least 35,000 signatures.

HON’s ballot initiative includes a five percent excess compensation tax paid by employers who employ individuals whose income is greater than $1 million dollars/year. This would generate an expected revenue of $50 million annually for the developer, allowing PDA to build or acquire an estimated 2,000 – 3,000 units over 10 years. The construction of these units is expected to open the door to other future funding sources, including public bonds.

There are several reasons why SDSA should endorse this initiative:

• There is a clearly recognized need for affordable housing that is not being met. Our endorsement while doing the work to get it passed is an opportunity for SDSA to deliver housing justice through the de-commodification of housing, and economic justice through the redistribution of wealth. This gives us a chance, as an organ of the Seattle working class, to take a stand on an issue the whole class regards as important.

• Seattle’s social housing model is the first of its kind in the nation. It provides a welcome alternative to both the overpriced corporate cartel owned private housing market, and the current model of “affordable housing” that provides little actual housing while it segregates low income people in substandard units. This effort will provide us with opportunities to differentiate DSA’s brand of politics from that of the Democratic establishment’s insufficient response to the housing crisis. 

• This will be a hard fought campaign that will be directly opposed by the reactionary business community, especially real estate interests and their lobbyists. SDSA will greatly increase its local profile if it takes a prominent role in the campaign, and will increase Seattle DSA’s profile amongst the working class. Participation provides opportunities for recruitment and a chance to further educate our members on the issue of housing.

The success or failure of the Seattle Social Housing Developer will depend on its funding, and our comrades across the nation are watching our progress.

The post Let’s Endorse House Our Neighbors Initiative to Fund Social Housing (I-137) appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

Collaboratively Written by: Carl T, Shiloh B, and Sean C

This piece is intended as the formal motivation for the resolution: Toward an Anti-Zionist Seattle DSA.

The Palestinian people, the global status quo, and our socialist movement all find themselves on a knife’s edge. In October, the Israeli settler-colonial regime unleashed the most intense phase of the genocide against Palestinians since the slaughter and expulsion of 80 percent of Palestine’s Arab population in the Nakba of 1948. Since then, the Israeli army has murdered more than 30,000 Palestinians and driven 2 million people out of their homes under a rain of bombs and bullets — weapons often designed and built right here in the Puget Sound region. When 80 percent of the global population facing acute famine conditions live in Gaza, an area the size of Seattle, there can be no uncertainty: This is a genocide.  

But as bad as things are now, if we don’t build a powerful movement to shut down the war machine, we could end up somewhere much darker. The leadership of both capitalist parties in the US have made it clear that they are in full support of this campaign of ethnic cleansing. That’s why, even after the International Court of Justice determined grounds to investigate Israel for genocide, the Biden administration continues to push for $14 billion in “aid” for the Israeli regime. The US uses their UN Security Council veto to block further international condemnation of Israel. The imperial US state and major US corporations like Boeing and Raytheon don’t just actively support the war on Palestine by providing arms and aid: these big capitalists and their political lap dogs lead the charge in widening this war as the US and Israel recklessly and murderously bomb Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Although to many people in the US and across the globe these evil and dangerous actions seem completely irrational, as socialists we understand that capitalism creates and relies on imperialism and war. Not only do war profiteers buy off our politicians at home — like our very own Congressman Adam Smith — but the global capitalist system only functions because imperialist states like the US and Israel enforce conditions of exploitation and oppression onto the vast majority of the planet. The opulence of the international capitalist class flows from the export of capital, military conquest, and the seizure of land–all dynamics playing out right now in occupied Palestine!

As socialists, we know this genocide is not merely a moral issue. The weapons manufacturers who fund politicians like Adam Smith do so because those politicians propel the US war machine. As Smith fights and votes for ever-increasing military budgets, his buddies at Boeing and Raytheon rake in money from those budgets — money that comes from our tax dollars. Meanwhile, working people in the US suffer from a housing crisis, crumbling infrastructure, an expensive and inaccessible healthcare system, and a spiraling climate emergency.

The vast riches of this system are poured right back into the war machine which perpetuates this system all over again. It is a vicious feedback loop of violence and subjugation designed to concentrate all wealth and power into the hands of capital. It does this by exploiting its workers. It does this by parasitically extracting value from the Global South. It does this by waging war and genocide against the people of Palestine. It is the same system that crushes us all, and the same struggle which will free us all!

But socialists know another world is possible. If poor and working people organize, we can build this world. We can build the power to scream a collective ‘hell no!’ If we don’t cooperate, the whole militarist system crumbles. We must build a mass socialist anti-imperialist movement that recognizes the shared interests of the people in Palestine, in the US, and throughout the world. Solidarity is not just some abstract ideal of support: It is a recognition that their fight is our fight, and that the people united will never be defeated.

As part of that organized struggle we applaud the leadership of Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush, both DSA members in Congress. In the face of fierce opposition from both major political parties, the mainstream media, and the powerful Zionist lobby, they’ve called for a ceasefire in the Israeli state’s US-backed war on Gaza from the beginning of the siege. Their courage in fighting for Palestinian liberation is exactly the standard we should hold for all DSA electeds! Rank-and-file DSA members have been showing up in the streets for Palestinian liberation for months, from New York to the Bay Area. Many are spearheading displays of solidarity, and in their struggle, are building a version of DSA that is anti-Zionist in its actions.

But if we are to be a principled anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist organization, today’s DSA must recognize its own historical complicity with the Zionist project. DSA’s main predecessor, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), was founded in a spirit of profound anti-imperialism sparked by the horror and injustice of America’s war against Vietnam. In 1973, a group of socialists led by Michael Harrington split from the Socialist Party of America because of the latter’s failure to endorse an immediate US military withdrawal from Vietnam. Paradoxically, despite anti-imperialism being its reason for existing, DSOC and then DSA were originally led by supporters of the Zionist project of an exclusionary ethno-religious state in Palestine.

How could this be? In the 1970s, the racist image of Israel as a heroic underdog fighting against the barbaric hordes was firmly fixed in the Western imagination. As a socialist, Harrington cited his belief in every people’s right to national self-determination as reason to support Israel, despite this being inherently contradictory with the rights of the Palestinians living in the region. Israel’s founder and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was a self-identified socialist who led the the primary Jewish labor federation in Palestine, Histadrut, from 1921-1935. The most famous “pioneers” of the early Zionist settler-colonial movement were socialists who lived in collective farms while holding all property in common. All this made Zionism an enticing prospect for anti-Communist socialists like Harrington and his comrades.

In other words, Harrington believed that the liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people was something which could be sacrificed in order to establish a type of socialist project. But we have seen the last 75 years of history unfold, and it is more obvious than ever: The Zionist project is not a socialist one, and it never could have been a socialist one while also participating in the ethnic cleansing and mass deportation of the people indigenous to the region. Any socialist project which treats the principles of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism as something to be compromised on can never succeed at building socialism.

Instead, it leads to what we see today: A Nakba which has been ongoing for over 75 years. The Israeli regime expelled almost 300,000 more Palestinians from the Occupied Territories in 1967 and has expelled thousands of Palestinians from their homes every year since. Since 1973, the US military-industrial complex has been Israel’s primary source of military hardware and technology. Since the end of the Cold War, the security of Israel has been the driving motivation behind America’s support for dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and their success in crushing democratic movements in the region. Israel teaches surveillance, crowd control, and torture techniques to US police officers so they can unleash them on the domestic population. That’s why we as socialists truly mean what we say: None of us are free until Palestine is free.

It is a necessity, then, that we do not compromise on our support for anti-Zionism within DSA. When DSA has compromised, and when DSA members in Congress and the national DSA leadership have opportunistically caved into electoral pressures, it hasn’t brought us power. Instead, these compromises have weakened our membership, caused division in our movement, and damaged our relationships with Palestinian organizations. When electeds like U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, and Nithya Raman take stances that are unaligned with our principles — whether it be condemning BDS, accepting endorsements from Zionist lobbies, or voting in favor of military funding to Israel — it is critical that we speak out and take concrete action to bring them back in line with our anti-Zionist commitments.

If our electeds choose to continue behaving in a manner unbefitting a socialist in office, then they do not represent us and must be unendorsed and unequivocally condemned. To do otherwise is to say that anti-Zionism is a lesser priority, something that can be compromised on in order to advance towards socialism at a local level. But we know that no socialism can be built on the back of the rejection of socialist principles! It could not be done by the settler-colonial Zionist project in Palestine, and it cannot be done here either. DSA has struggled with this issue and has failed several times. It has failed with Bowman. It has failed with Raman. But these failures do not have to be the end of the matter.

Despite DSA’s stumblings, anti-Zionism is a principle which we are committed to following. Our 2019 national convention passed several resolutions reaffirming that as an organization, we are anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist, and that we stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Simply affirming these stances will never be enough, but these resolutions are a guiding light: When DSA is at its best, we will find ourselves fully aligned in action with anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-Zionism. Where we do not find ourselves aligned, we know with certainty that such unalignment is a failure we must rectify.

Seattle DSA holds these principles to be central: where DSA nationally faltered, our chapter did not. In 2022 the NPC at the time illegitimately and anti-democratically dissolved the national BDS Working Group. Seattle DSA condemned the NPC’s actions, resolved to continue working with the BDS Working Group, and firmly declared that standing in support of Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism must be a non-negotiable red line for our electeds.

This brings us to the present. We write this text as an accompaniment to the first resolution which we plan to pass as part of concretely aligning ourselves with anti-Zionism. It is by the actions that we take that we demonstrate exactly where we stand: With the people of Palestine and with oppressed and colonized peoples around the world. Here in Seattle, DSA members have been a visible and active presence in the local anti-war movement. We’ve marched, we’ve protested, and we’ve been arrested. And we’ve been escalating our involvement further, from participating to organizing. Just last month, Seattle DSA’s Palestine Solidarity Working Group organized a successful sit-in in Congressman Adam Smith’s office, calling on Smith to commit to three demands: sign onto Cori Bush’s ceasefire bill, block military aid to Israel, and oppose any escalation by the US in the Middle East.

This is just the beginning. We are in this for the long haul. Even if a ceasefire is called today, we cannot rest until Palestine is free. So it is critical that we build solidarity and coalition across the Seattle area, across Washington state, and across the United States to fight the war machine. When we fight together, we win! But we cannot win standing alone.

It’s imperative that DSA chapters across the country continue to build the anti-war movement, and bring our socialist, anti-imperialist politics into the movement in order to strengthen it. We call on DSA’s national leadership to deepen our engagement in Palestine solidarity work and provide chapters with the resources needed to accomplish this work. We must treat this like the priority it is.

We are in dire times. Each day, it seems more and more as if the central contradictions of the era of capitalism and imperialism are clearer than they have ever before been. It is in times like these, where everyone sees the mask of decency fall off of the liberal-capitalist project, that we often have the greatest opportunities for change. It is more apparent by the day that barbarism is here, and that socialism is the only solution.

This presents a strong opportunity for successful socialist electoral projects which can demonstrate the thorough brokenness of our current state of affairs and the severe need for something better. But with this opportunity comes the struggles we have seen take place throughout DSA: How do we interact with our electeds? How do we hold them accountable and ensure that they are in line with our principles and our platform? Where should our red lines be?

We do not have all the answers yet to these questions. But with this resolution, the ones following it, and the open discussion in-between, we hope to make one thing clear: We will never abandon our solidarity with the fight for Palestinian liberation. Compromising on our principles to achieve a victory is no victory at all in the final analysis, for we cannot build a socialist project nor a socialist future if we abandon that which makes us socialist. So we are resolved: We will stand by the people of Palestine against the Zionist project, and we will stay in this fight until one day Palestine is finally free!

The post Their Fight is Our Fight: Palestinian Liberation and the Struggle for Socialism  appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

On February 9th, the far-right student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) launched a coordinated attack against members of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and other left-wing student organizations at three different Indian universities – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi University (DU), and the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU).

The ABVP is the student wing of the fascist and Hindu supremacist paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS is affiliated with the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration led by Narendra Modi, a fascist demagogue. Notorious for committing hate crimes against India’s religious and ethnic minorities, they have further cemented the power of India’s far right government. Modi himself has been a member of the RSS for nearly all his life, and helped lead their underground activities in the 1970s.

On the night of the 9th, student organizations, including the socialist Students’ Federation of India (SFI), met at the three campuses to plan for the upcoming elections to their respective Student’s unions. ABVP units at these campuses disrupted these meetings, physically assaulting SFI members, going so far as to even sexually assault female attendees. 

YDSA stands with our comrades in the Students’ Federation of India. In the face of far-right repression and surveillance, SFI activists are engaged in a heroic struggle to protect the hundreds of millions of Indians who belong to marginalized groups on the basis of ethnicity, religion, caste, and gender. The SFI is the largest socialist student organization in India, with over 4.5 million members. Its members have helped lead all manner of popular movements, such as labor and peasant struggles, anti-caste, feminist, and LGBTQ movements. In 2020, the SFI mobilized students against the Citizenship Amendment Act, a blatantly Islamophobic change to India’s immigration policy. 

As socialists, we condemn these fascist attacks against our comrades. The ABVP, and by extension, the RSS and BJP, seek to smother civil society and advance their right-wing, Hindu-supremacist agenda. YDSA is proud to stand in solidarity with the Students’ Federation of India in their courageous struggle for secularism, often at the risk of their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. 

Red Salute!

The post Condemnation of the Fascist Attacks on the Students’ Federation of India appeared first on DSA International Committee.

I watched Rustin on Netflix a couple nights ago. I highly recommend it—along with Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and PBS’s Eyes on the Prize—if you want a crash course in the Civil Rights Movement. It got me thinking about how socialists develop strategy (long term methods and goals) and tactics (individual or short term actions, campaigns, and mobilizations). 

Back then, the Civil Rights Movement had run into a roadblock on the way towards desegregating the South. President John F. Kennedy owed his election to the Black vote (and labor), but showed little urgency to repay his debt. Alabama Gov. George Wallace stepped into the vacuum in early 1963, declaring “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Connor made good on the governor’s threats, turning fire hoses and police dogs on nonviolent civil rights protesters in Birmingham on May 2. Within a few weeks, the backlash against Connor forced Kennedy’s hand and he delivered a primetime Civil Rights Address promising federal legislation. 

Enter civil rights strategist and tactician Bayard Rustin. While many Black leaders hoped Kennedy would finally act, Rustin refused to take the president at his word. He realized that the entire desegregation strategy might stall if a new tactic were not put into practice. Rather than backing off, he believed it was the time to push by calling for a national mass march and threatening to bring the capital to a halt. On August 28, 1963, 200,000 people joined the March on Washington and heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his I Have A Dream speech. Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act within a year.  It is fair to ask just how much credit Rustin’s intervention deserved; Malcolm X called it the “Farce on Washington” at the time. But there’s little doubt the march helped nationalize the movement. Studying this history is a must for activists committed to fighting for a better world and 1963 is rich in lessons for us today. 

To have a plausible chance of winning, any movement must first determine its aims and a broad strategy for achieving them. Socialist aim to overturn the power of the uber rich and the militarized states that defend their interests. Our strategy relies on mass, democratic movements of the world’s poor, oppressed, and working-classes to build up our own political parties, unions, and social movements. This strategic idea is critical, but it cannot be put into practice all at once. 

Tactics are how we put our strategy into action. The workers movement has developed a wide range of tactics over the decades dealing with unions, elections, mass protests, occupations, etc. One of the most important—and least appreciated today—is the united front. It’s the tactic that Bayard Rustin learned from communists and socialists in earlier years and which he put to such effective use in 1963. Fortunately, it’s not difficult to understand the basics. 

First, choose concrete goals. These goals must create meaningful change (the the Civil Rights Act) even if they don’t challenge each and every aspect of the system. Ideally, winning such demands draws more people into the movement and leads them to want to fight for more.  

Second, build unity between forces in labor, student, immigrant, feminist, LGTBQ, religious, progressive, non-profit, ecological, and socialist community groups, unions, organizations, and parties. These forces will not agree on everything, but they must be capable of mobilizing people to achieve our concrete goal.

Third, prepare for debate within the coalition. Sometimes, compromises within a coalition must be made to sustain the unity necessary to win; however, sometimes compromise leads to demoralization and betrayal. Knowing which is which is the art of political leadership. 

Finally, if socialists and radicals can demonstrate that they bring valuable knowledge and mobilizing power to the table, we can convince more and more people that we cannot stop fighting until we overturn the 1%.

Rustin provides a master class in how to think about the first three of these points, even as it leaves the fourth—perhaps owing to its production company—to the imagination. 

Sadly, even if we get all this right—as Rustin did in 1963—organizers can rarely rest on their laurels for long. Less than three weeks after the March on Washington, the Klan bombed the Birmingham Sixteenth Street Baptists Church, killing four African American girls.

Sixty years later, what does this mean for us in Maine? 

Thanks to generations of organizers, we have a little breathing space. It is enough to think of our brothers in sisters and gerrymandered, right-to-work, Red States—never mind the people of Gaza or Afghanistan or Central America—to understand that our relative freedom of action comes with responsibility. People in Maine have demonstrated the ability to safeguard abortion rights, welcome thousands of New Mainers, raise our minimum wage, and grow our unions. We have built a self-defense ecosystem of local and statewide movements that have protected us from right-wing populism, if only just barely and only for the moment. 

At the same time, we have not transformed the police or prisons, solved our housing crisis, made “life the way it should be” for LGTBQ youth, fully funded our public schools, or respected the sovereignty of the Abanaki peoples. We face public school budget cuts, sweeps against unhoused people, union-busting employers, an affordable housing crisis, inadequate public transportation, and a cost of living crunch. And we have to ask: How do these problems relate to building solidarity with Gaza? To challenging our governor’s veto of Wabanaki sovereignty? To confronting the MAGA threat? 

Were he with us today, the real Bayard Rustin would look for a weakness in the wall of injustices we face in Maine. He would ask who can be convinced to discuss a plan to leverage our collective strengths against that weakness. Then he would get on the phone and get to work. It’s easier said than done, but studying and discussing Rustin just might make it that much more possible.

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