UPS Teamsters are fighting for better pay, hours, and treatment on the job! If UPS doesn’t respond to workers’ demands before their contract expires on July 31, over 340,000 UPS workers are prepared to launch the largest strike in decades.

Show your support for UPS workers!

1. Do you know your UPS worker that brings packages to your work or to your home? Display this beautiful poster in your window to show your UPS worker and the community that you support their fight for a fair contract.

2. Join us next Friday, July 28 for our Strike Ready Fundraiser at the Gallatin Labor Temple! It will be an exciting night of live music to raise money for local UPS workers.

Featuring performances by:
STiLGONE
ART & FUNK COLLECTIVE
THREE PENNY RIOT

Suggested Donation $10

Donations will go to the DSA Labor Solidarity Fund, which is a national fund that supports local labor activity. Donations will support striking workers in Bozeman on this or future picket lines.

Representing around 1.1 million workers in the US and Canada in the fields of retail, grocery, healthcare, cannabis, and more, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)  is a major union with the potential to win big gains for workers. But some of its own members say the union is too top-down, lacks worker engagement and democracy, and isn't investing enough in organizing new workers in a time of increasing economic inequality and pressure on the working class. Tonight we're joined live by Enrique and Iris, two grocery worker-organizers and members of Essential Workers for Democracy, to discuss their efforts to reform their international union and "raise the floor" for workers everywhere.

Learn more about EW4D and get involved here: https://ew4d.org/

During its annual convention on July 8th, the Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) voted to censure LVDSA member and Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom for a bloated police budget as well as enabling routine police violence.

LVDSA is committed to uplifting the struggle of the working-class in social, economic, and political revolution, fighting to win a world organized and governed by and for the vast majority.

We observe Commissioner Segerblom, an elected representative and chapter member, consistently voting in favor of increased police and corrections funding year after year, including a 9.6%, $69M increase FY 2023-2024.

The Commissioner suggests, if not actively coordinates, increased policing in his district, specifically as a solution to the utterly American phenomenon of thousands of people without shelter in the wealthiest county in the history of the planet. The County and Commissioner Segerblom are cruel to deny unhoused people access to the same public spaces other human beings enjoy, in the near absence of any meaningful political will to solve what is a purely political housing crisis.

Officials increased LVMPD’s budget 37% since 2017 despite a 22% increase in use of force during the same period. 43% of LVMPD’s use of force targeted Black residents who are only 12.6% of the county, obviously indicating a consistent, historical pattern of racist policing. The Commissioner’s Ward E includes neighborhoods where there is a high concentration and largely disproportionate rate of imprisonment of Clark County residents.

DSA’s national platform affirms “incarceration, detention and policing are active instruments of class war which guarantee domination and reproduce racial inequalities” as well as poverty and mass violence. Police violence is a public health crisis, the American Public Health Association advocates the abolition of policing and prisons as we know it. The summer of rebellion of 2020 in response to police brutality and the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Tayler–among so many more–was the largest social movement in the history of the United States. Increased police/corrections funding directly contradicts the principles and platform of DSA and LVDSA, undermining a more just and equitable society.

Excessive funding solely allocated to policing perpetuates a system that diverts resources from other services and reduces the quality of life for many. Our chapter, as a grassroots democratic organization, has a responsibility to practice accountability among elected and non-elected members alike, to promote our collective platform and liberation.

LVDSA hereby censures Commissioner Segerblom for routinely voting for increased funding, enabling police violence and undermining our values as a chapter. LVDSA expresses its deep disappointment and disapproval of the failure to zealously defend the well-being of those in his district, specifically the most vulnerable who are unhoused or experiencing debilitating mental health.

LVDSA will inform and invite the community into reparative action, including the Commissioner, through statements, forums, and collaboration with organizations/collectives advocating for decarceration, decriminalization, and community-led public safety alternatives.

LVDSA members, elected or not, should promote the abolition of punitive, carceral public policy, and uphold our commitment to a different society based on mutual reciprocity, where crime is prevented by meeting basic needs, ameliorating misery, and promoting the inherent dignity of caring for one another.

Contact lasvegasdsa@gmail.com for any inquiries.

DSA +50 Orgs Condemn Biden Administration Siding With Private Prison Company CoreCivic to Keep Immigrant Detention in New Jersey

July 17th 2023

New Jersey, USA – This week, the Biden administration is expected to file an amicus brief joining private prison company CoreCivic in its attempt to keep an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison open in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The Elizabeth Detention Center, a converted warehouse with nearly 30 years of documented abuse, is approaching its contract expiration with ICE on August 31, 2023, and is barred from renewing its contract under a New Jersey state law signed by Governor Murphy almost two years ago. 

This move follows a similar Biden administration strategy in California, where the administration fought to prevent a private prison ban from taking effect.

A united coalition of New Jersey groups, calling on Governor Murphy and local, state, and federal officials to defend their residents, offered the following statement:

“The Biden Administration’s decision to side with CoreCivic, the world’s largest private prison company, is bitterly disappointing but unsurprising. New Jersey is no stranger to the uphill battle it will take to remove ICE’s abusive presence from our communities, nor the megacorporations who seek to profit off of our communities’ misery. We are proud of our history of resistance that ended ICE contracts with local counties across the state. We will continue our pressure to ensure that the Elizabeth Detention Center is closed permanently, that all people are freed, and that the building is never used to warehouse people for any purpose again.

We are in a critical moment. With a little over a month left until the contract expires, the local and state elected officials who once condemned the EDC under previous administrations must step up and condemn it today. We want to remind them of the tremendous suffering and resistance to the Elizabeth Detention Center since it opened nearly 30 years ago. Tens of thousands of people, inside and outside the prison, have protested the inhumane conditions, and at least two people, Boubacar Bah and Victor Ramirez-Reyes, have tragically died due to their detention there. 

We will continue to demand action and honor the lives destroyed by US immigration policy. We urge communities across New Jersey to join our fight to end the unnecessary, inhumane, and abuse-riddled practice of immigration detention.

We urge Governor Murphy and all elected officials to provide a prompt and public response to rebuke the Biden administration’s attempt to undermine New Jersey values.”

The post DSA +50 Orgs Condemn Biden Administration Siding With Private Prison Company CoreCivic to Keep Immigrant Detention in New Jersey first appeared on North NJ DSA.

Happy red hot summer!

UPS Teamsters have voted to go on strike August 1 if the bosses do not agree to a fair contract. Join us Sunday, July 9, 2:00-3:30 PM at the Gallatin Labor Temple (422 E Mendenhall) for a discussion about why workers go on strike and how to support UPS workers.

Suggested materials to review:

• The Chicago Teachers Strike Is a Fight for the Common Good (Article)
• Create Havoc Around our System (CHAOS) method (Video)
• Teamsters Deliver The Goods 2  (Podcast)

Other upcoming dates:

• Thursday July 13, 6:30 PM, Housing Working Group (1820 W Lincoln)
• Sunday July 16, 2:00 PM, Labor Working Group (422 E Mendenhall)
• Thursday July 20, 6:30 PM, Housing Working Group (1820 W Lincoln)
• Sunday July 23, 2:00 PM, Labor Working Group (422 E Mendenhall)
• Friday, July 28, Strike Ready Fundraiser at the Gallatin Labor Temple to raise money for a strike fund to support UPS workers if they need to strike
• Sunday, August 13, 2:00 PM, New DSA Member Orientation

Solidarity Forever

Syracuse DSA condemns the recent Supreme Court ruling that threatens protection of marginalized and colonized communities in America and dramatically limits access to the current education system. Already coming off one year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the curtailing of EPA powers to regulate air quality and carbon emissions, we already see the results of allowing hard won civil rights to remain issues of litigation as opposed to legislation. 

As socialists, we cannot sit idly by as an unelected, reactionary judicial body influenced by right-wing billionaires slowly strips the rights away from working-class people. It is up to us to organize a movement that can build the kind of world we need. A world that can meaningfully address the systemic racism woven within its structure. A world where free, high-quality education is accessible from cradle to grave.

The Supreme Court rulings show us that the ruling-class will always oppose even the most basic interests of oppressed and working-class people. Dozens of cases, ranging from Dred Scott v. Sanford, Korematsu v. United States, to Plessy v. Ferguson have upheld the right to discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender expression and sexual orientation. The most recent decisions should not be viewed as an extremist anomaly, but as a continuation of a trend—one that abets capitalist hegemony and white supremacy.

The Supreme Court, unlike every other court in the United States, has failed to adopt an ethics code that compels justices to recuse themselves from cases where there are clear conflicts of interests. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in particular, have accepted lavish trips and gifts from right-wing billionaires with business before the court. 

This makes a mockery out of a major branch of American government, instead turning it into a transparent example of the two-tiered system conservative justices might deny exists—one designed for the wealthy, and one for everyone else.

We must not let empty promises by centrist Democrats derail and thwart demands for accountability that arise organically, products of the increasingly apparent contradictions of the capitalist system. Those demands for accountability and a truly just world cannot be paralyzed by election promises, freedoms to perhaps be realized in future election cycles. People are tired of their rights being used for fundraising pitches with no intention to actualize or advocate for them—they want a society that provides for their needs and defends their humanity in the here and now.

It is up to us to wield our collective power and make a better world, one built from the ashes of the old, and inspire our neighbors and comrades to make it with us.

July 3rd, 2023

The post On the Supreme Court, July 2023 appeared first on Syracuse DSA.