It’s budget season again here in New York! We caught up with freshman Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha to talk about a major development in the fight for Public Power here in New York State and what her budget priorities are in her first year in office.  

And in City budget news, Eric Adams is using the influx of migrants to justify an austerity budget this year. His preliminary budget proposes deep cuts to public education, libraries and other essential social services- while it appears he is leaving the New York Police Department budget untouched. Desiree and Caitlin have been doing mutual aid work with migrants and are joining us live tonight to give us an update on what happened to the migrants who camped outside the Watson Hotel and to comment on the Mayor’s austerity budget.  

To call your rep and urge them to Tax the Rich and include Build Public Renewables in the budget, visit https://taxtherichny.com/contact-your-reps/

To connect with Desiree and Caitlin you can show up to the Red Hook Mutual Aid Store at 147 Pioneer Street in Brooklyn and follow South Bronx Mutual Aid on twitter @SBXMutualAid and on Instagram @southbronxmutualaid

On Feb. 21st Boston DSA emailed out the following call to action to Boston residents encouraging them to give public testimony on how the Mayor’s rent control proposal is in need of serious changes

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 22nd, at 10 am the Boston City Council will be hearing public comment on the Mayor’s proposed rent control legislation. Unfortunately, the proposal as is does not adequately protect tenants from increasing rents. It excludes many renters’ landlords and still allows for annual rent increases of 6 percentage points more than inflation (and rent increases of up to 10%). Most gravely, since the proposal lacks vacancy controls it may even incentivize evictions.

We are asking people to either submit written testimony or show up to give public comment tomorrow to point out to the Council that Boston deserves better. Boston is one of the most expensive cities to live in within the US; we need more affordable housing options.

To testify virtually on Zoom, email this address and ask for a link to give public comment: Christine.oDonnell@Boston.Gov. To submit written testimony, simply email your comments to this email: Ccc.Go@Boston.Gov. There is no deadline to submit written testimony.

If while drafting your testimony you’re looking for specific points to make on how Boston City Government could be ensuring people have affordable housing, here are some suggestions:

• First and foremost, the rent control proposal absolutely needs vacancy controls added in. Meaning, rent-increase caps must extend to both current and new tenants. Absent vacancy control, landlords will just have an extra incentive to evict renters and find higher-income tenants.

• The rent control proposal’s ‘just cause’ eviction protections have too many exemptions / potential loopholes to make up for the lack of vacancy controls. Most importantly, the vast majority of evictions in Boston are for non-payment of rent, which are not protected at all.

• The rent control proposal should limit increases to no higher than inflation in the given year.

• The rent control proposal excludes too many tenants. For example, it excludes buildings where the property owner lives there and there are also six or fewer dwelling units.

• The rent control proposal does not give due consideration to students who also suffer from their universities’ exorbitant housing costs.

• The rent control proposal should also include an overall rent cap, in an actual dollar amount.

Furthermore, we encourage folks to point out to the Council how rent control alone is not sufficient to end the exploitation of tenants by real-estate interests. More needs to be done to address the core problems the housing market generates.

• More municipal dollars should be committed to community-land trusts.

• We need more social housing and greater public funding for maintenance so as to have the upkeep residents deserve. Accordingly, the State Legislature must approve Boston’s request for a real estate transfer fee.

• The State Legislature must also pass legislation guaranteeing a universal right to free legal counsel in housing court for tenants.

Again, the public hearing is tomorrow at 10 am. And to testify virtually on Zoom, email this address and ask for a link to give public comment: Christine.oDonnell@Boston.Gov. To submit written testimony, send your comments to this email: Ccc.Go@Boston.Gov. 

P.S. We want to further acknowledge that housing justice isn’t simply attained with governmental policy changes, but through tenants collectively organizing and compelling real-estate interests to act. So, we encourage you to get in touch with the chapter’s Housing Working Group if you wish to plug in to that sort of organizing — simply email Housing@BostonDsa.Org and ask to join.

By Michael Sebastian

As the Oakland Education Association bargains a new contract, it has raised a comprehensive set of common good demands to help strengthen Oakland’s public schools and support students. OEA rallied hundreds of teachers and community members in support of these demands at the February 8 school board meeting. 

At the rally outside La Escuelita elementary school ahead of the board meeting, participants heard speeches from OEA teachers and parent leader Pecolia Manigo, who fired up the crowd with chants of “Who’s schools? Our schools!” Manigo, a leader of the Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN) and recent candidate for school board, said “we can get this confused, that this is just about a contract. The contract is a representation of what we want in our schools.”

As the school board meeting opened to the public, hundreds flowed into the gymnasium where the meeting was held. Ismael Armendariz’s suggestion to “cut pork at the top” sparked chants of “chop from the top,” referencing the top-heavy finances of the district’s budget, where the superintendent makes $294,000 and other administrators pull in large salaries which divert money away from schools, teachers, and children. As OEA observed in a pamphlet in 2019: “OUSD is ‘broke’ on purpose so billionaire influencers can make financial arguments for closing neighborhood schools, refusing living wages for teachers, and denying students the support they need in order to learn and grow.” The chronic lack of resources has less to do with funding and more to do with who will foot the bill. The budget will either be balanced on the backs of black and brown students, as Armendariz said in the gymnasium, or the district will need to “chop from the top”.

As the meeting continued and the floor opened for public comment, attendees spoke about the dangerous consequences of chronically underfunded schools. One teacher spoke via Zoom about finding guns in school lockers, and a student report back showed that roughly half of high school students in OUSD don’t feel safe at the school that they attend. These problems arise because schools are understaffed, which is why OEA is calling for smaller class sizes, more nurses, counselors, psychologists and school librarians. Reinvesting in our schools and fully staffing them is the only way to create safe and productive learning environments for children.

Part of the reason that Oakland schools are so understaffed is that teachers in Oakland are substantially underpaid. Oakland is one of the most expensive cities to live in the state, and one of the lowest paid for teachers in Alameda county. “Living wages continue to be an issue in Oakland,” said OEA president Keith Brown in Edsource. “An experienced teacher can move to Hayward Unified and make $28,000 more overnight.” This results in high turnover, with one in four teachers leaving the district each year. In order to increase teacher retention rates, provide quality teachers for students, and maintain a stable learning environment in public schools, Oakland Unified will need to increase salaries so that teachers don’t leave the district or change careers to meet cost of living in the Bay Area.

Finally, OEA wants to reinvest in the Community School model, which has received over $4 billion in new state funding over the past two years. Engaging parents and communities so that schools become places where neighborhoods can flourish, community schools will provide needed resources for families, organizing in and out of school to make sure that students can thrive. This will help the district fulfill another one of OEA’s common good demands, a Reparations 4 Black Students resolution which aims to eliminate the black student opportunity gap in literacy and educational outcomes, and provide resources for black families who predominantly live in the city’s most disadvantaged communities.  

Combining the teachers’ requests for living wages and better working conditions with resources that will help Oakland children thrive, OEA is mindful that without the support of the community most of their demands will go unmet. The fight for better teacher wages, better working conditions, and better schools for children are completely intertwined. This is why the union fought so hard to save Oakland schools from closure, culminating in the 4-3 vote in January to overturn last year’s decision to close five elementary schools. This is also why it continues to fight to hold on to these victories and set the stage for more gains for our schools, children, and communities in the future.

Join teachers at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Wed, March 15 at 2pm to demand that OUSD bargain in good faith.

Michael Sebastian is a member of the steering committee of East Bay DSA.

Revolutions Per Minute spans the Atlantic Ocean this week, exploring the parallels between Labor movements in the UK and the US, with special guest Jordan Flowers, a co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union. We speak to Stuart Richards, a senior organizer with the GMB in the UK’s West Midlands focused on Amazon workers, and James Meadway, a Council Member at the Progressive Economy Forum and a former advisor to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP. 

Member Bruce Nissen shares his thoughts about a past political movement

In conversations with my younger comrades in the Pinellas DSA, I have been astonished to discover that virtually none of them has any idea of who the Yippies were in the 1960s — 1980s period. As one who came to political maturity in the ’60s (I was twenty years old in 1968), I was powerfully influenced by them at the time. They were a significant force in bringing together the emerging “hippie” or youth culture and political radicalism at the time. They were in the news fairly frequently, I just assumed that they would remain in the public consciousness up to the present day. How wrong I am!

I still think that the Yippie! phenomenon is worth remembering and examining, so that’s why I am writing this. Let’s start with a little bit of background. The 1960s was a decade of increasingly obvious disaffection from society by the younger generation. The 1950s had produced the beatniks but they were a very small sideshow to the decade of conformity in most things. By the 1960s some of the most obvious failings of the United States became so prominent that they could not help but stimulate a negative visceral reaction from a growing segment of young people. The two most prominent failings were the racist repression of African-Americans, prompting a civil rights movement that was viciously repressed on national TV news each evening, and an imperial war in Vietnam that resulted in a draft to send young American men off to fight a war that made little sense to many of them.

The numerically larger reaction was cultural. Young people began experimenting with mind-altering drugs (especially marijuana but also less frequently more potent drugs such as LSD and mescaline). Some young men grew their hair longer; puritanical attitudes toward sex were under attack. Peace and love and freedom to “do your own thing” became keywords of the growing cohort of those who became known as hippies.

A second reaction was political. The anti-war movement against the Vietnam War grew throughout the final third of the decade and into the 1970s. The civil rights movement morphed into a Black Power movement and a women’s movement seeking gender and sexual equality grew by leaps and bounds. Liberation movements from underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America spurred solidarity movements in the U.S. as well as Latino freedom struggles among Chicanos and Hispanic (primarily Puerto Rican) populations. Militant reform movements in a previously self-satisfied labor movement challenged the power of employers and their often-compliant union leadership.

These two reactions were not necessarily connected with each other. Despite a common vaguely defined opponent — the “system” — there could be enormous differences in both cultural styles and political analyses among these emerging forms of resistance. I distinctly remember in 1967 running into young Marxist revolutionaries who urged me and other radicals to cut our hair, eschew dope, look as straight as possible, get a job in a factory, and integrate into a working class that was perceived as being hostile to the new youth culture. I was lectured that only in this way could I contribute to a transformation of U.S. society. I rejected this invitation to mimic the very attitudes and lifestyle that I was rebelling against.

A big portion of the emerging hippie culture remained apolitical in any conventional sense of the word “politics.” They rejected the striving competitiveness of mainstream culture and attempted to live a quieter life less centered on conspicuous consumption, but did not necessarily engage in political activism or advocacy. But many of us attracted to the hippie culture also were politically estranged because of the war and other reasons, so we felt a compulsion to also rebel through political activity.

Enter the Yippies. As a named phenomenon the Yippies originated in 1967 from a meeting of a small group of leftist veterans of previous demonstrations and movements. The most prominent figures to emerge as Yippie leaders were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. (More on them later in this article.) The name was of course a take-off on the word “hippie” and was intended to indicate joy in living, antics and pranks, and a nullification of the “death culture” that the originators saw as pervasive in America. To make it look more official for mainstream media, they invented a (non-existent) “party” — the Youth International Party (YIP).

The Yippies (and YIP) had no formal membership; one could simply declare oneself a member. The goal was not to establish anything with a formal structure; instead it was to utilize the media to spread among America’s youth countercultural and anti-capitalist messages through the use of flamboyant spectacles and symbols. Some prominent Yippies took outrageous names as part of the theater: Wavy Gravy was a prominent Yippie who became fairly well known for his role at the historic Woodstock Festival in 1968. Here is Wavy at later point in his life:

Others took names like Joannee Freedom or Daisy Deadhead. Some semi-famous people like radical singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, radical lawyer William Kunstler, Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders of the rock group The Fugs, and others were self-declared Yippies.

But probably the most prominent Yippie was Abbie Hoffman, a brilliant media performer who constantly ended up in the news because of his latest outrage against conservative mainstream sensibilities. For all his clowning, Abbie was a serious revolutionary who had a thought-out rationale for his theatrical antics. He had come to believe that people were not moved to radicalism by rational discourse and logic. Instead, they viscerally responded to events and images that shaped their cultural viewpoint through which they interpreted the world. Thus, the way to reach them was to engage in pubic theater that forced them to reevaluate.

Here are a few images of Abbie:

Jerry Rubin was almost equally prominent in the Yippie mythology, but he was not as deep of a thinker as Abbie. Books he authored were fairly shallow, and he didn’t exhibit the same degree of purposive refection on his own actions as did Abbie. In the end he would sell out his ideals and become a Wall Street trader and businessman who Wikipedia claims became a multi-millionaire. But in his earlier incarntaion he did have something of a flair for theatrical messages. Here are a couple of images of Rubin in his revolutionary days:

Abbie and Jerry and fellow Yippies engaged in numerous public guerilla theater events. Among them:

· In the 1967 March on the Pentagon, Yippies induced some in the crowd to surround the Pentagon, handed out witch’s hats and colorful outfits and levitation sticks and held a ceremonial “levitation” of the Pentagon building to drive out the evil of militarism and war. Soldiers guarding the Pentagon held rifles out in the direction of the protesters; a picture of a girl inserting a flower into the barrel of one soldier’s gun went around the world in news media.

· Abbie Hoffman in late 1967 snuck a crew of protesters into the Wall Street Exchange building. When up on the visitor’s balcony over the Exchange floor, they rushed to the rail and threw hundreds of dollar bills down on the trading floor. Trading was stopped for a few minutes; some stockbrokers scrambled to retrieve the bills as chaos ensued. Abbie and crew managed to escape outside where he related the story to reporters who had been tipped off in advance. Then he publicly burned a $5 bill to complete the guerrilla action. Again, publicity streaked around the country.

· In March 1968 the Yippies called for a “Yip-In” at New York City’s Grand Central Station. I happened to be in New York for a spring break from college in Iowa, and my then-girlfriend and I attended. Well over one thousand people showed up. Balloons, music, and a festive atmosphere was everywhere. Then a couple of intrepid youths climbed up on the famous Grand Central clock and removed the hands. (Later Yippie publicity claimed the purpose was to free the masses from the tyranny of the clock and a forced workweek.) At that point the police went crazy and rioted. They waded into the crowd, swinging batons and cracking heads. We were trapped inside the building and could not escape except by running down the stairs into the subway system. As we were running down the stairs, a policeman pursued us and others who were likewise escaping. I still vividly remember an older gentleman who looked very straight and who most likely was not part of the demonstration but simply a commuter. He ran down the stairs with us, but he was slower. The policeman smashed him across the head with such a loud crack that I can still hear the pop. The man reeled and fell heavily to the ground, bleeding profusely. We couldn’t even get him help for some time, as we were trapped inside by a police line. Things like that radicalize you very, very quickly.

· The biggest stage for Yippie! theatrics was the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August 1968. The Vietnam War was heating up; Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was retiring in disgrace; the Democratic Party was planning to nominate VP Hubert Humphrey, a strong war supporter, for president; and Chicago Democratic Mayor Richard Daley had instructed the Chicago police to “shoot to kill” anyone disturbing the peace. Mainstream anti-war movement organizations had called for a massive march during the convention and the city had refused to grant a permit. Hundreds of thousands had been expected for the march, but widespread publicity of Mayor Daley’s threats intimidated most who had planned to come. In the end only about 10,000 showed up. The Yippies had planned a massive Festival of Life with live rock bands and theatrical happenings; again, permits were denied. All the big nationally known bands pulled out in face of the threats; only the MC5, a radical Detroit-basaed band ended up playing. Phil Ochs also performed. The MC5 concert was cut short when the cops attacked the crowd. The Yippies brought in a pig named Pigasus to coronate as President of the U.S. Abbie was arrested and the pig was confiscated by the police. The whole convention was a mess that culminated with a Police Riot outside the hotel where Humphrey was being selected. The TV media brought all of this to the nation on a nightly basis.

· Following the Democratic Convention police riot, the U.S brought felony conspiracy charges against eight organizers who had planned the demonstrations. Most were anti-war political organizers who looked like normal Americans, but Abbie and Jerry were also part of the Chicago 8 (later the Chicago 7 when Black Panther Boby Seale’s case was severed from that of the rest). Abbie and Jerry showed up at the trial adorned in judge’s robes, repeatedly taunted the judge, and were charged withi contempt of court countless times. Because the name of the judge (a real fool who made a joke of himself by his behavior) was Julius Hoffman, Abbie made a legal effort to change his first name to Fuck so he could answer as Fuck Hoffman every morning in court. (For some reason, his application was turned down.)

· When Abbie and Jerry were pulled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Abbie came wearing an American flag shirt; he was promptly arrested as he stated, “I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country.” Jerry, who was wearing a Viet Cong flag shirt, shouted that the cops were Communists for not arresting him also.

· Yippie chapters across the country engaged in similar public theatrical events. In 1969 they stormed and briefly seized the Justice Department building in D.C. during an anti-war demonstration. In 1970 Yippies raided Disneyland and occupied Tom Sawyer’s island; riot police shut down the theme park and arrested dozens of occupiers.

These theatrical radical events fascinated me as a young college student. For about two and a half years from mid-1967 until 1970 I considered myself a Yippie and attempted to emulate their work on my campus. I joined a guerrilla theater group that disrupted officious campus events, participated in the coronation of a male homecoming queen at a homecoming football game, played a minor (and shamefully cowardly) role in a nude-in against Playboy magazine’s spokesman speaking on campus, ran a giant be-in festival of life on campus, hosted various “Digger dinners” with free communal meals outdoors, set up a Free Store in an unoccupied alcove of my college dorm, and more.

The college student government appreciated many of these antics, and they were happy to sponsor a visit to campus by a leading Yippie. We tried to get Abbie Hoffman, but could not find an easy way to reach him. We did contact Jerry Rubin, and he came and spoke to fairly large crowd on campus. I arranged a Yip-in welcome where we inundated the crowd with balloons thrown down from a balcony we occupied. I still have a photo of Jerry and me during his visit in 1969:

We interviewed Rubin for our college underground newspaper, and I quickly saw that he was not a particularly deep thinker — I remember thinking that I had thought through a number of these questions more thoroughly than he had. He was warm and friendly and fun to be with, but here was not a leader to work out a strategic direction for the future of our movement. He had nothing to say when I attempted to converse with him about the role and function of the Yippie myth, something I had discovered through reading writings by Abbie.

Still, I thought the Yippies were pretty cool for a couple of years. But subsequent events caused me to lose my fervent admiration and to move to other elements of the movement. First, it became apparent that the Yippies were not anchored in anything that had staying power, such as the labor movement. When youth culture faded so did the Yippies.

Second, it became apparent that behind the flashy exterior many of the Yippie “leaders” were lesser idols than they appeared. All idols have feet of clay, and my infatuation with Abbie Hoffman cooled considerably as later episodes showed him to be a very flawed human being. When I finally got a chance to meet him, at a fizzled demonstration at Tompkins Square Park in the East Village in New York City, he was acting paranoid. I asked him if he was Abbie Hoffman (because I wasn’t sure) and he immediately said, “Yeah! Want to drop some acid?” I replied no and retreated in confusion. Upon later reflection I realized that he suspected I was a “narc” (narcotics agent) trying to get him arrested and he knew that narcs are not allowed to consume illegal drugs when they pursue drug dealers and users. He certainly didn’t appear as brilliant in person as he did through his media antics; in fact, he appeared to be an isolated and somewhat paranoid individual.

In 1973 he was busted for being involved in an attempted sale of a huge amount of cocaine (probably set up by narcs, but nevertheless he was there). He disappeared and went underground shortly thereafter. He resurfaced in 1980 as Barry Freed, an environmental activist with a surgically altered face in upstate New York leading a campaign to preserve the St. Lawrence River. He eventually served four months for the cocaine bust and continued his activism against the CIA, the War on Drugs, and similar issues. He was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder in 1980 and in 1989 he committed suicide at age 52.

Unlike Jerry, Abbie stayed true to his leftist ideals to the end. He deserves respect but had some large human failings that were exposed in his brother Jack Hoffman’s book Always Running: the Lives of Abbie Hoffman. The larger Yippie project, to influence the country’s culture and politics toward the left through mass media interventions, also deserves respect. But it is flawed as a larger strategy: it should be seen as simply one tactic among many to move the consciousness of the American public to the left. We also need serious analysis and strategy, an affiliation with the labor movement and grounding in the working class.

So I say, may the Yippie spirit carry on, as one of many emanations from a growing socialist movement in the United States. I hope the DSA will be at the center of that movement.

By: The People’s Transit Alliance

5 minute read

tw: racism, sexual assault

This past Saturday, Feb. 4th, 2023, was Transit Equity Day, “a collaborative effort of several organizations and unions to promote public transit as a civil right and a strategy to combat climate change…” organized by Labor 4 Sustainability. 

For Transit Equity Day 2023, the People’s Transit Alliance held a canvass of transit riders in Downtown Berkeley to discuss what improvements could be made to the bus system, the planned service redesign, and the importance of transit workers and riders building power together.

Labor 4 Sustainability chose Feb. 4th, Rosa Parks’ birthday, in order to honor her legacy as a civil rights icon, and her courageous action taken on a segregated bus on December 1, 1955. Those of us raised in the United States know the story of Rosa Parks, and her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger.

What is less well known is her long history as an organizer for the NAACP, her radical politics, and her lifelong commitment to fighting white supremacy in the United States. 

The People’s Transit Alliance wishes to share this neglected side of Rosa Parks’ story. As we organize in her name, we must disrupt the whitewashed version of her life that is taught in schools, and used by politicians and corporations to maintain the very systems of oppression that she spent her life fighting against.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up with her maternal grandparents and mother. Her grandfather was a follower of Marcus Garvey, and taught young Parks the importance of self-defense, sitting on his porch with a shotgun when the Ku Klux Klan came into town.

She was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church for her entire life, where she learned a “theology of liberation that affirmed the equality of all people, laid forth a Christian responsibility to act and provided sustenance to struggle against injustice.”

Mrs. Parks first met her husband, Raymond Parks, while he worked as an organizer on the Scottsboro Boys case. Mr. Parks was a committed activist and revolutionary, who often had to hold secret meetings and avoid police, who were seeking to harass and arrest him for his activism. He and Mrs. Parks attended Communist Party meetings, and worked with other important socialist and communist organizers in the Deep South.

Mrs. Parks began working with the Montgomery NAACP in 1943, where she would soon meet E.D. Nixon. Nixon, Parks, and a small group of activists at the NAACP would lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement in the decade leading up to the bus boycott. 

Parks worked as the secretary of both the Montgomery and Alabama State chapters of the NAACP, seeking justice for black women who had been raped by white men, and black men who had been wrongly accused of sexually assaulting white women.

She and Nixon represented a working class presence at the NAACP, which was often dominated by more affluent members of the black community. When the national NAACP directed local chapters to expel members with socialist or communist tendencies, Parks spoke out against the purge. The Montgomery chapter refused to carry out the resolution.

On December 1, 1955, when Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus, she was not the first to do so. Claudette Colvin, who was 15 years old at the time of her arrest, had refused to give up their seat months before Parks, as had others.

In fact, it was a case against Colvin, not Parks, that was brought before the Supreme Court and led to the decision that bus segregation was illegal.

Parks’ decision to remain in her seat was not wholly spontaneous, but a result of her growing frustration with the lack of success that negotiating with the city government had produced, as well as an intimate understanding of the consequences of taking such an action.

Often, Parks’ role in the boycott is diminished. Rather, it is seen as the moment where Martin Luther King Jr. achieved national prominence. However, this version of events ignores Parks’ work as a carpool operator, and a key member of the inner circle of organizers at the Montgomery NAACP.

Eventually, due to death threats, red baiting, an inability to find work in Montgomery, and disagreements over the direction of the Civil Rights movement, Mrs. Parks and her husband were forced to move to Detroit.

In Detroit, Mrs. Parks worked tirelessly as an organizer, particularly focused on freeing political prisoners, expanding access to reproductive rights, defending the rights of women prisoners, and defending black women who had been sexually assaulted. She was a primary organizer of the Joann Little Defense Committee.

Rosa Parks’ politics were truly radical, and clearly opposed to the goals and actions of the powerful politicians who claim to honor her legacy today. She called Malcolm X her personal political hero, and believed in the power of organized nonviolent direct action and the moral right to self-defense.

In 1973, she wrote a letter that included the statement, “The attempt to solve our racial problems nonviolently was discredited in the eyes of many by the hard core segregationists who met peaceful demonstrations with countless acts of violence and bloodshed. Time is running out for a peaceful solution. It may even be too late to save our society from total destruction.”

She was a committed supporter of the Black Power movement, showing up to support radical organizations such as The Black Panthers and working alongside the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and Republic of New Afrika in the wake of the 1967 Detroit Riots.

She was also an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and the march towards war in the aftermath of 9/11.

To recount the entirety of her activism, organizing, and incredible life is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, our goal with this piece is to shed light on an important piece of history that is often ignored, in favor of a quiet, modest Rosa Parks.

Organizing around public transit was not her primary political project but rather one part of a broader struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy, and imperialism. On this Transit Equity Day and beyond, The People’s Transit Alliance seeks to carry Parks’ radical history into the present and imagine organizing for a better transit system as one part of a broader struggle.

When we organize transit workers and riders, we build power at a key political and economic intersection in the East Bay. We reconnect organized labor with a radical political project, and develop concrete strategies to improve the working conditions of those that operate the transit system, which in turn improves riding conditions.

Public transit serves the East Bay’s multiracial working class. It ensures that workers can get to their jobs, the grocery store, doctor’s appointments, places of worship, friends and family, and access all parts of the city.

Improving public transit alleviates the economic burden of maintaining a car, lowers the carbon emissions that deepen the climate crisis and pollute the air we breathe, improves mobility for disabled people, and provides critical access to the working poor of the East Bay.

Transit organizing is a key priority in the fight against white supremacy, the climate crisis, patriarchy, and liberation of the working class. To honor Rosa Parks on Transit Equity Day, we must remember that we are still fighting the same systems of oppression she began fighting more than 80 years ago.

Solidarity forever!

Note: For further reading about the incredible contributions of Rosa Parks to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, please visit these links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/01/how-history-got-the-rosa-parks-story-wrong/

https://archive.org/details/rebelliouslifeof0000theo_i7s2/page/n24/mode/1up?view=theater

The People’s Transit Alliance is a project of East Bay DSA, organizing for an equitable, democratically controlled transit system that serves the multiracial working class of the East Bay and beyond.

As the election for a new Nevada State Democratic Party Chair approaches, the Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America feels compelled to state publicly that the chapter has not endorsed any candidate. We also want to shed light on what the admittedly disappointing relationship between LVDSA and the NSDP has been like for the last two years. 

After the clean-sweep election of a slate of LVDSA members into party leadership in 2021 on the Progressive Slate, a media storm ensued, with outlets across the country lamenting or cheering the rise of socialism within a state party structure. The slate, which spun out of the Nevada for Bernie infrastructure, which had strong connections with DSA, was indeed largely elected by DSA members who also deliberately held positions on the State Central Committee and who organized an NV Dems caucus called Left Caucus (which then acquired new progressive members outside of DSA, as well).

After the Progressive Slate won the election, it was discovered that the vestiges of the famed “Reid Machine,” who held these positions prior, had seen the writing on the wall and – legally, though clearly unethically – flipped a kill switch that effectively gutted the party infrastructure, transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the party coffers, giving the entire staff parachutes that allowed them to quit en masse, and leaving countless bills unpaid and files unorganized. 

Ready to be mobilized, we awaited instructions. The instructions never came. Nor, indeed, did any real communication. We openly acknowledge our part in allowing the relationship to fall flat. We deferred to the people who’d actually won these offices, naively expecting them to think of us as partners in organization and mobilization. After the election, Left Caucus also fell off in attendance and capacity; as is so often the case when a big campaign ends, all but a few major players scattered when a new project didn’t present itself. 

Initially, despite our lack of communication, we watched with pride while the NV Dems made some bold statements: one arguing for Palestinian rights that drew the national ire of politicians and pundits, one demanding clemency for Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, and more. Still, the principled statements were just statements; we saw no significant organization toward these positions, no push on legislators themselves, and no call to action for community members who wanted to see these political viewpoints moving more than just reactionary newsmen to action.

As the term went on, we saw the ostensibly-progressive coalition move more and more to the center, making administrative and political choices that were more in line with the corporatists that we pledged to beat than the grassroots organizers who pushed the initial victory. As the Ghost of the Reid Machine played dirty trick after dirty trick, the ostensibly progressive leadership oscillated between playing respectability politics and making compromises to the center. 

Decisions like ending their support for our Holiday Solidarity food distribution – an annual event that both feeds the community and once gave us a rallying point for the coalition that would elect the slate in the first place – were unfortunate, though not surprising, given the corporate media backlash that came from their promotion of the event the year before. 

As socialists, we do not think the rightward shift is a moral failing of leadership; we have seen the same thing happen over and over when socialists enter Democratic Party politics. The corrupt, corporate-fueled machine (and its aide-de-camp, the mainstream media) is a moderating force, even for the proudest leftists.

Even when leadership attempted strong reforms – for example, leadership’s national push for a formalized removal of dark money from Democratic Primary races via a DNC resolution – there was no communication, no ask of us as DSA members to mobilize our comrades around the country to lobby their local party officials; we learned about this empirically good (if futile) policy push only through the mainstream media, like everyone else.

The Party, however, took no stance when every single one of our elected State Representatives proudly voted to condemn “the horrors of socialism,” and indeed continued to do free messaging for the handful of so-called progressive Representatives who insisted that voting against socialism was necessary for passing a progressive agenda.

This is our lesson, and we hope socialists everywhere will pay close attention: the Democratic Party is a dead end. It is a “party” in name only; truly, it is simply a tangled web of dark money and mega-donors, cynical consultants, and lapdog politicians. The establishment is Lucy with the football: no matter how effectively socialists organize for power, the establishment will simply pull the football away, using dirtier and dirtier tricks. Enough falling for the tricks and even the most dedicated socialist can’t help but give up and play the ugly game. We don’t want milquetoast progressive reformist-reforms; we want socialism. We won’t get it by playing the DNC’s games, and we won’t get it by being a mildly obnoxious thorn in their side, either. Our task is to out-organize them entirely, and not merely within the confines of the voting booth.

Now re-election approaches. The former Progressive Slate’s stances do not differ significantly or materially from their opponents’, nor do their general tactics. We would note that it is unfortunate that the party chair is receiving accusations of misdeeds related to the SCC membership list. We believe that it is more likely that the establishment democrats do not understand their own processes, which made it easy for us to win elections in 2021. That said, this kind of rules-lawyering and parliamentary sleight-of-hand makes it very difficult for regular working class people to engage with politics at this level, which has always been seen as a net positive by the ruling elite.

We cannot offer this slate our organizational support, either on paper or through organized action, despite the fact that some of the slate members continue to be DSA members. We also will not be supporting the election of a lifelong corrections officer or the reinstatement of the explicitly corrupt Reid Machine. As socialists and abolitionists, we believe in something better: a politics of hope, where communities build themselves up, invest in their own democracy, and demand accountability and transparency from their community leaders, elected and unelected. We will prepare for a future where we can belong to a true worker’s party, one which is unapologetically anti-capitalist. We believe in socialism and that is the only fight we’ll be investing in.

At our 2023 Annual Convention, members voted to endorse two Priority Campaigns: a Labor RnF Strategy and a Tax the Rich Campaign.

Membership also voted for a new Steering Committee. The winners are:

• Co-Chairs: Keller S. and Kira M.
• Secretary: Eric CK.
• Treasurer: Emma D.
• Membership Organizer: Jocelyn R.
• Communications Organizer: TJ S.

Resolution and Bylaw Amendment Results

A New Approach to Organizational Structure – Passed (14-1-0)

Co-Signers: Keller S., Amber R., Mac C., Joe B.

Whereas, Syracuse DSA has undergone a change in membership engagement and committee involvement…

Whereas, the demands of Committee leadership are a significant strain on those individuals…

Whereas, several Syracuse DSA committees have dissolved or gone dormant in the last 12 months…

Whereas, there currently exists no formal mechanism for small working groups to engage in chapter work without full recognition as committees… 

Whereas, greater coordination between committees is a tangible and worthwhile goal…

Be it resolved that the Syracuse DSA Bylaws be amended to add the following language:

ADD:  Article IX, Section 5. Organizing Committee and Organizational Structure

1. The Organizing Committee (OC) of Syracuse DSA (composed of Steering Committee members and co-chairs of all chartered committees) may elect, with a simple majority, to organize chapter committees under the structure of the OC. The OC and Steering Committee (SC) will convene regular meetings in which the work of standard committee meetings takes place, for all committees that are organized under this structure. Committee members may share their work and provide updates as necessary to the entire OC in order to facilitate greater connection between committees and reduce the overall burden of scheduling for committee members. 

2. All chapter members in good standing are encouraged and welcome to attend and participate in OC meetings, and all chapter members in good standing in attendance at a given meeting will be considered voting members of the OC. 

3. The chapter Co-Chairs are responsible for convening and facilitating OC meetings but may delegate roles as needed. 

4. Regular minutes should be taken for all OC meetings, as well as for any breakout sessions that may occur. The chapter Secretary is responsible for recording minutes but may delegate responsibilities as needed. 

5. The OC may, by simply majority, empower chapter members to form Working Groups under the guidance of the OC. Working Groups must be composed of at least 2 chapter members in good standing, and may engage in organizing work similar to a full committee. Working Groups will adhere to the same duties and responsibilities of a full committee, except for leadership roles. Working Groups will not have formal or elected leadership positions and must adhere to any guidelines laid out by the OC. Working Groups should be considered temporary structures, with a goal of either disbanding at a given date or event, or converting into a full committee. Working Groups are obligated to regularly report their work and provide updates to the OC. 

Proposal to add a Labor Officer Position to the Steering Committee – Passed (15-0-0)

WHEREAS, labor organizing is fundamental to any socialist strategy to build power;

WHEREAS, because of labor organizing’s importance to all aspects of our work, it is important to institutionalize a labor focus on our Steering Committee, the most central body of our chapter;

WHEREAS, Syracuse DSA needs a purposeful, thought out labor strategy and needs leadership who can prioritize the execution of this strategy;

WHEREAS, Syracuse DSA does not and did not, for most of 2022, have a functioning labor committee;  therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that in Article V Section 1 of our bylaws the list of Steering Committee positions be edited to include a Labor Officer;

RESOLVED, that in Article V Section 5 of our bylaws the list of elected local officers be edited to include a Labor Officer;

RESOLVED, that in Article V of our bylaws a new section will be added after Section 10 which reads:

Section 11. Labor Organizer:

The Labor Organizer will be a voting member of the steering committee who will be responsible for engaging the chapter in deciding and executing a labor strategy.;

RESOLVED, that the first election for Labor Officer will be held immediately should this resolution be passed; and
RESOLVED, should this election fail to result in the election of a Labor Officer then a new election for Labor Officer will be held at the chapter’s April general meeting.

Plan a Conference of the Local Left – Passed (13-0-2)

Endorser: Brian E.

Co-endorsers: Mac C., Marianna P., Jermaine C., Jocelyn R., Emma D.

Be it resolved that the chapter will initiate the planning of a conference of the local Left to be held in the second half of 2023 or early 2024.

Be it resolved that we will initiate conversations with other local Left organizations, with an encompassing definition of the Left, including all long-term coalition partners in addition to others we might like to be in coalition with and including a variety of kinds of organizations. Conversations will determine the level of interest of each organization reached out to and solicit initial thoughts about its goals, scope, timing, length, structure and content.

Be it resolved that interested organizations will be asked about the level of involvement they will commit to, with clear expectations for each level: a) planning and coordinating, b) promoting, or c) attending.

Be it resolved that organizations that join the planning will jointly determine the overall plan for the conference and will determine what kind of content should be prioritized.

Be it resolved that Syracuse DSA will seek to strengthen mutual understanding and relationships with other conference participants, that we will foster conversations about topics that inform our work but that do not naturally arise in the course of campaigns or other current coalition work. We will seek mutual recognition of points of agreement with other Left organizations and will seek comradely understanding of points of disagreement.

Be it resolved that Syracuse DSA will seek to foster greater cooperation among local Left organizations and unorganized Leftists.

Be it resolved that all parts of Syracuse DSA, be they committees or other projects, will participate in the planning and coordination of the conference and support its success.

Resolution for An Alternative Housing Model – Passes (14-0-1)

Author: Eric CK

Co-Sponsors: Max L., TJ S.

Whereas the American housing system is built upon structures of racism and inequality, which are exacerbated by capitalism; and

Whereas our current housing system will never be able to properly address concerns of tenants and at the very best provides limited and criminally unenforced protections to said tenants; and

Whereas Syracuse’s housing stock and quality are controlled by slumlords who have no intention to properly care for or maintain property conditions; and

Whereas Syracuse has one of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning and poverty in the United States; and 

Whereas Syracuse DSA has been an active member of the Syracuse Tenants Organizing for Power (STOP!) alongside the Syracuse Tenants Union, Party for Socialism and Liberation and members of the Communist Party and;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that Syracuse DSA recommits itself to the STOP! Coalition and building tenant power across Central New York; and

Be it further resolved that Syracuse DSA will emphasize tenant organizing by sharing STOP! trainings and events regularly with DSA membership; and 

Be it further resolved that Syracuse DSA will encourage its members to work as part of STOP! and further the coalition’s capacity for form tenant associations and further the work of the Syracuse Tenants Union (STU); and

Be it further resolved that Syracuse DSA members who are actively engaged or become actively engaged with STOP! will commit to further discussion and creation of an alternative housing model; and

Be it finally resolved that members engaged with STOP! will continue to build upon established projects, such as creating a land trust, and will work in collaboration with the other coalition members to create a sustainable and long-lasting tenant movement across Syracuse. 

Proposal to Revitalize the Labor Committee – Fails (6-6-3)

Author: Eric CK

Co-Sponsors: Emma D., TJ S., Max L., Andrew B.

Whereas labor organizing and activism have been the heartbeat of DSA and other socialist organizations; and

Whereas Syracuse is one of the most union-dense areas in the United States, having three unionized hospitals and a dozen unionized grocery stores, and strong union representation in logistics, education, and other industries; and

Whereas there has been a wave of class-struggle from the Sysco Strike, and unionization of Communication Service for the Deaf, Syracuse University Graduate Students, TCGplayer Authentication Center workers, Hamilton College student admission workers, and Starbucks baristas in Liverpool; and

Whereas several important contracts are expiring in 2023 and workers may go on strike, from UPS workers with the Teamsters and 13,000 workers at Tops Friendly Markets across Upstate NY and Northern PA  with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW); and

Whereas Syracuse DSA’s Labor Committee has been inactive since March 2022; and

Whereas we must organize on the shop floor to transform our unions into democratic organizations capable of self organizing in conflict with the capitalist class; and

Whereas Syracuse DSA needs to create a space for union members in our chapter to come together to stand in solidarity and advance their own struggles against the boss and to transform their unions; and

Now, therefore, be it resolved, that Syracuse DSA commits to reactivating our Labor Committee to serve as the basis for supporting our labor work and recruiting individuals into ongoing labor campaigns; and forming a base for our socialist organization in the working class of Syracuse 

Be it further resolved that the Labor Committee will meet monthly in a union-business, a business or location that is unionized or in the process of unionizing, including but not limited to the Liverpool Starbucks and Tops Friendly Markets Fayetteville cafe; and

Be if further resolved that the Labor Committee will serve as a space to skill-share and provide community for workers and union-members; and

Be it further resolved that Syracuse DSA, through the Labor Committee, will assist in the strengthening of socialist aligned unions and the creation and maintenance of reform caucuses in different unions at the request of other Rank and File union members; and

Be it further resolved that Syracuse DSA and the Labor Committee will work in tandem with  reform caucuses, including but not limited to, RailRoad Workers United, Reform UFCW, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAW); and

Be it further resolved that the Labor Committee will coordinate solidarity actions with working-class individuals and union campaigns, and provide assistance with the implementation of the Rank-and-File strategy as laid out in the Labor priority resolution; and

Be it further resolved that the Labor Committee will focus on providing trainings for DSA members working in the healthcare and education sectors; and

Be it further resolved that the Labor Committee will implement the Strike Ready DSA 2023! program laid out by the National Labor Committee to aid striking workers in Syracuse, Central New York, and beyond; and

Be it further resolved that the Labor Steering Committee Officer should regularly communicate with and act on the advice of the Labor Committee. 

Be it finally resolved that the Labor Committee will involve local labor members in its work and work alongside other DSA committees to ensure that the priorities and needs of workers and union members are addressed in all of DSA’s work. 

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