BIG NEWS: Jersey City RTC proposal poised for approval next week
Right to Counsel has secured FIVE council votes for passage at June 14th's Jersey City Council meeting! With the ordinance poised for approval, we must continue to organize and ensure that the city commits to housing justice by enforcing RTC.
“They will be the fourth and fifth vote for this bill, guaranteeing its passage. Above all, their commitment to our residents means that Jersey City will pass one of the strongest Right-to-Counsel bills in the country, protecting tenants across the city.”
Facts on the Ground: Justice for Palestine
In our latest episode, we are talking about what we can do to stand up against apartheid in Palestine. A new bill sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani aims to stop nonprofits funding illegal settlements benefiting from charitable status. Zohran joins the show, along with the Adalah Justice Project's Sumaya Awad.
You can find more information about the The Not on Our Dime bill here.
You can also read the legislation here.
Teamsters Prepare For Huge National Strike if UPS Doesn’t Deliver the Goods
By Jonathan Martin
On August 4, 1997, 185,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) led by president Ron Carey began a fifteen-day strike that would cost the United Parcel Service (UPS) over $600 million. They won 10,000 full-time positions with higher salaries and benefits, and preserved Teamster’ pensions from UPS takeover.
John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO at the time, said of the strike, “You could make a million house calls, run a thousand television commercials, stage a hundred strawberry rallies, and still not come close to doing what the UPS strike did for organizing.”
On August 1, 2023, UPS Teamsters, now numbering 340,000, are ready to strike again if the company refuses to meet their demands. In an economy increasingly reliant on drivers to deliver online orders, and a logistics sector awash in COVID profits, the leverage of such a large strike is unmistakable. This would be nearly twice as large as the powerful 1997 strike; in fact, it would be the largest strike in the United States since the 1959 strike of around 500,000 steel workers.
Burned by concessions, Teamsters elect new leaders
Yet just five years ago, militant action by the Teamsters was off the table. In 2018, when a weak UPS contract was brought to the membership by James P. Hoffa’s bargaining team, they rejected it. Invoking an obscure provision in the IBT charter, Hoffa Jr. forced the contract through, angering many Teamsters.
Especially contentious was the creation of a “two-tier” system for drivers. New full-time positions that split time between driving and warehouse work would earn less pay overall, and have no protections from overtime abuse. Teamsters say that in practice these workers largely act as delivery drivers, earning less pay for the same work as others. (This video offers an in-depth explanation.)
For many Teamsters, the overriding of their vote rejecting the contract was the final straw. Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) had been organizing for decades to reform the union and elect a more militant and democratic leadership, and in November 2021 they saw success. Teamsters United, a coalition made up of Hoffa critics and TDU members, successfully elected fourth-generation Teamster Sean O’Brien as president, and TDU leader Fred Zuckerman as its secretary-treasurer.
O’Brien has promised militancy and a win for the Teamsters, no matter what it takes.
Teamsters pose an array of demands
This year, the “two-tier” system implemented in 2018 is a key bargaining issue. Removing the so-called “22.4” category for drivers would see thousands of full-time workers get an immediate bump in pay, bringing them in line with the other full-time drivers doing the same job.
The Teamsters also seek to raise the pay of part-timers, who often earn little more than minimum wage. In 1997, part-time work was a key issue that resonated with the public, and became a rallying cry for the striking workers. In an economy driven by gig and part-time work, this demand could once again be key to winning the support of the public and could galvanize demands by workers in other sectors.
Another key issue is forced overtime, where workers are required to work a sixth day of the week (called the “six-day punch”). The Teamsters also want to address the driving conditions of workers. Many UPS trucks lack air conditioning units, hospitalizing workers during heat waves.
These are some of the top national demands. However, the national contract only entered bargaining 3 weeks ago, as regional “supplements” to that contract are still being negotiated. (Currently, Oakland’s Local 70 and Zuckerman’s former Louisville local, the massive Local 89, are in the two regions that have not yet settled supplements.)
UPS has already begun to cry poor, making negative predictions about revenue in an attempt to undermine the Teamsters position. In reality, however, profits at UPS continue to grow.
According to data from TDU, UPS ships around 20 million packages each day, and made $13.8 billion in profit in 2022. It dwarfs its competitors, controlling nearly two-fifths (37%) of all revenue from package delivery services in the US. The company plans to reward its investors with $8.3 billion in dividends and buybacks 2023.
A crucial link in the supply chain, UPS moves 6% of the United States’ GDP each year. A strike could cost UPS $185 million a day.
Solidarity Delivers the Goods
In the past year, East Bay DSA and the broader community have stood in solidarity with thousands of workers on strike. This includes public education workers in Oakland, and last year’s strike of 48,000 academic workers at the University of California.
UPS Teamsters supported both those strikes, turning out to the picket line at Global Family Elementary in solidarity with OEA. Many honored loading dock pickets at UC, helping build the power of UAW’s strike.
The Teamsters’ contract fight is already mobilizing UPS workers in every state in the country, but if they are forced to strike, it could galvanize workers across the U.S. in the way that the West Virginia teachers’ strike did for education workers nationally in 2018. The current struggle represents a huge opportunity for national organizing both in the broader labor movement, and for community supporters here in the East Bay.
We can stand in solidarity by contributing to organizing funds, educating other workers about the working conditions and demands of UPS Teamsters, and preparing for a possible strike on August 1. These networks not only strengthen the power of contract fights and strikes across union lines, but represent important linkages as unions like the Teamsters seek to unionize Amazon.
DSA members and their communities are getting strike ready with UPS, and helping strengthen the wave of labor militancy sweeping across the country. Many have already pledged to support a strike. From Trader Joes and Starbucks, to the Teachers’ Unions, to UPS, our solidarity is critical in the working class’s fight against the bosses and billionaire class.
Add your name to DSA’s pledge to support a strike.
Jonathan Martin is a member of East Bay DSA.
On the Victims of Wold and Davenport
No Justice For Faisal – Cambridge City Council Rejects Move For Police Accountability
In January, Cambridge police killed Arif Sayed Faisal, a 20-year-old UMass student experiencing a mental health crisis. Despite multiple protests and community outrage in the 5 months since the shooting, neither Cambridge Police (CPD) nor the established Police Review and Advisory Board (PRAB) have taken any concrete action to address the situation.
On February 14th, CPD determined that “based on all of the information that has been reviewed so far, the department has not identified any egregious misconduct or significant policy, training, equipment, or disciplinary violations.” Perhaps this is true – but this pronouncement comes from the very party whose actions are under scrutiny. Why should we accept it at face value?
Decades ago, the PRAB ceded its power back to CPD – the very organization PRAB is supposed to monitor! The PRAB, instead of investigating allegations of police misconduct themselves, decided to let the “Cambridge Police Department conduct investigations on behalf of the board.” This is ridiculous on its face. It should go without saying that Justice without impartiality is not justice. But if the history of US police violence over the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that the police cannot be trusted to police themselves.
Per current ordinanc language, the PRAB is hand-picked by our City Manager – who is themself not elected. It is past time for an elected PRAB – not one that is 3 steps removed from the voters and that has given up on its job. If we want any transparency or accountability from CPD, we must have a review board that is (1) independent from CPD and (2) accountable to our community, not an unelected bureaucrat.
On May 22nd, City Councillor Zondervan proposed a policy order that would do just that – by putting the question of electing the PRAB on the November ballot.
This would be an opportunity for our community – a community that has shown its disappointment in the lack of police accountability and transparency in our city – to have input on police disciplinary procedures.
The process around this policy order – Order #96 – was an embarrassment to democracy. After Zondervan introduced the order, typically it would have been discussed, debated, delayed (if councillors wanted more time for consideration), and ultimately, voted on. Instead, Councillor Toner did something virtually unprecedented: he motioned immediately to end debate and move straight to a vote.
His motion passed with a 6-3 vote, with Councillors Zondervan and Nolan, as well as Mayor Siddiqui, dissenting. (It’s worth pointing out that besides Zondervan, the other two dissenting voices presumably voted no because they wanted to speak on the order.)
Councillor Toner’s platform lists “promoting civil and inclusive dialogue” as his number one campaign priority. It was anything but civil and inclusive for Councillor Toner to end debate before his colleagues had had a chance to speak. His motion was disrespectful and anti-democratic, and it flew in the face of his own stated highest principles. Disgraceful.
The other five councillors who supported the motion to end debate are also to blame. It’s one thing to disagree with the proposal, but it’s another altogether to stifle debate on it. What were they afraid of?
Once that motion passed, Order #96 was voted on and failed 1-8, with Zondervan as the lone “aye” vote. Many councillors expressed that their “no” votes were based not on the content of the order itself but the spontaneity of its introduction and the lack of prior discussion on it. But these are the same councillors who voted to close discussion!
If these councillors had wanted more time to consider the order before open debate, there is a separate option for that: City Councillors have the right to delay a vote on a proposed order until the next council meeting. This is a commonly used tool among councillors to ensure they can make informed decisions before taking votes. That six of our nine councillors chose to close discussion outright rather than exercise this option has no justification. All six of these councillors say they want to do everything they can in the aftermath of what happened to Faisal, but when given the chance to discuss legislation that’s popular with their constituents and could have actually made a difference, they abruptly abandoned those commitments.
When they did so, they also abandoned their commitment to listen to their constituents. In fact, the idea of a democratically elected PRAB was conceived not by Zondervan but by a group of constituents who asked him to propose the order.
This episode was a gross miscarriage of democracy and showed a disturbing disconnect between the City Council and their constituents – the working-class Cambridge community. The order’s failure shows that the council is not listening to the growing movement of people demanding justice for Faisal and accountability from the police, which is itself beyond disheartening, and the manner in which the bill failed is equally, if not more, infuriating.
The Council’s redundant policy rules forbid any councillor from reintroducing this legislation this cycle, meaning no one will be able to propose this order until 2024. Cambridge won’t have the option to vote on whether we want an elected PRAB in 2023. With this shameful, anti-democratic vote, the Council has determined that the voters can’t be trusted to decide what police accountability looks like – despite the complete inaction and lack of transparency surrounding Faisal’s murder.
I hope the voters will keep this in mind as we elect our council this November – and that we replace these vanguards of the status quo with a city council that will uphold democracy and fight for police accountability. As proud socialists, we know that civilian monitoring and investigatory oversight of the police is not the end of the road. We know that the only thing that will stop police brutality is defunding and abolishing the police. But we have to start somewhere. We can start by watching and recommending discipline.
Review: “Occupation: Organizer” by Clément Petitjean
Occupation: Organizer by Clément Petitjean offers a comprehensive historical examination of the variety of contexts in which a century of community organizing has operated and evolved and how interest groups, political organizations, philanthropic organizations, and movements have shaped the practice and the process of its professionalization — with Chicago inevitably at the epicenter of his analysis.
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“My goal in this book is to challenge these misconceptions and take community organizing as a serious object of critical analysis. In order to do so, we need to look at community organizers not so much as individuals, with their stories and backgrounds, but as the members of a particular social group, with its own values, norms, and material and symbolic interests, which exists as a relatively autonomous entity.”
These misconceptions that Clément Petitjean refers to in Occupation: Organizer: A Critical History of Community Organizing in America are of those on both the Right and Left that dismiss community organizing from having measurable worth, as well as its association as solely being a byproduct of the nonprofit industrial complex or philanthropic organizations. Petitjean also implores us to look beyond the celebritization of organizers—namely the Saul Alinskys and Barack Obamas of the world—and understand the actual function and evolution of community organizing with all of its contradictions, messiness, and tedious work considered all at once. The book is predominantly framed around the question and the process of the professionalization of the practice.
This framing, mostly by necessity and perhaps to the collective sigh of many socialist organizers, starts with the life of Saul Alinsky. Petitjean emphasizes that unpacking Alinsky’s legacy is done so in the book not so much to biographize and certainly not to elevate it, but rather to examine the “professionalization dynamics” that Alinsky contributed to the field of community organizing in an inarguably lasting way. This examination unravels into virtually every imaginable dimension of the Left ecosystem from the 1930s up through the last part of Alinsky’s life in the New Left movement in the 1960s and 1970s (he passed away in 1972). But it also takes note of how the Right has co-opted Alinsky’s work, by taking note of his tactics and giving them a conservative twist—a testament to a key component in Alinsky’s approach: stimulating civic participation using a universally applicable model which is also ideologically agnostic. Alinsky, in a 1959 letter to a social reform-minded priest named John O’Grady, essentially stated as such as part of his initial guiding practices:
“[create] a responsible area of authority which possesses the loyalty of the people by virtue of its active representation and implementation of the people’s hopes and desires.”
We also briefly learn how the academic and literary arguments for and the institutionalization of community organizing initially took place in the 1910s and 1920s to the chagrin of social workers — a practice that was professionalized decades earlier and was still in the process of defining itself as well. In fact, the professionalization of social work produced a culture in the field that rejected social and political reform as its components.
Prior to his engagement in community organizing, Alinsky studied in the first Sociology department in the U.S. at the University of Chicago under Ernest Burgess and Robert E. Park, both of whom had a lasting impact on his life work and instilled in Alinsky an “obsession with conflict and power.” They saw conflict as necessary to shaping the fabric of society in order for its power dynamics to be properly understood. The city of Chicago was where their vision was applied and theory of change was practiced. One of Alinsky’s first endeavors after college was the Chicago Area Project (CAP) which ran off of public and private funds (some from the Rockefeller Foundation). CAP was seen as “a direct application of the Progressive-Era belief that social surveys could be used as a tool for social reform.” CAP would send organizers into Chicago neighborhoods that they perceived as disorganized or prone to civic disorganization and would predominantly target youth, being that their goal was to spark a self-help project to provide social and educational services to the neighborhood. CAP was premised on the rejection of casework, seen as an “individualizing, psychoanalysis-inspired practice” (another highlight of the tension between social work and community organization) and government-driven social intervention. Alinksy’s vision, that being the pursuit of natural leaders by professional community outsiders, marked the initial development in practice of the theories of community organizing he developed under Burgess and Park.
One of Alinsky’s cornerstone projects came to be the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) which he founded with the help of Bishop Bernard Sheil in 1939 to organize existing organizations in the neighborhood around shared goals in spite of its ethnic divisions (that being western European immigrants of different ethnicities—interracial organizing that included Black residents was not on the table). One of BYNC’s first victories was putting pressure on Armour, the meatpacking company, to recognize their employees’ union and offer wage increases. BYNC was heralded as a model for civic democracy in the press throughout the early 1940s, and saw recognition from President Truman. Its success provided validation for Alinsky to continue his entrepreneurial project of community organization rather than settling for a relatively more stable career in social work or academia.
He went on to form the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940 and continued to build upon the concept of professional community organizing, and had still managed to avoid any association of his work with anti-communism throughout the first couple years of its founding. But as time went on, Alinsky’s original intentions unraveled differently. Returning to the aforementioned letter from priest John O’Grady to one of the most powerful Vatican officers in 1959, Cardinal Secretary of State Domenico Tardini, O’Grady highlighted Alinsky’s work as not having direct roots in the faith tradition but still serving as a model to fight apathy and demoralization that communism was not equipped to address. Alinksy went on to validate this with O’Grady after the correspondence took place. Petitjean goes on to elaborate as to how Alinsky used professionalization as its own version of anti-communism, and how Alinsky’s self-styled hard-headedness and pragmatism paved a path for him to show how his “radical” approach made him stand apart from other professional organizations, to the extent that he would attempt to set himself apart from “establishment” or “sell-out” liberals. Ironically, IAF organizers out in the field were sent out to parts of the country they had no familiarity with and would report back to their supervisors or Alinksy himself of the low wages, long hours, and work overload as a result of staffing shortages. Sexism also produced deep resentments and lack of opportunity in Alinksy’s IAF. Alinksy’s biographer, Sanford Horwitt, noted that “Alinsky’s attitude toward women (which changed somewhat by the end of his life) was typical of the male world of Chicago politics and especially of the CIO subculture.”
In spite of the trouble behind the scenes at the IAF, the media continued to praise Alinsky’s work as a polished and technicalized approach throughout the 1950s and more so into the 1960s. This revealed itself to be a crucial time in which Alinsky’s so-called radicalism began to be put to the test. The Economist published “Plato on the Barricades” in 1967 to argue that Alinsky’s strategy proved more effective in organizing the Black population than Stokey Carmichael’s or Martin Luther King’s—perhaps not a surprising expression from The Economist in the 1960s, but an audacious and racist assertion nonetheless. Petitjean illustrates:
“A month before the Economist piece on Alinsky, Martin Luther King delivered his famous Riverside Church speech, where he took a strong public stance against the war in Vietnam and connected the civil rights movement with a broader fight against US imperialism. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other dominant newspapers all lambasted King’s speech. Instead, Alinsky’s ‘radicalism,’ which contained no anti-imperialist element, no support for the anticolonial revolutions underway in the third world, and defined politics in technical terms (‘we’re just technicians trying to organize the people’), was a much more suitable candidate for the media’s patriotic defense of the social order and the status quo.”
What’s further telling of the depoliticized nature of Alinsky’s ground game was the last decade of his life, in which he resorted to consulting large corporations. Although he suggested to his peers that the attention he received from the corporate scene wouldn’t compromise or adversely affect his underlying cause, he played directly into the emerging trend at the time of corporate social responsibility. It became all the more clearer that omitting an ideological approach was a key fixture to Alinksy’s work so that it “could be pitched to basically any group that sought to implement ‘change,’” and in Alinsky’s own words, “as long as the clients adhered to core Judeo-Christian moral values.” We see in returning to how the IAF was run in addition to how he communicated his theory of change towards the end of his life that his intentions were very individualistic from the onset, and his successor’s insistence on the mere existence of the “Alinsky method” cemented the idea of the professionalization of the field was valid and effective as an organizational model to be carried forth.
The second half of the book examines the development of community organizing in the latter part of the 20th century by first examining the reaction of organizations and individual organizers to the Alinsky method and the tensions during the civil rights movement that were seen in overlapping organizing networks of the time. Petitjean looks at the emergence of local community networks during the 1960s which favored “the development of oppressed people’s collective leadership to achieve emancipatory structural change,” and was often deliberately anti-institutional, and described by Petitjean as “spadework.” Petitjean looks at four specific examples that invoked the spadeworker tradition: “SNCC’s activity in the Deep South; the attempt by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to build an ‘interracial movement of the poor’; the creation of politicizing positions and vehicles by war on poverty legislation; and the Black power movement’s emphasis on organizing at the local level.”
They practiced a bottom-up approach that rejected the boundaries established by the professionalization of organizing, with no distinct individual or organization that constituted the center of it to amass social capital in the way that Alinsky did. In spite of concerted attempts to disassociate with the professionalization of community organizing and even in cases where local residents themselves were recruited for their respective organizing efforts, the attachment of a specific agenda to their work clouded their mission, especially given that residents weren’t necessarily conscious of any given organizer’s political agenda, of which there certainly was one.
A notable event in which the Alinksy and New Left worlds collided was in the summer of 1964 when IAF board member Ralph Helstein attempted to train SDS members in the proto-Alinsky method. The meeting was not successful: Alinksy saw SDS organizers as naive, and SDS saw Alinsky’s approach as too liberal and absent a political vision. Although SDS organizers were clearly onto something in identifying Alinsky’s shortfalls, they ironically ended up reproducing efforts of Alinsky’s anyway, such as the use of social surveys to perform political work. Petitjean points out the similarities in the Alinsky and spadeworker tradition: ethnographic community immersion, leadership identification and attempting to let the people speak for themselves, and the development of specific goals removed from abstraction. And as it perfectly fits into ongoing debates of the educational backgrounds of leftists today, spadeworker development was almost always fueled by student movements or the college-educated. The Black Panther Party’s development likely would not have come to be without its college-educated core.
The organizing culture from the 1970s to the end of the century gradually became more of an effort to capture populist sensibilities in the context of practicing hyperlocal politics—and attitudes that shaped these practices were often seeded in a deep mistrust of government in general, also serving as an interesting backdrop to the early years of the development of neoliberalism. “Grassroots” political action was coined and developed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, driven not only by consultants of some of the most well-funded electoral campaigns of the time but also the advocacy organizations that now constitute our modern non-profit industrial complex. This caused the concept of community organizing to expand beyond unforeseen levels of reach and influence. To add to it, philanthropic donations went on to triple from the 1970s to the late 2010s.
Throughout now-Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign it has been easy to catch Chicago organizers and advocates for Johnson, rightfully so, comparing his campaign and tactics with that of Harold Washington: emphasis on the intention to place input from neighborhood groups into motion and listen to (and eventually employ) professional organizers. As this developed during Washington’s term, community organizing also managed to find its way into conservative and reactionary tendencies as exemplified by the founding of Save Our Neighborhoods, Save Our City (SON-SOC). Petitjean notes the context in which SON-SOC developed:
“Both organizations were started by IAF-trained organizers in the 1970s in neighborhoods where white ethnics responded to the arrival of African American and Hispanic families with reactionary language and methods. In these neighborhoods, the dog-whistle rhetoric used by people like Republican mayoral candidate Bernard Epton and alderman Ed Vrdolyak, the leader of the anti-Washington faction during the infamous ‘Council Wars,’ resonated widely. During SON-SOC’s first convention in 1984, the 750 delegates issued a ‘Declaration of Neighborhood Independence,’ soon nicknamed the ‘white ethnic agenda,’ centered on neighborhood preservation and opposition to racial integration.”
This served as one of many examples alongside the quickly changing landscape of nonprofits, volunteer organizations, philanthropic organizations, labor unions, and political campaigns that produced a vast array of competing interests with the ascension of neoliberalism as its backdrop. It contributes to the murkiness of the concept of community organizing itself: is it inherently liberal, conservative, reactionary, radical, local, or political? Any of these descriptors could be assigned to community organizing throughout its development. It’s on this basis that Petitjean dismisses any notion that community organizers are either homogeneous or exist in a social vacuum. He concludes that community organizers do inhabit a “subaltern position” in the political ecosystem, although it may also be fair to critique how subaltern their position actually is considering the current political moment in Chicago and the influence that community organizers had on Mayor Johnson’s successful campaign.
Petitjean also concludes with looking at professionalization dynamics through a “prism” to see what type of work is done and how. In examining professionalization, he neither concludes that unpaid volunteer work should be put on a pedestal or romanticized, nor does he conclude that a wide network of paid professionals is sufficient to sustain itself. He argues that lulls in movements provide the most difficult scenarios to advocate for deprofessionalization, “since defending the group’s dwindling resources can appear as a more reachable and desirable goal”—with philanthropists contributing to the dialectic of constraining organizing work while at the same time keeping it financially afloat.
Petitjean frames three approaches to effective and sustainable community organizing to consider:
- Continue offering community organizers paid roles, but in a way that is removed from any sense of academic or professional superiority
- Interrogate organizational dynamics themselves: their structure, how volunteers and paid staff relate to one another and identify sources of conflict and address them, and how roles are specialized
- Making organizer roles deliberately temporary, allowing many people to practice them over time to produce a longer term act of knowledge-sharing that is closer to Ella Baker’s idea of “group-centered leadership”
There are a myriad of factors to consider for not only developing a self-sustaining strategy of community organizing for the modern Left, but to also avoid running in circles. What does it really mean to produce an environment in an organization where its paid organizers aren’t naive young adults fresh out of college and falling into a self-righteous modus operandi? How easily can conflict and task division be predicted and addressed in a substantial way that doesn’t have a problematic director or broader leadership team serving as a bottleneck? Are horizontal organizing tactics always doomed to failure, or is it possible for an organically self-reproducing culture in an organization possible in establishing long-term goals? Alinsky provided us procedures absent a democratically-minded politics and painted the organizer as a hero, while the New Left and many segments of the modern Left exhibit deep convictions of democracy at their core, while having an historic propensity to dissolve or burn out. How do we survive?
Occupation: Organizer is a must-read for activists, activists-becoming-organizers, and of course organizers themselves whether their area of focus be politics, labor, or running a neighborhood block club. The way forward is not remarkably clear after reading, but the historical lessons the book provides are critical to shaping our understanding of the organizing world as it is, and what we’re at an advantage to avoid.
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Occupation: Organizer was released on Haymarket Books on April 18, 2023. The author and Executive Director of In These Times magazine, Alex Han, recently held a conversation about the book at Haymarket House in Chicago which can be viewed here.
The post Review: “Occupation: Organizer” by Clément Petitjean appeared first on Midwest Socialist.
Atlanta DSA condemns charges against Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers and calls for Democratic Referendum on Cop City
Yesterday, three organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund were arrested by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on charges of “money laundering” and “charity fraud” in an apparent effort to develop a RICO-like case against the Stop Cop City protest movement. These charges against civil rights organizers represent yet another scare tactic and unwarranted escalation by the same elite forces conspiring to build Cop City. We call for the immediate release of the arrested organizers with all charges dropped.
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund has for years provided bail and legal support for peaceful protestors — it is not a criminal organization. We stand in solidarity with the defendants against the corrupt politicians, police foundation, billionaires, and corporations pushing to undemocratically destroy public forests and build Cop City. It’s notable that the same Georgia prosecutors who routinely ignore blatant corruption at City Hall and the State Capitol are instead taking aim at working-class Atlantans fighting to preserve public land through peaceful protest. These arrests are acts of political repression by a right-wing, minoritarian regime which rules society to serve a handful of wealthy elites.
Since 2021, thousands of Atlanta residents have peacefully campaigned to oppose Cop City by legal and democratic means. All violent conflict over Cop City has been instigated by Mayor Andre Dickens, Brian Kemp’s State police, and the major corporations behind the Atlanta Police Foundation. Mayor Dickens and the Atlanta City Council have repeatedly and brazenly ignored the concerns of local residents and voters in authorizing the destruction of public Atlanta forest land and the violent eviction raid on peaceful protestors — all culminating in GBI’s violent murder of an environmental protester.
No amount of police repression can silence the voices of working-class Atlantans who are united in our resolve to stop Cop City. The crisis over this development has been ongoing for two years, and the popular resistance against Cop City will continue until Atlanta residents are able to decide on this issue in a free and fair election. We call on the Atlanta City Council to vote NO and reject the allocation of construction funds for Cop City. Instead, the council should order a democratic referendum to let the people of Atlanta decide whether the construction should proceed in the upcoming general election already scheduled for November 7, 2023.
Statement from the Atlanta DSA Steering Committee
A 2023 Delegate’s Guide to Learning from the 2021 Convention (Or: A Mandate, not a Menu)
Statement on Hotel Davenport Building Collapse
Socialism Conference 2023
No one is coming to save us, but us.
We need visionary politics, collective strategy, and compassionate communities now more than ever. In a moment of political uncertainty, the Socialism Conference—September 1-4, in Chicago—will be a vital gathering space for today’s left. Join thousands of organizers, activists, abolitionists, and socialists to learn from each other and from history, assess ongoing struggles, build community, and experience the energy of in-person gatherings.
A four day conference featuring dozens of panels, lectures, and workshops organized by groups from all over the country, the Socialism Conference will facilitate exchanges between existing activists and organizations, while also welcoming new layers of politically curious people as part of rebuilding our radical traditions and movements.
Featured speakers at Socialism 2023 will include: Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D.G. Kelley, aja monet, Bettina Love, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Sophie Lewis, Harsha Walia, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Astra Taylor, Malcolm Harris, Kelly Hayes, Daniel Denvir, Emily Drabinski, Ilya Budraitskis, Dave Zirin, and many more.
The Socialism Conference is brought to you by Haymarket Books and dozens of endorsing left-wing organizations and publications, including DSA. Visit socialismconference.org to learn more and register today.
Register for Socialism 2023 by July 7 for the early bird discounted rate! Registering TODAY is the single best way you can help support, sustain, and expand the Socialism Conference. The sooner that conference organizers can gauge conference attendance, the bigger and better the conference will be!
Socialism 2023 Covid-19 Policies:
Attendees are expected to wear a mask (N95, K95, or surgical mask) over their mouth and nose while indoors at the conference. Masks will be provided for those who do not have one.
A number of sessions from the conference will also be live-streamed virtually so that those unable to attend in person can still join us.