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Tonight we are talking about how care providers have been treated during the COVID-19 pandenic, focusing on vaccines to explain the role they will play liberating us from the COVID-19 epidemic (especially in our communities of color).

 

This is a deeply personal subject and in this episode we hope to honor everyone’s values and beliefs while grounding this segment in the science and public health knowledge of our guest.

 

Guest Jamese Lamb is an NYC-DSA Bronx/Upper Manhattan branch member and has a doctorate in Nursing from Duke University. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice and you should consult a primary care physician for your own personal care needs or eligibility for the vaccine.

 

This past Monday, New York City shut down indoor dining at restaurants and bars as COVID cases continue to rise in the city and across the country. Many restaurants were barely surviving before New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year. With little to no government support to make up for the loss of business needed to maintain necessary restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19, restaurants and bars across the city are shutting their doors for good. And of course those most impacted in all of this are restaurant workers.

Today we’ll be talking with Natalia, Paul and Crystal, comrades from here in New York City and across the country in Minneapolis and Austin who are organizing with the Restaurant Organizing Project, and effort to organize restaurant workers for relief and power on the job during COVID-19 and beyond. We’ll talk about the many labor issues that existed for restaurant workers before COVID, how the pandemic has exacerbated those struggles while creating new ones, and how workers are fighting back.

Follow the Restaurant Organizing Project at twitter.com/@restaurantproj or visit labor.dsausa.org/restaurants to learn more about how you can get involved!

Space Coast DSA (SCDSA) Organizing Committee (OC) was originally formed in 2017 on the growing wave of interest in socialism nationwide. After two years we formally adopted a set of Bylaws and in 2019 were formally recognized as an official chapter. We engage in a number of projects as a chapter from protests and tabling events  to mutual aid programs and political campaigns. If you’re interested in these endeavours or just furthering your ideological education, all are welcome in our spaces member or not.

When the capitalist media finally pronounced the resounding defeat of fascist Donald Trump, workers around the world breathed a sigh of relief – but only for a moment. Millions continue to suffer through the COVID crisis despite the changing leadership. Workers face mass evictions and unemployment, police repression, and intensifying climate change. The working class must demand that Biden and Harris make real change and break from the neoliberal status quo that brought us Trump and his neofascist movement in the first place.

If the US government can afford to bail out corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in support, it can afford to bail out the working class. We demand COVID relief now in the form of a $15/hr minimum wage and $2000 monthly survival checks. We demand a safe, livable planet for all, and a Green Jobs Guarantee that puts millions of people to work building the green infrastructure necessary to halt climate change and achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030. We demand the passage of the Emergency Healthcare Guarantee Act and a Medicare For All single-payer healthcare system that guarantees healthcare as a right, not a privilege. We demand a People’s Bailout!

In order to win the COVID relief we deserve, we must overpower the billionaire class. We, the Metro Atlanta DSA, know that this struggle must begin with the immediate defeat of the Republican candidates in the January 5th runoff elections. Control of the US Senate hinges on Georgia, and a Republican-held Senate would be a massive barrier to passing even the most modest reforms. We recommend voting against all Republican candidates on the ballot, in order to make progress possible. However, we do not endorse or support any candidates running in the election. If the Republicans lose the election, our next immediate task will be campaigning against the incoming neoliberal capitalist senators to pass real COVID relief for workers.

Throughout this election cycle, we are organizing to combat racist voter suppression, and to help working Georgians cast their votes in the runoff elections. We are holding socially distanced canvasses and lit drops every weekend, making phone calls and sending texts to voters, and raising awareness about the January 5th election while building support for key socialist issues such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a living wage. 

If you would like to get involved in our campaign, please join DSA, join our chapter, and check our calendar for upcoming events. We are a volunteer-led organization and we rely on dues and donations from working people to fund our activities. Please consider donating to support our campaign. You can email jan5runoffs@madsa.ga for more information.

Workers will fight for the dignity we deserve. Workers will win. Solidarity.

After exit polls from the November election showed 72% of voters wanted Medicare for All, Medicare for All Indiana and the Religious Socialism Committee of Central Indiana DSA convened on November 24th a Multifaith Forum on Medicare for All, recorded and available as our podcast episode. Panelists discussing their faith’s shared commitment to universal healthcare as a moral imperative included: Rabbi Jordana Chernow-Reader, Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation; Rev. David W. Greene, Sr., Purpose of Life Ministries (Second Baptist) and President, Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis; Hebah Kassem, Muslim Medicare for All Activist and DSA member; and Fr. Charles Allen, Episcopal Priest and Member, Religious Socialism Committee of Central Indiana DSA. The moderator was Fran Quigley, director of the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law and member of the Religious Socialism Working Group and Central Indiana DSA.

Welcome to FINALS WEEK at Revolutions per Minute. Inspired by the developing tuition strike at Columbia-Barnard and other actions around the country, we’re focusing on workers and students organizing on campus. Our live guest, David Duhalde, will speak on the history of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, DSA’s campus-oriented arm and a crucial part of our diverse socialist movement. We also hear from Michele of CUNY Adjuncts on their struggle against austerity and for a human-centered approach to graduate labor. Finally, farmers’ protests have made global headlines as millions of workers fight back against neoliberalism in India. We’ll end our show tonight with a brief interview with Jagpreet of Queens DSA on these massive protests and the governmental policies that provoked them.

 

To learn more about the Columbia-Barnard tuition strike, visit linktr.ee/columbiaydsa.

 

Tired of austerity measures like those that threaten CUNY adjuncts? Tax the rich! This week, NYC-DSA, NYCC, Empire State Indivisible, and DSA chapters around NYS are throwing down to protect our communities from budget cuts. As part of their Tax The Rich week of action, their campaign is calling people across New York state to pressure Albany to Tax the Rich to fund our future. NY is facing a budget deficit of over 50 billion and we need Albany to act in the new year to pass over 50 billion in new taxes on the rich to save our state from catastrophe. Go to taxtherichnys.com to get involved.

The CDC Evictions Moratorium is set to expire at the end of the calendar year. People in Indiana are still being evicted, and the eviction crisis is only going to […]

Last week, many New Yorkers celebrated Thanksgivings, but for members of the Shinnecock Nation it was recognized as a Day of Mourning and the end of Sovereignty Camp 2020, a multi-week encampment led by Indigenous women of the Shinnecock Nation to call on New York State to drop their lawsuit over a monumental billboard the nation has put up to bring in economic development to its members who are suffering from hundreds of years of violent settler colonialism. We’ll talk with Shinnecock tribal member and lawyer Tela (tea-la) Troge about Sovereignty Camp 2020 and the nation's centuries long struggles to defend their ancestral territory. We’ll also be joined by comrades from Suffolk DSA to talk about their campaign to Defund the Police and organize to build democratic socialism in a uniquely conservative region of Downstate New York. The Shinnecock Nation lawsuit link: https://linktr.ee/WarriorsoftheSunrise Suffolk DSA Campaign: bit.ly/SteveAndTimListen to email and call Steve Bellone and Tim Sini

On September 22nd, a two-thirds majority voted to join the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 993. As of November 30th, their employer Herzog Transit Services Inc. (HTSI) has yet to formally recognize their union: HTSI is still making terminations and policy changes without ATU’s consultation.  Dangerous Work Conditions Oklahoma County has been a hotbed for […]