DSA at the national level has been going through a rough time. The current National Political Committee (NPC) has been hard at work preparing the budget for the next fiscal year. Unfortunately, this has been a much harder time than anyone could have expected. The NPC elected at our latest convention inherited a financial deficit of $1,054,490. This is due to a number of factors. Our last convention voted to fund a number of campaigns, such as giving more resources to locals in order to help elect DSA members to school boards, allowing YDSA to participate in dues sharing, and creating full-time paid political leadership positions like national co-chairs and NLC co-chairs. The previous NPC also hired 12 new staffers to help with the influx of members that joined in 2020 due to the Bernie campaign and the George Floyd uprising. This increase in spending, plus the loss of membership DSA has had since 2021, has caused our national deficit to become untenable. The current NPC has voted to slash many of the spending priorities I mentioned above, but even after this, the organization will be left with a deficit of over $500,000. This made the majority of the NPC propose cuts to the national organization’s staff. You may be hearing this and thinking there is nothing you can do to help the situation. But you can by signing up for Solidarity income-based dues! At our last convention, we passed a resolution titled “Give Our 1% for the 99%,” allowing members the option to give one percent of their yearly income to the national organization. Many chapters have been participating in Solidarity Dues drives to get as many members as possible to sign up for income-based dues. And we have had amazing success. In fact, our projected income was increased by $420,000! While our deficit is still large, we should do everything we can to lower it. This will allow us to fund as many campaigns as possible and hopefully lessen the number of staff we will have to lay off. You may be asking yourself, “I’d love to sign up for this, but I don’t know how!” Luckily, a member of DSA’s national editorial board created this helpful explainer on how to sign up! This link will take you to a post made to the national organization’s discussion board. Let’s all chip in our 1% for the 99% and build the socialist movement!

GET INVOLVED: Update your member dues to solidarity dues here. If you’re not a member of DSA yet, you can join now using the same link. 

2023 was a watershed year for the city of Columbia’s hostile response to the rising unhoused population. Spearheaded by Republican mayor Daniel Rickenmann, the city has passed several ordinances that only make life more difficult for this vulnerable population. Condemned by the SC ACLU and a large group of local advocacy groups, these new rules empower police to arrest anyone sleeping outside, using a shopping cart, or possessing the ill-defined “drug paraphernalia,” which includes simply having a metal spoon. In addition, the city has sought to move services like Oliver Gospel Mission and Transitions Shelter out of the city center, and has a projected budget of $30 million dollars for this move which could otherwise go to more constructive efforts.

Columbia DSA’s mutual aid working group has worked tirelessly to continue to support the unhoused population despite these challenges. We have raised $1500 in the past eight months for several projects, including purchasing bus tickets and other direct aid to members of the community. This is in addition to the weekly food services provided on Saturdays and Sundays, which include cooked hot food, sandwiches, drinks, and hygiene products.

GET INVOLVED: Do you want to help? Donate directly to the Unhoused Benefit Fund. Volunteer for weekly food distribution on Saturdays at 12pm or Sundays at 1pm by emailing dsaofcolumbia@gmail.com. If those times and days are not accessible for you, we ask that members carry necessities like food and water in personal vehicles for individual distribution, especially as temperatures climb in the summer.

Peninsula DSA Supports Single Inclusive Democratic State for Palestinians and Israelis

SAN MATEO, July 16, 2024 - Following the leadership of our comrades in Chicago DSA, Peninsula (CA) DSA voted at our June 2024 General Membership Meeting to declare our support for a political vision of one democratic state in Palestine. We identify Zionism’s politicization of identity and Israel’s nature as a state exclusive to Jews as a root cause of the suffering and injustice which Israel has inflicted upon the people of Palestine, and we believe that true peace and liberation can only be achieved by the dismantling of the apartheid, settler-colonial state and the establishment of one democratic state in its stead.

The material reality is that a two-state solution is not feasible, and it has long been more of an aspirational myth rather than a serious policy proposal. In the words of Jewish Currents contributing editor Joshua Leifer, the idea is little more than a “political fiction” which gives liberal Zionists a way “to reconcile their seemingly contradictory commitments to both ethnonationalism and liberal democracy.” Since the 1970s, when Palestinian intellectuals first proposed a “mini-state” on 22% of historic Palestine, Israel has continuously redefined the conceptual Palestinian state to include ever-less territory and to hold ever-less sovereignty. By the 1980s, there were already 100,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, prompting former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meron Benvenisti to warn that it was “five minutes to midnight” for the two-state solution. Now, there are over 650,000 settlers in the West Bank, and settlers, emboldened by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, are committing even more violence and stealing more Palestinian land. The two-state solution—which has come to mean a fragmented Palestine under de facto Israeli control—cannot generate a movement powerful enough to bring liberation to Palestine; it only provides cover for ongoing ethnic cleansing.

For this reason we support a movement for a single, inclusive state between the river and the sea that is:

• Democratic. All citizens would be equal in the eye of the state, including its laws, institutions and policies, regardless of identity. This includes the right of those who have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine to return and enjoy full citizenship.
• Secular. Freedom of worship would be guaranteed, and one’s religion or identity would not be a factor in granting or denying rights to citizens or non-citizens.
• Socially just. Stolen land, homes and property would be restituted to all victims of dispossession. Resources and social welfare would be allotted fairly to all citizens. The income, poverty and education gaps would be bridged.

Finally, we call on national DSA to likewise declare its support of one democratic state in Palestine: a “one-person, one-vote” state in which everyone is represented equally, regardless of ethnicity, religion, origin, etc. As socialists it is our responsibility to imagine what a just world would look like and share that vision with the world. Without democracy, self-determination is impossible, and without full equal rights under a secular state, there can be no democracy for the Palestinian people. Separate can never be equal.

Further reading:

• “What Does ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really Mean?” (2021), Jewish Currents
• “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return” (2021), Jewish Currents
• The Resilient Fiction of a Two-State Solution” (2020), Jewish Currents
• “Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine” (2020), Jewish Currents
• “The Case for the One Democratic State Initiative as a Counter-Hegemonic Endeavor” (2023), Mondoweiss
• One Democratic State Initiative

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