Last week, against the backdrop of the most dangerous period of the COVID-19 pandemic, City Council voted to increase our CPS Energy rates. During a period that has found teachers, students, service workers, and the highest rate of city employees out on COVID leave, we are being urged to stay home, to stop the spread, but no further federal assistance is coming. Instead, residents of San Antonio are being forced to bear the brunt of CPS Energy’s mismanagement.

We commend our DSA endorsed City Councilmembers, Jalen Mckee-Rodriguez and Teri Castillo, for voting against the rate hike. Other Council Members gave lip service to the idea of reforming CPS Energy, without using their power to force any committed change. The Council discussion made clear who is listened to: it’s the CEOs and business executives who run a utility which we, the people, own. Who knows if Rudy Garza will be here to see any of these commitments through? Former CEO Paula Gold Williams certainly isn't, but we, the working class ratepayers of San Antonio will be here.

Since the fallout of Winter Storm Uri, it was clearly only a matter of time before the cost of the storm would be pushed onto working class people. On the first CPS Energy Board of Trustees call following the storm, over 140 people delivered public comments identifying the failures of CPS Energy. At nearly every single CPS Rate Adjustment Town Hall, the choice of the people was overwhelmingly clear, no rate hike. Instead, a majority of City Council voted against the will of the people. We are repeatedly told that our public input is valued, and like clockwork, our representatives vote against our interests. It’s made obvious again that the majority of our City Council is unwilling to govern with the tenacity our living conditions call for.

This is why the only action the people of San Antonio have left is direct democracy. Last year, Recall CPS nearly collected enough signatures to put CPS Energy reform on the ballot. Next year, it appears we have no other choice. If our elected officials refuse to represent the will of their constituencies, we need a ballot measure that allows the voters of San Antonio to choose the best way forward for CPS Energy. We hope you will join us in that fight. DSAUSA.org/join

Xcel Energy originally hoped to run their highest polluting electric plant, the Comanche Coal Plant, until 2040. Then hundreds of people wrote in and spoke out at public hearings demanding that they close the plant as soon as possible – 2030 at the latest.

In response, Xcel struck a backdoor deal with the City of Denver to keep running the coal plant until 2035, along with some nasty strings attached.

Luckily the Public Utility Commission is likely to amend or even reject this proposed settlement. We’re co-organizing a rally on Friday April 8th and a phone/email campaign telling Denver City Council to refuse any future agreement with Xcel and instead demand the Comanche 3 Coal Plant close by 2030 or sooner.

Attend the Coal Free Colorado Rally on Friday April 8th

Call or email your city council representative and tell them No Dirty Backdoor Deal for Xcel.

Denver is Turning its Back on its Climate Commitments by Signing the Xcel Settlement

Denver’s electricity provider, Xcel Energy, is trying to lock Colorado into 13 more years of coal while forcing customers to foot the bill… And the City of Denver supported it!

Here’s what’s wrong with the proposed settlement:

1. It agrees that Comanche 3, the largest single source of climate pollution in Colorado, should operate until 2035.
   
   The settlement would require the Comanche 3 coal plant to burn coal until 2035– five years longer than any other coal plant in Colorado. This is the most unreliable power plant in the state, including being offline for nearly all of 2020 because of poor maintenance practices.
   
   The coal plant is the largest source of climate pollution in the state and is located in Pueblo, a low-income, Latino community. This community doesn’t even get the electricity from the plant — just the pollution. When the PUC held a hearing in Pueblo in October 2021, residents expressed overwhelming support for retiring the coal plant by 2030 at the latest.
   
2. It prevents Comanche 3 from ever being closed earlier than 2035.
   
   The settlement would lock in a retirement date for Comanche 3 of December 31, 2034 that could never be changed, even as the plant continues to suffer malfunctions and more and more cheaper, cleaner alternatives become available. The single largest source of CO2 emissions will run for the next 14 years.
   
3. It makes Xcel’s shareholders rich on the backs of Denver ratepayers.
   
   The settlement forces us ratepayers to pay Xcel $658 million to recover costs lost because of their mismanagement. We shouldn’t be on the hook to pay millions to Xcel’s Wall Street investment for their bad business decisions.
   
   The settlement also guarantees Xcel at least $626 million in new company-owned electric generation resources to replace the Comanche 3 coal plant after 2035. The more resources Xcel builds and owns, such as new wind turbines, solar panels, or gas plants, the more money their shareholders make. Typically, Xcel has to allow other companies to bid on new electric projects. For example, instead of setting up community-owned solar farms we would have to get our new electricity through Xcel, feeding their extractive monopoly.
   
4. It assumes new gas plants would operate for at least 40 years.
   
   The settlement allows Xcel to assume that new gas plants would operate for 40 years – long after 2050, the date by which Xcel says it is aiming to be carbon-free. This violates Denver’s plan for 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, and Colorado’s goal of 100% renewable energy by 2040.
   
5. It will massively increase pollution from gas-fired power plants.
   
   The settlement says that the social cost of carbon will be used in dispatch starting in the summer of 2022. This means that gas generation will increase dramatically, to make up for the lost coal generation–because it is impossible for Xcel to acquire new renewables by next summer.
   
   
   Tell your City Council member and the Mayor that the City of Denver to protect people and the climate, rather than corporate profits!

On Dec. 2, more than 100 people registered for a Zoom call hosted by the Public Utility Commission to hear what the public thought of Xcel’s 10-year plan. Scheduled to end at 6 p.m., the event ran well past 7.

Of the dozens and dozens who spoke, only four supported Xcel’s plan. The rest of us called it out for what it is: greenwashing.

Xcel boasts that their “Landmark electric resource plan would cut carbon emissions an estimated 85% by 2030.”

The problem with that target is that it’s too late. The Biden administration’s national goal is 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035; Gov. Polis’ target is 100% renewable energy by 2040. Denver, Boulder, Pueblo, Fort Collins, Longmont, Golden, Summit County, Lafayette, Frisco, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Nederland, and Breckenridge each have set 100% renewable electricity targets by 2030 or 2035.

We’re already in the midst of a climate crisis. We’re feeling it first-hand with the record-setting heat waves, wildfires, mudslides, droughts and air pollution.

Xcel missed its window of opportunity to help avert climate catastrophe. Now the question is, how bad will we allow it to get?

To stave off the worst of the worst, community members overwhelmingly called for the following changes to Xcel’s plan:

Close all coal plants, especially the Comanche Coal Plant, the state’s dirtiest, most unreliable and expensive source of energy, by 2030 at the latest.

Do not pass on the cost of the Comanche Coal Plant to ratepayers. This coal plant was built in 2010 and it was largely opposed then. It was a bad investment that Xcel Energy needs to take responsibility for. The general public already is paying the price with our health and the challenges of an increasingly hostile climate.

Close the Arapahoe and Cherokee gas plants by 2030. Like the Comanche Coal plant, these have been polluting the air of its nearby mostly Latino, working-class neighborhoods, contributing to our severe ozone issue and of course climate change.

Set a 100% renewable electricity goal by 2040 at the very latest — to align with Colorado targets.

The outpouring of support for these demands has been overwhelming. The hearing on Dec. 2  featured voices ranging from ski industry representatives concerned about shrinking ski days, to local business owners wanting to purchase clean electricity, to indigenous leaders highlighting the devastation coal and gas brings to the land and their communities, to parents angry about the planet on which we’re raising, and eventually will pass along to, our kids.

A strong majority of Pueblo residents (30 opposing Xcel’s plan, 7 neutral and 8 in favor) spoke out at an earlier public hearing in October. More than 1,000 residents have submitted written comments to the same effect.

Xcel Tries Striking a Backdoor “Settlement”

This surge in public participation prompted Xcel to have work behind closed doors with the city of Boulder and Denver and other parties to devise a counter-offer.

Originally the plan was to run the Comanche Coal plant until 2040. In this new deal, that closure date would be moved up to 2035. It would also pass on some of the cost of the bad investment to us ratepayers. 

At the Dec. 2 statewide hearing, however, we residents made clear that 2030 is the hard line for closing those coal- and gas-fired plants. We can’t have Xcel making closed-door deals that undermine the strong public consensus on this.

This post was taken largely from EcoSocialist Chair Clayton Dewey’s op-ed in the Colorado Sun, with his permission.

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In an effort to exert its power over the Americas, the United States has enforced an embargo on Cuba ever since its revolutionary struggle for independence from American imperialism. The blockade is an effort to force regime change against the will of Cuban people who want to improve their society without foreign interference. Despite the immense suffering caused by the embargo to this very day, socialists in Cuba have made remarkable achievements in education and healthcare. DSA members Rolando, Tom, and Patrick as well as Daniel Montero, a journalist from Cuba, join us to discuss the movement to end the embargo and the fight to preserve Cuban self-determination.

Over the past few months, a situation involving the calls for expulsion of Rep. Jamaal Bowman has brought to light a series of organizational issues that we should not be distracted from, namely:

1. How do we seek to build DSA as a Socialist membership organization with commitments to our democratically decided principles? 
2. How does our national political leadership (NPC) carry out that will?

The first issue speaks to the long-standing electoral approach that embodies much of DSA’s strategy, past and present. Electoralism alone is not a solution to our struggle, but a necessary component when applied carefully. The endorsement of Rep. Bowman has exemplified a set of problems with our electoral approach. First, the premature endorsement of candidates who are not tied to the organization in a meaningful way, and in turn their subsequent connection to the Democratic Party once elected, which places us in a precarious situation. These issues have consistently allowed for careerist and opportunistic behavior to flourish, relegating DSA to a mere mobilizing branch for vague progressives that attach us to the Democratic Party, as we attempt to horse-trade for watered-down reforms. What ought to be clear is that both the Democratic and Republican parties are our enemies. Such as here in Buffalo where the attempt to unseat a local Democratic Party leader was met with vicious reactionary politics from the Democratic Party itself, and a joining of hands with Republicans and conservatives. Moving from Local/State level to the Federal level we see these contradictions are even greater. This should give us serious pause about issuing endorsements to candidates such as Rep. Bowman who we have little to no reason to put out support behind. Vague progressive values are abundant, socialists with principles tied to our organization and a working class base less so. Second, the issue this also addresses is the nature of DSA – its size, its influence, and its relation to a fighting labor movement necessary to extract concessions from the capitalist class. As James Connolly put it:

“a socialist political party not emanating from the ranks of organized labor is, as Karl Marx phrased it, simply a socialist sect, ineffective for the final revolutionary act, but that also the attempt of craft organized unions to create political unity before they have laid the foundation of industrial unity in their own, the economic field, would be an instance of putting the cart before the horse.”

This issue has long burdened DSA since its foundation as little more than an organization to “push the Democratic Party left”. The premature – and often questionable – focus on electoralism has always been a series of contradictions that we will not overcome with candidates such as Rep. Bowman. This does not mean we should reject any electoral approach altogether, but that we must be more decisive and develop more consistency with our principles. We are happy with the NPC’s decision to develop a Socialists in Office committee, and to bolster our electoral standards at minimum. Serious thought should be put into the weaknesses of a horizontialist approach that deems any vague progressive candidacy useful to building Socialism. Though none of us are members of the Marxist Unity Group, we endorse their call for the following requirements to our electoral standards:

• The candidate must be a member of DSA.
• They must accept and pledge to promote and fight for the DSA national political platform if one is passed.
• If the campaign is successful, any staffers hired by the legislator will also be subject to the first two requirements.
• Legislators must agree to at least quarterly meetings with DSA leadership of the appropriate designation: for example congresspeople would meet with the National Political Committee, state legislators would hold meetings with leadership of all state chapter leaders (or leadership of a state/regional body if one were created), city councilors would have meetings with local chapter or branch leadership, etc.
• All DSA members in legislatures must form a caucus that votes as a block and rejects de facto discipline from any other party caucuses, regardless of which ballot line they were elected on.

To the second major issue, we are seeing a genuine problem with our national political leadership. The decisions of the NPC – the majority we should say – throughout this process have been dismaying and counterproductive. The lack of conviction to even censure Rep. Bowman illustrates as much. We also cannot help but notice that a level of secrecy in these discussions occurred that leads to reasonable doubts about the integrity of the decision making process. Additionally, the subsequent response to reign in the BDS & Palestine WG has also been an issue of concern. Though the NPC is the highest decision making body elected to carry out our political aims in-between conventions, the NPC’s disregard on our democratic commitments to Palestine, and the move to effectively censor the BDS & Palestine WG shows a vulnerability in our organizational coherence. We do not support this decision, even as we also have criticisms of BDS & Palestine WG’s decisions and level of independence, we have signed on in support of their statement of dissent. The Buffalo Chapter of DSA has voted in overwhelming support on the issue of Palestine and dissent on retaining Rep. Bowman as a representative of our organization. As leadership we see it fit that we should convey our resolve to uphold that message. The NPC has failed to act in the best interest of our organization’s democratically decided principles, and instead has demonstrated a vague strategy in supporting an elected representative who has not demonstrated the tenacity of a socialist in office. While we understand the weight and difficulties that the NPC is being presented with, we find it necessary to convey that this does not absolve the NPC of due criticism. 

Furthermore, and most troubling of all, the revelation that an NPC member threatened to split and denounce DSA as a racist organization for upholding our principles of support for Palestine is particularly egregious and cannot be ignored. Whomever this NPC member is, we cannot have confidence in their leadership much less the NPC’s integrity as long as this behavior goes unanswered. We ask that this NPC member be made public to DSA membership, and that they resign from national leadership on grounds of malfeasance.

The formation of the United Auto Workers in the 1930s represented the upsurge in organized working class militancy that pushed forward a New Deal. Since that time the UAW has been a base of support for its members that collectively provides workers with a better life. Yet the UAW has weakened as its corrupt leadership has chosen compromise with the bosses over a robust internal democracy. That’s all about to change. The successful One Member, One Vote referendum has forced open the democratic process and created space for new leadership to rise up. We’ll discuss that and much more with UAW members Kay and Chris. The UAW is much more than just autoworkers. After threatening to strike, the 17,000 member Student Researchers Union of the University of California system won recognition and officially became the newest UAW local. How did these academic workers build a new organization? We hear directly from Kat and Laura of the SRU on how they made it happen.

It’s never been easy to be a front-line retail or customer service worker at the holidays, and with a dramatic surge in COVID cases affecting New York City, this year is even harder. For our Revolutions per Minute holiday special, we’re joined live by Eric Dirnbach of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, DSA’s national project in partnership with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, as well as Aria, a retail worker who participated in a successful strike last year at the Good Vibrations sex shop in Massachusetts with support from EWOC.

Plus, a special correspondent, Shen, visits the picket line in Chinatown to speak with Liang, a restaurant worker at the historic dim sum restaurant Jing Fong.

We are fundraising for the WBAI end of year Tower Fund with some help from our NYC-DSA chorus, Sing in Solidarity. Give to the Tower Fund at towerfund.wbai.org and follow our chorus on Twitter @nycdsachoir.

Sign the petition to support Jing Fong workers and stop displacement in Chinatown at bit.ly/stopdisplacement.

Are you a retail or service worker looking for support organizing your worksite? You are not alone. Support and help is available. Visit https://workerorganizing.org/support/. 

2021 has been another incredibly tough year, with the pandemic and climate crisis exacerbating income inequality and dire living situations for working class people across the globe.

 

Tonight we’ll catch up with a few DSA working groups to talk about the organizing they’ve done to build working class power and solidarity this year and what’s coming up for 2022. Our guests tonight are Joel from the BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group on the Boycott Puma campaign and the power of a consumer boycott, Emma Claire from the Healthcare Working Group on universal healthcare and labor rights for home health care workers, and Josh and Robert from Eco-Socialists on the Green New Deal for Public Schools and the New York Public Power campaign.

 

To learn more or get involved with NYC-DSA's eco-socialist organizing, visit https://ecosocialists.nyc/join-us/.

 

Find NYC-DSA's Healthcare Working Group on Twitter or Facebook @NYCDSAHealth or email the organizers at healthcare@socialists.nyc.

 

Curious about the BDS movement and DSA's Palestine solidarity work? View the primer and FAQ: https://palestine.dsausa.org/palestine-and-bds-faq/.

 

Throughout this episode and all our remaining 2021 episodes, we are fundraising for WBAI's rent on the transmitter at 4 Times Square. We encourage all who are able to donate what they can, even a small amount, toward this important community institution. Visit towerfund.wbai.org to give. 

Gary Dorrien's new book American Democratic Socialism is a comprehensive look at the deep roots, many of them religious, of democratic socialism in this country. Rev. Andrew Wilkes spoke with Professor Dorrien at a live event in New York City at Judson Memorial Church, where this podcast was recorded.