While a “Red Wave” of victories did not materialize for Republicans earlier this month on election day in most parts of the country, conservatives won big here in New York gaining congressional seats as well as seats in the New York State Assembly and Senate. Republican Lee Zeldin centered his gubernatorial campaign around a false and racist narrative on crime, that dominated media coverage, and it was almost enough to defeat Governor Kathy Hochul, who ran a lackluster campaign despite a large fundraising haul.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Republican ad blitzes focused on crime, motivated voters  to head to the polls in suburban Long Island and the Lower Hudson Valley, despite many of those voters living in some of the safest places in the country, where crime rates have flattened and that many of them had exaggerated views about crime rates in New York City, which are still well below where they were for decades. 

Today we’re joined live by Nomi and DJ to break down some of the misinformation that blanketed the airways before the election. Nomi is the Constituent Services and Organizing Manager for Council Member Tiffany Caban and worked with DJ and other volunteers from the district to create a Public Safety Resource poster along with Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s office. We’ll talk to Nomi and DJ about how socialist are not only battling right-wing propaganda stoking fear of crime, but organizing for real public safety in our communities and dignity for all. 

We’ll also talk to Michaelangelo with Mid-Hudson Valley DSA about what Neoliberal Democrats are getting wrong in their post-election analysis and how centering socialist messaging led Sarahana Shrestha to victory in her Assembly race in the Hudson Valley.

To join a Public Safety Canvass in Western Queens on Saturday, December 3, visit: Bit.ly/safetycanvass 

Strikes are erupting across the country, from railroads to the New School and your local Starbucks. Reminder from your comrades at RPM - never cross a picket line, just grab a sign and walk alongside them. Workers  

Today we will hear from rank and file organizers about the Labor Notes troublemakers school, speak to Shep Whanon of Gays Against Guns on Trans Day of Remembrance and close out the show with Caitlin of the GYM on the brutal sweeps Eric Adams is unleashing upon our most vulnerable unhoused neighbors.

It is hard to find the words to express the depth of the trauma and grief that our chapter and community are experiencing in the wake of the mass shooting at Club Q. That we are issuing this statement a few days after the event is a testament to the fact that we have been in deep mourning as we attend multiple community vigils and spend time supporting one another. We all understand how close this act of hatred brought us to losing chapter members who are deeply loved and valued, and our hearts break for our comrades who lost friends and loved ones to this tragedy. 

As difficult as it is to move forward, our solidarity with one another and the greater LGBTQ+ community is helping us find the strength to begin the organizing work that must follow. It has not been lost upon us that while CSPD was busy surveilling our chapter last summer and arresting our comrades who were marching for affordable housing in our community, the District Attorney was busy dropping charges against the right-wing terrorist that perpetrated this weekend’s armed attack. It is not lost upon us that this terrorist is the grandson of a fascist MAGA politician in California. It is not lost upon us that Colorado Representatives Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn have boosted anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric while supporting the gun lobby that made this weekend’s tragedy possible. It is not lost upon us that evangelical churches in our city operate as political actors to create a climate of intolerance where bigotry and zealous hatred are incubated. And it is not lost upon us that all these fascist bad faith actors ultimately work together to silence and oppress our community, especially those amongst us who are the most marginalized. 

Colorado Springs DSA and the community we serve will not be silenced. We will not submit to the fear that right-wing politicians and their followers try to instill in us. This moment makes it clearer than ever how urgent it is for us to stand up for our community and fight for our rights, to stand against hatred and violent state oppression, to stand against the cold and calculated sacrifice of our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ siblings by fascist capitalists seeking a scapegoat for the inhumane inequality that their greed creates, and we take that stand now, together. 

We’ve got us. We stand strong in solidarity, carrying those who are wounded, and march on.  

Atlanta DSA Statement on December 6th Senate Runoff Elections

The Senate Runoff Election in Georgia will have important consequences for working-class people across the country. Although Democrats have lost control of the House of Representatives for now, the winner of this runoff will hold a critical Senate seat for 6 years—the entire duration of the next Presidential term. Herschel Walker is a millionaire capitalist and far-right extremist. If elected, he could be the deciding vote that blocks moves to abolish the filibuster and pass other critical legislation. For these reasons we encourage our members, supporters, and the public to vote to defeat Herschel Walker and his far-right agenda.

The 2024 elections will present a huge opportunity for the growing socialist movement to shift the balance of power in the United States. The Left could lead the charge to abolish the filibuster and clear the path for historic gains for the working class by legalizing abortion nationwide and passing the PRO Act. Expanding voting rights could permanently alter the political battlefield and make it impossible for the minoritarian neo-fascists in the GOP to capture the federal government again. Herschel Walker’s election to the US Senate could rule out all of these possibilities for six years.

Make no mistake: working-class people have fundamentally different interests from the neoliberal elites in the Democratic Party establishment. DSA remains committed to advancing our democratic socialist perspective by building a democratic working-class organization. In this election, we are building independent working-class power by making sure that young workers and people of color know how to vote. We are getting out the vote by helping the public navigate barriers to voting, and promoting political issues like abortion rights from a socialist perspective. We encourage everyone to make a plan to vote as early as possible, to join us in continuing to fight for abortion rights no matter who wins the runoff, and to join DSA to help build an economy and society that works for the many, not the few.

Find your polling place and make a plan to vote early at atldsa.org/vote

The Houston Democratic Socialists of America is appalled by the horrible act of violence against the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado Springs.  This tragic event was not a senseless act of […]

The post Statement on The Colorado Springs Shooting appeared first on Houston DSA.

Earlier this month, the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) made history by successfully passing an expansive disinvestment bill through the student government.

The bill, which passed 35-17-7, calls for CWRU to “fully divest its assets in Israeli apartheid, the international military-industrial complex, and the international prison-industrial complex”. It goes on to describe the apartheid conditions Palestinians are subjected to, including the forced displacement and subsequent establishment of illegal settlements in the militarily occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the blockade of the Gaza Strip that severely limits the movement of vital goods, and the unjust detention, torture, and killing of much of the population. It also points to recent reports from mainstream human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and Israel’s own B’tselem as support.

According to a source closely involved with the bill, who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons, a major factor in its success was its sponsorship by a large coalition of campus clubs. These included environmentalist clubs, feminist clubs, identity-specific clubs such as the Black Student Union, and more. To build this coalition, SJP gave presentations to various clubs and then asked if they would sign on as a sponsor.

“Of course it’s important to focus primarily on what Palestinians have been saying for 74 years,” said the source. “Which is that they’ve been living under a segregationist apartheid state that’s ethnically cleansed them from most of their homeland, but the use of other voices is also very helpful in passing these bills because people tend to sweep the voices of Palestinians under the rug.”

The CWRU SJP has been trying to pass similar bills since at least 2018. In their first attempt, SJP failed to get the bill up for a vote. In 2021, the bill went up for a vote but failed to gain a majority. Opponents proposed their own bill and spent the time allotted for discussing SJP’s bill discussing their own, leading to confusion when it came time to vote.

Following their prior defeats, SJP made multiple changes to the original bill. One change included the addition of calling for disinvestment of companies involved in the international military and prison-industrial complexes as opposed to focusing solely on companies operating in illegally occupied Palestine. This helped to preemptively counter the common zionist talking point that Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) bills “unjustly single out Israel”. Another change included calling for the school to conduct an investigation into whether companies it works with are complicit in war crimes, private prisons, or Israeli apartheid prior to disinvestment.

The day after the vote, CWRU President Eric Kaler condemned the resolution by calling it naive, claiming that many of its clauses were irrelevant, claiming it “undoubtedly promotes anti-semitism”, and smearing the members of the student government that voted in favor of the bill as conducting “aggression towards the Jewish members of our community”. Kaler’s statement was swiftly condemned by the editorial board of CWRU’s student newspaper The Observer, which called the remarks “reckless and ill-considered”. The Cleveland chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, also condemned the president’s statement as being “dishonest, dangerous and defamatory”.

The fight for divestment at CWRU is far from over, given the administrations clear aversion to democracy.

As socialists, we must stand in solidarity with the students of CWRU, and of people everywhere, who speak out against colonial crimes. We must rigorously oppose all attacks on this solidarity, no matter if they come from powerful members of our communities or from within the socialist movement itself.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

-Written by an anonymous Cleveland DSA member

The post Students for Justice in Palestine Win Big at Case Western appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

By Anthony Migliacci and Luca Dhagat

To many of the University of California’s nearly 300,000 students, strikes are distant news, simply actions reserved to the industrial workplaces of the Midwest. All that started to change last Monday, when nearly 50,000 academic workers across ten UC campuses began striking in response to the University’s numerous unfair labor practices. The strike was authorized with 98% approval by members of three United Auto Workers locals, which represent postdoctoral scholars, graduate student researchers, academic researchers, readers, tutors, graduate student instructors, trainees, and fellows. 

For most of the University’s large and diverse student body, this strike — the largest U.S. strike since 2019 and the largest education strike in U.S. history — is likely to be their first experience of a powerful labor action. It is also the first to personally impact many of these students, with its disruption of their day-to-day schedule of classes and other academic services. While it is undoubtedly exciting that academic workers are collectively waging a war against their abysmally low wages, lack of benefits, and toxic work environments, why is this strike so meaningful to undergraduates?

When Cal YDSA, the Young Democratic Socialists chapter at UC Berkeley of which we both are organizers, called a rally of undergraduates at the Campanile on Friday afternoon, numerous student organizations joined in and turned out their members. 

Elise Joshi, the Executive Director of youth organization Gen-Z for Change, told the crowd, “Our voices are loud, but so is the silence from leaders who claim to support us,” adding, “Gavin Newsom and state leaders, your silence speaks volumes.” 

Graduate student researcher Kenny Vetter tied the demands of the strike to the interests of the student body, pointing out that “Austerity is a symptom of a broken system that relies on the financialization of education. The only way we are going to change that broken system is with this right here, the power of the people.” 

Cal YDSA organizer Grace McGee, connecting the strike to the experience of undergraduates: “Our generation has not seen an economic system that works for us. We grew up wondering why our teachers were being pink-slipped, why mom and dad couldn’t find work, but we have the opportunity in this moment to build a world that works for ordinary people.”

Striking workers join the undergraduate rally at the Campanile Friday

The truth is that this strike may be a truly radicalizing experience for countless students and young workers. Striking UAW members, and those of us standing with them in solidarity, are showing UC students and others that a better future is worth fighting for and that we can all engage in struggles in our workplaces and on our campuses. They are bravely making evident the immense power of collective action to fight for the demands that unite us as working people, and to highlight the powerful interests that oppose those demands. And, given that the University churns out new laborers who will be joining the workforce in the future, their struggle can be a training ground as well as a major inspiration for a growing and increasingly militant labor movement. Simply put, this strike may very well build class consciousness for hundreds of thousands of young people.

The spirit of solidarity has consumed the UC Berkeley campus. Students are being informed by their professors that their classes have been canceled in order to honor the picket line, while some lecturers, represented by UC-AFT, are teaching their courses on the picket line. At a Monday rally, it was announced that UPS drivers represented by the Teamsters could refuse to deliver packages to the University. Students spending just a minute near the picket lines are likely to hear the many supportive honks coming from truck drivers, bus drivers, and members of the community. Construction workers halted their work in a refusal to undermine UAW’s efforts. Of course, Bernie raised his voice in support of the UAW workers. But even the Stanford marching band spelled out UAW with their bodies at the Big Game at Cal on Saturday.  

Faculty support has been growing, both on and off the picket line

This powerful solidarity is forcing students to think about unwavering working class solidarity and to understand that meaningful change can be won when working people stand together. This experience will inform their political perspectives and will inspire them to be militant labor organizers in their own workspaces after graduation.

Cal YDSA has been at the lead in building undergraduate solidarity and support for the strike. Many of our members are academic workers and part of UAW-2865, and YDSA members in and out of UAW have been visible and present at the picket lines. 

Some of the most active and militant union leaders are also proud socialists and YDSA members. For example, Tanzil Chowdhury, a graduate student and researcher at UC Berkeley, member of the union’s Bargaining Team, and one of the most recognizable faces on the picket line, carries a DSA card. During the strike’s first day rally on Monday, Tanzil gave a rousing closing speech about how the strike is our chance to give the reins of history back to the working class. In the midst of one of the largest rallies that Sproul Plaza has seen since the Free Speech Movement in 1964, he quoted Mario Savio’s famous “Machine” speech: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part!”

Needless to say, this historic strike represents a unique moment to build the socialist movement’s organizing power. By organizing students to engage in strike solidarity, Berkeley YDSA has become the campus group students go to if they want to get involved with supporting the strike. In the weeks leading up to the strike, we published an Undergraduate Letter of Support students could sign on to. With nearly 20,000 signatures and growing daily, we’ve used this petition to reach students to ask them to come out to the picket lines. We’ve also been able to use it to promote YDSA’s own solidarity actions, like our art build, where we created posters and banners for the strike, and the Undergraduate Solidarity rally we organized in order to bolster the number of undergraduates showing up to the picket lines. We’ve also been active in publicizing strike information through social media and through flyers we’ve distributed on campus, like what it means to not cross a picket line. We’ve also created an email template that students can use to reach out to professors to ask them to stop holding classes, so that their students aren’t forced to cross a picket line.

Although these efforts are extremely important to building energy for strike solidarity among undergraduate students, our work is only getting started. The vast majority of undergrads on UC campuses, even among those who are supportive, are not involved with strike solidarity and don’t yet see the connection between the struggle of their academic workers and the fight to protect their own educational futures. Berkeley YDSA has been working to solve this problem by portraying the strike as part of a broader struggle against neoliberalism and austerity in our universities. By connecting the exploitation of academic workers to issues like the budget cuts and closures of three libraries on campus, especially at a time when tuition hikes continue and the UC spends millions on pampering chancellors and administrators, we’re showing students that the strike is a part of a broader fight against a system that only cares about profiting off them.

This strike is our chance to show the bosses many things. It’s our chance to show them that the threat of a resurgent labor movement and a militant working class is on their doorstep, that students know that a victory for working people is a victory for them as well. It’s our chance to show that our communities stand in solidarity with workers when they go on strike. 

It’s also our chance to show the bosses that every single day more people are realizing the need for systemic change to fix the problems in our workplaces, and that wherever they go, they’ll find active and militant socialist organizers leading the way with every fight for working class power.

Anthony Migliacci is the co-chair, and Luca Dhagat is a member of the organizing committee of Cal YDSA.

While 2022’s Election Day wasn’t a perfect one for our chapter, it was an excellent one. All of our members running for public office won their offices and all but one of our endorsed non-members did. Our endorsed candidates running at the State Senate level won, and all but one of our candidates at the State House level did. We congratulate all of our candidates, both in victory and defeat, for advancing progressive, class-conscious ideals in all three counties of the state–in urban, suburban, and rural parts of Delaware. We especially congratulate endorsed non-member Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown on becoming the House Majority Whip–the first person of color to ever occupy a House leadership role in the history of our state! We are building a mass movement that demands a Delaware that puts people over profits, and puts the interests of Delaware’s working class over its major corporations.

The loss:

Susan Clifford (RD-39, Seaford): 30-70%.

The wins:

Sen. Marie Pinkney (SD-13, Bear): Unopposed

Rep. Larry Lambert: (RD-7, Claymont): 71-29%
Rep. Rae Moore (RD-8, Middletown): 58-42%
Rep. DeShanna Neal* (RD-13, Elsmere): 61-39%
Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown (RD-17, Wilmington Manor): Unopposed
Rep. Sophie Phillips (RD-18, Christiana): 71-29%
Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton*: (RD-26, Bear): 70-30%
Rep. Eric Morrison* (RD-27, Glasgow): 53-47%
Rep. Kerri Evelyn Harris (RD-32, Dover): 58-42%

(* indicates a Delaware DSA chapter member)

DSA-recommended candidates Auditor-Elect Lydia York also won 54-46% and New Castle County Councilman Brandon Toole (CD-1, Bear) won unopposed.

These DSA-endorsed electoral wins represent a DOUBLING of our chapter members in Dover and a 33% increase in our non-member endorsees in office—clearly, the appetite for democratic socialism in Delaware is growing. This election cycle also marks the beginning of electoral relevance for our Southern Delaware DSA branch. One endorsed non-member in a district entirely located in Kent County was elected. Kent County is not sapphire-blue the way Northern Delaware is; while it voted for President Biden in 2020, it went for President Trump in 2016. This should put to rest the tiresome narrative that we are a fringe group only capable of winning in overwhelmingly Democratic communities. While in Delaware, at least, we might not be a competitive force in red or purple districts, or in our state’s one red county of Sussex (yet!), we have proven that with quality candidates, quality messaging, and a quality work ethic, we can go into Kent County, compete, and win.

Still, the relentless attack ads, aimed not only at the candidates we support, but at candidates such as Dr. Frank Burns and Rep. Paul Baumbach who merely donate to our endorsees, should not be ignored, even though they were largely ineffective in a state that both leans left and prides itself on a congenial political climate. It is important that we continue to grow our chapter in membership and in organizing capacity so that candidates continue to view our endorsement as an asset and not as a liability. Mailers and texts attacking us seem to be more effective than robocalls, as several of our candidates who were targeted with these—Reps. Moore, Neal, and Morrison—while all victorious, underperformed Biden’s 2020 performances in their districts at a statistically significant level. Meanwhile, Rep. Lambert, who was merely attacked by robocalls tying him to us, actually slightly overperformed the President’s 2020 results in his district. Granted, other factors are at play here too—racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia directed at our candidates, betrayal by some state-level Democrats overtly or covertly supporting our GOP opponents, and of course, Biden’s natural boost up and down the state of being Delaware’s “favorite son”. In the case of Rep. Morrison, who had the biggest underperformance of any candidate we backed, the Delaware GOP ran an experienced political candidate, giving him a (paper thin) moderate veneer, and poured massive amounts of money and manpower into the race. Given all of these vulnerabilities, they’ve probably hit their high-but-not-high-enough ceiling against him, at least for the coming decade in which his district will remain the same.

There is some internal work to be done to shore up our positions—both we and other Delaware progressive organizations have run into frustration when trying to get a mostly Northern New Castle County membership base down to canvas and volunteer even in Southern New Castle County, let alone downstate. While we made up for this by redirecting more fundraising money to our candidates in these communities, nothing compares to on-the-ground support and we can realistically probably never out-fundraise the corporate elite of Delaware. Now that we have multiple electoral successes in the region, southern NCCo in particular is a critical area for us in which to build our base and destigmatize the word “socialism” from meaning “the Soviet Union” to meaning “a society in which the interests of working people are favored over the interests of the elites.” The part of New Castle County below the canal is more underrepresented in our membership than redder Kent County is. While we should not compromise our platform—doing so in the face of electoral SUCCESS looks comically weak, there are possibly some points that could be clarified, especially on criminal justice. It is one of the few issues on which Delaware is right-of-center on, and it is by far and away the issue on which the attack ads against us hammered the hardest—the Republicans can’t hit us on our healthcare policies or environmental policies very much, simply because they are overwhelmingly popular among Delawareans. It is critical that we make it abundantly clear that while our goal is to fight against the carceral state and not just to get nicer cops and prison guards, we do not plan to eliminate police departments and empty all of the prisons the moment we gain power. We actually have a plan for public safety that transfers functions from the police and resolves socio-economic conditions conducive to crime.

Overall, this was a highly successful electoral campaign for the Delaware DSA chapter in 2022! We owe our profound thanks to all of our members, all of our supported candidates, everyone who volunteered and worked for the candidates, and other progressive organizations and labor unions that threw down in money and time for many and in some cases all of our candidates. Thank you all so much!

For immediate release – November 18, 2022

AKRON, OHIO — Akron DSA demands Akron City Council halt development at White Pond Business Park immediately. We join with our fellow Akronites to say that public land should be for public use, not the profits of private investment. This wetland area is home to vulnerable species of wildlife — likely including a few endangered species, though more time is needed to confirm. In Ohio, 90% of wetlands have already been destroyed, and as climate change intensifies, we can’t afford to destroy natural habitats, including a peat bog, which is something that is excellent at storing carbon and for mitigating air, water, soil, and noise pollution.

DSA is an ecosocialist, ecojustice organization, meaning we fully support maintaining and preserving undeveloped areas at all costs, meaningful action towards mitigating climate change, and creating ways for people to live in harmony with the natural spaces we love and depend upon for survival. Capital’s need for constant growth and expansion is incompatible with life on earth and it is our responsibility as socialists to stand against the reckless demands of Capitalism.

Additionally, this proposal suggests unethical behavior. Mayor Horrigan accepted campaign donations in 2021 from the developers and individuals affiliated with the developers – Triton Property Ventures, LLC and now White Pond Reserve, LLC – a company that the public has no evidence of experience with new developments. Triton owns multiple properties across the area, and with this city focusing on critically needed housing improvements, we don’t need another unaccountable landlord with properties tied up in LLCs.

We are inviting the public to join us for a hike hosted by Save White Pond at 1 pm on Sunday, November 20, 2022 at the area slated for development. 

Parking for event: 274 White Pond Drive

Event information: https://actionnetwork.org/events/save-white-pond-hike-for-solidarity/

Akron Democratic Socialists of America

Email: dsaakron@gmail.com