On January 3rd, 2021, Charlotte Metro DSA held its monthly meeting in the midst of the #ForcetheVote on Medicare for All debate that was raging online amongst the American Left.  While the weeks since that meeting have diverted our attention, it is important for the chapter leadership to revisit what was discussed at the meeting and report on the debates and decisions that the chapter made as a democratic organization in regard to #ForcetheVote. 

Members displayed their passion and commitment to socialism and building working class power in one the longest debates in chapter history. Many fantastic questions were raised about how we build power, the nature of organizing work, and how we can effectively reach our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors in the working class. Ultimately it was decided to not endorse the #ForcetheVote effort, but instead to use this as an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment as a chapter to Medicare for All organizing.   

Through the debate we were able to reach a consensus as a chapter that healthcare is at the top of everyone’s mind, especially in the midst of a pandemic and economic crisis.  Since healthcare intersects with every aspect of our lives - labor, housing, education, race, and gender, to name a few - it is also one of the easiest ways for us to start talking to and organizing with the people in our lives.  So, instead of simply voting “no” on endorsing the #ForcetheVote effort, we want to use this as an opportunity. An opportunity to recommit to supporting Medicare for All organizing within Charlotte Metro DSA and in the Carolinas, as a way to reach and recruit new members, as a vehicle to building an effective organizing body in the region, and as a way to positively impact the lives of workers in our community and state.

As we launch this renewed effort in Medicare for All organizing, please join us for our Medicare for All Campaign Kickoff on Saturday, February 20th at 1:00 PM.

RSVP here. Campaign news, updates, and actions will be posted on our M4A Campaign launch page.

Medicare for All now. Solidarity forever.

The Charlotte Metro DSA Steering Committee

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/18/the-columbia-university-student-strike-is-about-far-more-than-tuition

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Our society is in economic and social crisis, and as socialists, we know that the roots of this crisis spread far beyond the immediate cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Deliberate policy decisions by our leadership at all levels have led to a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, crumbling social and physical infrastructure, an education system designed to reinforce the dominance of the capitalist class, a healthcare system designed to extract profit from human suffering, and a mass incarceration system that imprisons and brutalizes tens of thousands. In this episode, RPM's own Jack Devine interviews State Senator and NYC-DSA member Julia Salazar about the state budget process and how New York State can lead the charge against 50 years of harmful neoliberal austerity. We also speak to Emmaline Bennet of Columbia YDSA about the current tuition strike at Columbia and the fight for democratized universities dedicated to the pursuit of human knowledge over private profits. Finally, because it's COVID winter, Desiree Frias will walk us all through how to help eligible people, especially elders, sign up for a vaccine appointment through the city's fiendishly difficult online portals. Times are tough, but we have a world to win.

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At the beginning of this month, State Senator Warren Hamilton proposed Oklahoma Senate Bill 676, a punitive piece of legislation that would make it illegal for healthcare entities to provide life-saving, gender-affirming medical care to trans Oklahomans under the age of 21.  Senator Hamilton is a staunch anti-choice conservative who believes that his role in […]

Building the power to win public power  - The failures of our current energy system are all around us. Here in New York City we see blackouts every summer during heatwaves and people lacking heat in the winter. Utility debt is mounting across the state, but investor owned utilities are still building dirty fossil fuel infrastructure at the expense of rate payers, and the health and safety of communities and the climate. Today we’ll talk with Mohini Sharma and Patrick Robbins about how the NY Public Power Coalition is building power across the state to pass two bills later this year that will replace corporate utilities with a democratically controlled, publicly owned energy system.

Anyone who lives here in New York City knows the sight of mostly empty luxury towers lording over our neighborhoods. These developments generate immense wealth for real estate capital while raising rents for the working class residents who actually live here. As luxury buildings proliferate, tens of thousands are forced into homelessness and millions more pay most of their meager wages to their landlords. Gentrification is a campaign waged by real estate capital and their representatives in the state that dispossesses disproportionately black and brown working class New Yorkers for profit.  

NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for City Council in District 35 Michael Hollingsworth has spent life building tenant power and fighting for the people. He joins us to discuss his history as an organizer in the struggle to build working class power in his neighborhood and why he decided to run for city council on a socialist slate. We also hear from a member from DSA’s healthcare working group on the worker led fight to keep a hospital open in East Flatbush.

Earlier today, Joe Biden was sworn in as the President of the United States. He comes into office as more than 400,000 people in this country have died from Covid-19, 2020 was the hottest year on record and white supremacists are desperately fighting to maintain their power in this country after social uprisings against police brutality this summer strengthened movements for racial justice and Black Liberation. Biden ran his campaign for President as a centrist democrat and has since proposed a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus plan called the “American Rescue Plan” and announced 17 executive actions he plans to take on day one that many in the mainstream media are describing as Biden’s way of beginning to dismantle Trump’s legacy. Today with our DSA comrades we will talk about how Biden’s plans leaves out many struggling people including essential workers and why Biden must go further in the first 100 days of his administration and embrace bold policies that Democratic Socialists and grassroots movements across the country are organizing for like defunding the police and a Green New Deal in order to truly dismantle Trump’s legacy. We’ll also hear from Desiree Joy Frias who has been on the ground at the Teamster union worker strike at Hunts Point Produce Market.

Like many of you, our primary feelings right now are those of anger and urgency. We are isolated in our homes, or continuing to work in essential jobs made dangerous, as we watch COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise. Amidst this deadly pandemic we are witnessing a new stage in the emergence of the far right. White supremacists, encouraged by the President and our congressional representative, Elise Stefanik, are beginning to violently challenge our already precarious and frail democracy.

Both of the bourgeois parties have rallied together to protect big business and the political establishment. This could potentially cause a fallout between the Republican party, Trump and his white supremacist supporters, and boost the growth of the radical far-right movement. We will see increased calls for militarization and policing. Calls will be made for “unity,” signalling a rightward turn for the Democratic party as they reach across the aisle to work with conservative colleagues to restore the legitimacy of political institutions. We must be prepared to present an alternative.

High Peaks DSA is vehemently anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist. We believe that building a better society depends on true democracy, representation, economic justice, collaboration and care. Fascism, racism, and capitalism are the antithesis of justice and community care. Cornel West offers inspiration here. He reminds us to “never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” Fighting for justice is uncomfortable, confrontational and messy, and it is loving. This is the instinct that we organize from.

These past couple weeks have been hard. We are tired, but we can feel energy starting to creep back in. It is tempting to wait it out, and wish against our better instincts that Joe Biden’s inauguration will bring more normalcy, but we know that no such thing will happen. As we wrote in June, after the world erupted in anger at the unjust murder of George Floyd, “the system is not broken, it is working as it was always intended to. Our system was born when colonists brought the first African slaves to work this land for their own financial gain over 300 years ago.”

The same is true of the Capitol Police’s response to the white supremacist spectacle on January 6, 2021. The system that colluded to allow them to ransack the Capitol has been 300+ years in the making and will not disappear overnight. It is imperative that we continue organizing locally, to counter white supremacy and fascism in our community, to organize ourselves as the working class in order to challenge the power structures enabling white supremacy, which cannot exist without our labor, and to build support structures that can care for each other through sustained hardship.

In the spirit of solidarity and organizing during these tumultuous times, we hope you will join us in the following:

1. Our members’ meeting tomorrow, January 20th at 7 PM. We will discuss events of the last few weeks & the local priorities moving forward.
2. Our next Public Meeting will be on Wednesday, February 3rd, and will be focused on how you can get involved in local campaigns for justice as we move into a new political era.
3. The Tempest Collective’s: “Fighting the Far Right in the Biden Era”, featuring speakers from Santa Cruz and Chicago DSA chapters, labor organizers, and more.
4. Advocating for the health and safety of the most vulnerable.  Check out this really big news from our friends at RAPP (Releasing Aging People in Prison)!

The post What’s Next? appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

The spirit of black radical traditions, at their best, can turn the world upside down and help usher in a political economy of dignity, voice, and decision-making power for working-class communities. Liberationist streams of black radical spirituality are as contemporary as Alice Walker’s call for democratic socialist womanism, as old as Reverend George Washington Woodbey’s Black Baptist socialism and beyond. This discussion between Rev. Andrew Wilkes and Rev. Sekou, artist, author, and public theologian, is part of an ongoing series on faith and socialism. In this conversation, Rev. Wilkes and Rev. Sekou talk about the ethical and religious streams within black radical traditions and the implications for our times