India Walton will be the 63rd Mayor of the City of Buffalo. She won by inspiring and organizing people through a plain-spoken, class-conscious message. She will be one of the most significant executives in the country to be a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the first woman to hold this office. 

The Buffalo chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, a socialist organization driven by member dues and decisions, backed India Walton in February with a unanimous vote. We recognize Walton as of and for the working class. We admire her intentional organizing on healthcare as a proud nurse. We value her focus on labor agitation, police and justice reform, community housing, the rights of tenants over landlords, and leadership development.

“All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours. We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.” – India Walton

Buffalo will be the largest American city to have a socialist mayor since Milwaukee in 1960. In 1917, the Socialist Party mayoral candidate won over 30% of the vote on an anti-war platform in Buffalo. Over 100 years later, we are proud to support the mayor-elect’s platform that rejects austerity and places the class interests of workers and tenants over the extractive private interests that have run our government.

India Walton’s organizing approach was rooted in the working class. She united left groups and volunteers in canvassing and phonebanking to discuss values like the demilitarization of police, removal of predatory fines, and prioritization of community infrastructure and public education. This campaign overturned Byron Brown, a corrupt stooge, after 16 years. The ruling class all over the country flooded his campaign with more than $100,000 in the week before the election, hoping for the charter school lobby and billionaires to advance their interests in our city government. But as India shouted with her supporters Tuesday evening, “when we organize, we win.”

We applaud the efforts of all involved in this campaign, and thank the Buffalo DSA Electoral members who maintained an independent strategy and support system to petition, canvas, phonebank, and get out the vote for mayor-elect India Walton. We invite all Buffalonians who want to continue member-directed organizing at the point of class conflict, such as in labor, healthcare, and housing, who want to receive and grow socialist political education, and who want to participate in developing our electoral strategy, to join DSA and be part of the life of this organization.

Buffalo DSA is looking forward to proudly working alongside the executive of our city in our collective fight against capital, and we extend our most heartfelt thanks and congratulations.

Yesterday was election day in New York. Since we’re dealing with the New York Board of Elections and the new ranked choice voting system here in New York City, many of the results are not yet finalized. DSA for the City candidate Tiffany Caban won her city council race in Queens while the rest of DSA endorsed candidates await the final results. Upstate in Buffalo India Walton won the Democratic Party primary for Mayor and a number of Rochester DSA endorsed candidates won their elections. Socialism continues to have unprecedented success at the ballot box in New York, but there is clearly so much work left to be done.

The Queer community has made huge strides towards social acceptance in this country, but there is still work to be done. In the state of New Jersey, the “Trans Panic” defense has been outlawed, and this March, the “Queer Senior Bill of Rights” was signed into law, barring senior care facilities from discriminating against seniors based on their orientation, gender identity, and HIV status, but key protections, such as transwomen’s rights to compete in sports, are still only under executive purview, and not codified in law.

This leaves us vulnerable to the whims of future administrations. Right now, there is even a bill to prevent transwomen from competing in women’s sports, a position rooted only in bigotry, and not at all in science. It seems to have died in committee, but it still poses a threat to the rights and dignity of transpeople in our state. We do not want to go down the road of other states, such as Florida, where minors are to have their genitals inspected by adults before competitions. Such egregious actions are not only a violation of transpeople, but of all people who wish to compete, and such systems are begging to be abused. We call on the state legislature and governor, Phil Murphy, of New Jersey to enshrine the rights of trans athletes in law so as to prevent such heinous abuses from encroaching upon us in the future.

Happy Pride Month! As a bisexual woman of color and as a new mom, I am so proud to share this time with you as we celebrate the beauty of the queer community. I am thankful to stand beside all of you as we fight for liberation. Yet the capitalists and the police state have tried to co-opt our struggle. Everywhere you walk in New York you can see banks, corporations, and cop cars decorated with rainbows in an effort to conceal that these institutions remain forces of domination against the oppressed people of the world. The Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) will take to the streets on Sunday, June 27th to stage the third annual Queer Liberation March. We’re joined by Natalie James, Saje Liese, and NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for city council Tiffany Caban to discuss the upcoming action and much more.

The city and county of La Crosse are each receiving over $20 million in stimulus funding. The broad left community must act together to ensure that public oversight and input are the driving force in spending this funding. This level of funding is a once in generation opportunity to pay for projects that can save lives and uplift our community as a whole. Please get involved in the decision making process.

Coulee Tenants United, CouleeDSA’s tenant organizing working group, is participating in 2 nights programming at the La Crosse Public Library on Housing and Homelessness this month. CTU is a working group dedicated to educating, organizing, and empowering renters in the Coulee region.

Part 1 on June 21st at 6:30 PM is focused on homelessness, while part 2 on June 28th at 6:30 PM covers housing, development, market and non-market solutions, and tenancy struggles. Follow the links to get registered. Program recordings will be available for those who can’t make it in person.

Long-term, systemic solutions to the housing crisis require large up front investment. Demanding that this historic stimulus bill is leveraged to better our community through permanent projects should be a priority. Reach out to us at CouleeDSA@gmail.com or at our Facebook page if you want to get involved.

The post Housing and Homelessness programming with CTU: Systemic problems and Solutions first appeared on Coulee DSA.

On June 8th, the Washoe County Dems announced that they would coordinate the state’s Democratic election campaigns, receiving statements of support from Governor Sisolak, Sen. Cortez Masto, State Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, and State Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.

This decision to run these campaigns outside of the state party is, in reality, an attempt to run these campaigns outside the oversight of Nevada Democrats. It is a move that purposefully circumvents the mandate of the State Central Committee and disregards the results of our free and fair officer elections. We decry this shameless bid to ignore the voices and values of the Nevadans these representatives claim to serve.

We recognize that this is only the latest development in a continued assault on the right of Nevada Democrats to govern their own party. Ever since the election of Chair Whitmer and the Progressive Slate, the political elite has made it clear that it has no intention of respecting the choices of rank-and-file members.

It is time for us to send a message: free, fair, and open democracy is not a slogan – it is a foundational principle that we, as a party, must embody.

It is for this very reason that we organized around Chair Whitmer. It is for this reason that we voted for the Progressive Slate. It is for this reason that we are proud to continue to support their bold agenda of transformative change – bringing genuine inclusivity, transparency, and bottom-up democracy to our party. We remain united in our vision for a better world and a party that gives us all a say in building it. Directing our movement is not a privilege granted to us by our representatives, it is our right.

Nevada’s working people deserve to be treated as partners in the democratic process, not as subjects to be dictated to by a wealthy and privileged elite.  In the coming primary season, Democrats will remember who among our representatives stood for the choice of the people and who stood only for themselves.

Left Caucus and Las Vegas DSA remain committed to their mission of lifting up the voices of Nevada’s working class and marginalized communities, transcending our differences and uniting us in our shared struggle for justice, equality, and democracy. When we fight together, we win together.

June 1st marked the start of a newly elected SC, contact buffalodsa@gmail.com to get involved and subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date >>>>>

You’re listening to Revolutions Per Minute live on WBAI 99.5fm. We’re a socialist radio show and podcast from members of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with 95,000 members nationwide and NYC-DSA is its biggest chapter. We are run by our 7,000+ members and organizers who are working together to build democratic socialism in all five boroughs. As our returning listeners are well aware of, there is currently an ongoing struggle for Public Power here in New York. Earlier today, ecosocialists organizers held a rally outside city hall to demand the transformation of our statewide energy system necessary to avoid climate catastrophe. We’ll share with you protest sounds and speech from the action. Later in the show I’ll speak with DSA anti imperialist organizers Olivia Katbi Smith and Dylan Saba about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israeli aparthied. DSA supports freedom of movement and equal civil and democratic rights for all people across the world. Palestinians are no exception. We’ll discuss how an anti imperialist analysis reveals how ruling classes across the region and especially here in the United States profit and are empowered by the current state of affairs. International working class solidarity is the only solution.

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