You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM

You can follow Hadas Thier on Twitter @HadasThier

Her book A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics will be available this Summer. You can preorder it here: 

https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781642591699

Dragonfly's work can be found here: http://dragonflyness.com/

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM.

Defund Police! Protect Workers! Rebuild Atlanta!

Join us for a day of action against state budget cuts on June 15, 2020.

Governor Brian Kemp is calling on all state agencies to prepare for a 14% budget cut, but we think the State of Georgia and the City of Atlanta should keep cuts where they belong! Our schools, hospitals, and public services shouldn’t suffer when we’re spending too much on police cruisers, tanks, and riot gear. Tax the rich and defund the police!

This June 15 day of action is organized by Metro Atlanta DSA in collaboration with leaders and organizers from Atlanta-area unions and Black socialist groups.

June 15 Schedule & Action Items

1:00 PM

Phone blitz!

Call your legislator to demand a just state budget.Use our script!

3:00 PM

Downtown sit-in & caravan!

Let’s make some noise! If you’re walking and want to rally at the Capitol, meet at the GSU MARTA station, and if you’re driving, meet at Grant Park.

ALL DAY

Atlanta Budget Talks!

Call (404) 330-6090 and demand that the City of Atlanta defund the police. Use our script!

Our Full Statement

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent recession, Governor Brian Kemp released a statement on May 1st calling on all state agencies to prepare for a 14% budget cut in the 2021 fiscal year [5]. Historical experience has taught us that these cuts often disproportionately harm our most marginalized communities. Alternatively, investment in public necessities including healthcare, affordable housing, education, and transportation would help protect all residents of our state. 

The burden of Kemp’s proposed cuts will directly contribute to deepening poverty and weakening the working class’s ability to recover—specifically in low-income communities, rural regions of the state, immigrant families, and Black communities. Rather than slashing funding for the services that millions depend on for life, we call on the state of Georgia to put our most marginalized citizens first by taking a more equitable, just, and humanistic approach to balancing the budget.

More recently, in response to protests demanding justice for Black lives like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has failed to protect Atlantans, opting instead to lead a police occupation of the city. As Georgians struggle to pay rent, hold jobs, and afford healthcare, our leaders have poured money into a deadly, racist police and prison system and handouts to employers and landlords. 

While our people suffer, like furloughed service workers at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport left without healthcare or job security [1], our state and local governments respond with tax cuts and subsidies for Georgia’s wealthiest corporations [2]. Our governments have spent enormous resources to protect the ultra-wealthy, at often violent cost to the communities they exploit for profit.

We call on the people of Georgia to join us and refuse any budgets that erode our public schools, hospitals, food access, safe housing, and other vital public services without first cutting from Georgia’s violent carceral systems and its subsidies for the capitalist class. 

Instead of a broken, racist system that treats essentials as commodities reserved for those who can pay, Metro Atlanta DSA calls for a just budget that protects the crucial public services that our people depend on.

Our Demands

We demand that the City of Atlanta:

1. End the police occupation of Atlanta, keep the curfew lifted, defund the Atlanta Police Department, and close the Atlanta City Detention Center. Reinvest recovered funds in Black communities and restorative community programs;
2. Adopt the demands of Unite Here Local 23 [1], including guaranteeing recall rights for workers at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport for 36 months and guaranteeing healthcare for all furloughed workers;
3. Adopt the demands of Black movement organizations in Atlanta [4], including a moratorium on books and arrests for minor offenses, a moratorium on rent, mortgage, utilities, evictions, and parking payments; emergency housing for people without homes, the immediate release of those incarcerated in the Atlanta City Detention Center and providing those released with housing, transportation and other services as needed; and the reduction of police presence in highly vulnerable neighborhoods.  

We further call on the State of Georgia specifically to:

1. Keep the National Guard out of Georgia;
2. Immediately end the drug war in Georgia, beginning with legalizing marijuana and immediately commuting related sentences;
3. Move to end mass incarceration as well as the spread of COVID-19 by dramatically reducing the number of people incarcerated in Georgia, including in county and city jails, and ensure those released have access to the health, financial, transportation, and other resources needed to successfully transition out;
4. End all special tax privileges, exemptions, and loopholes for large corporations and the rich, such as the costly film tax credit;
5. Adopt the anti-austerity demands of the United Campus Workers of Georgia [3], aimed at reducing harm to working-class and marginalized employees, including mandating that any pay cuts or furloughs must begin with the highest-paid public employees and must be made on a progressive basis, with those of the highest earnings giving up a larger percentage of their salary or taking more furlough days;
6. No layoffs, program closures, or department closures for state employees, or employees working for state-subsidized business, excluding the police.

Much of the catastrophe resulting from COVID-19 was avoidable, and the severity of its impact is directly tied to the injustices of capitalism. As socialists, we reject an order that places private property and wealth above human life and dignity.

We will not be sacrificed for billionaire profits!

References

[1] Unite Here Local 23 represents airport service workers and hotel workers across the country, including at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which has placed its concessions workers on recall without healthcare; https://www.unitehere23.org/updates-victories-and-news-coverage/

They have a petition of demands, addressed to Mayor Bottoms, here.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/economic-essentials-for-atlantas-airport-concession-retail-workers

[2] GBPI estimates that Georgia gives $9.8 billion per year in tax breaks for special interests, that setting the tobacco tax at the national average would raise $600 million per year, and that closing an itemized tax deduction loophole for high earners would generate $175 million per year; https://gbpi.org/2020/georgia-cant-afford-another-lost-decade-options-to-increase-state-revenues-to-close-budget-shortfalls/. 

GBPI also reports the state has nearly $1.3 billion in lottery reserves, which could fund shortfalls in HOPE college programs as well as Pre-K; https://gbpi.org/2020/unused-lottery-funds-available-to-support-more-affordable-access-to-college/.

[3] The United Campus Workers of Georgia represent workers at higher education campuses across the University System of Georgia. https://www.ucwga.com/news/ucwga-calls-compassion-response-14-budget-decrease

[4] Many organizations form The Peoples’ Response Atlanta, a collective of concerned citizens and community organizers calling for an adequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant economic crisis from Mayor Bottoms. You can read their demands here: www.bit.ly/DearKeisha or https://wearyourvoicemag.com/peoples-response-atlanta-coalition-mayor-keisha-lance-bottoms/

[5] Recent reports indicate that the budget cuts have been revised down to 11%.

As voted on at the June 7th Meeting of the Charlotte Metropolitan Democratic Socialists of America, the voting body has adopted the the following resolution:

Therefore, be it resolved, employment as a law enforcement officer is in opposition to the principles of the organization as outlined in DSA constitution article II. “Law Enforcement officer” shall be defined as “an individual who is sworn, badged, and arm-able by the government to enforce the law, or a prison guard; or individuals who are members, operators, or supporters of police associated union organizations”(Whether employed by the government or a private company). Persons employed as law enforcement are therefore excluded from membership in Charlotte Metropolitan DSA. Whereas, law enforcement agencies operate to promote the interests of capitalist institutions and to suppress organized dissent against their control of American society; and Whereas, oppressed groups with whom the DSA seeks to organize such as people of color, sex workers, and the homeless have immediate reasons to be afraid of the police, and uncomfortable in their presence.

In an interview with the Gavel, BCPD Chief Evans DEFENDED sending BCPD officers to Franklin Park Tuesday evening. Roxbury and Dorchester are majority Black neighborhoods of Boston. Under no circumstance should BCPD be doing anything, ever, in Roxbury or Dorchester. Particularly not policing a protest against police brutality.

Evans says sending officers to police the protest is”by no means political” This is outrageous. Sending police to oppose protesters at a rally against police brutality and the murder of Black people by police is absolutely political. Boston College must immediately end any involvement in policing protests in Boston. YDS of BC reiterates our call for Evans to resign or be removed as Chief of the Boston College Police department. No institution that employs him has any concern for systematic racism of the police or the criminal justice system. All the statements in the world cannot outweigh his presence on BC’s campus.

Petition to remove Evans can be found here.

High Peaks Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) seeks to express our collective horror at the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by officers in the Minneapolis, Minnesota police force and our solidarity with the black Americans and citizens of all races who have taken to the streets to peacefully protest police brutality and state-sanctioned racism in our country.

While High Peaks DSA recognizes that the Saranac Lake police department maintains a relatively positive relationship with the village community, we call for the Village Board to adopt an ordinance that explicitly condemns police brutality in light of the murder of George Floyd and implements a zero-tolerance policy towards abusive policing. By explicitly condemning police brutality, the Village of Saranac Lake will signal itself as a safe space for diverse communities.

High Peaks DSA also calls for the Village Board and Police Department to partner with village residents to establish a system of community oversight to ensure cooperation, accountability, and justice for all.

Fill out the form below if you’d like to sign the petition:

The post PETITION: Ordinance To Explicitly Condemn Police Brutality & Implement A Zero-Tolerance Policy Towards Abusive Policing appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM.

Text from Natalie Stroud’s presentation during “Education Workers Unite to Defend Vermont Education” on May 29.

My name is Natalie Stroud. I have been a preschool teacher in Burlington for six years. I'm not going to rehash most of the facts and figures because they are already out there and I encourage you to read the letters written people who work in childcare centers. I will share with you the reason WHY I have chosen to plead with Governor Scott to reconsider the June 1st reopening date.


Our nation is experiencing collective trauma right now. Trauma happens when what we individually assume to be true about the world or ourselves is challenged, making it hard to cope and impossible to go back to how things were before. We will all be changed forever by this pandemic. That is trauma.


My students are home right now learning that sometimes parents lose their jobs. They are learning that you can’t always trust the grownups in charge to tell the truth or take care of us. They are learning what it feels like to be isolated and lonely. They are learning that sometimes people don’t always get better when they get sick. All of this is traumatic.


People often say, "kids are so resilient, they will be fine" and yes, kids have the capacity for resilience. But don’t be fooled, their body will remember the trauma for the rest of their lives. They keep moving and smiling because they have to to survive.

So much social and emotional learning takes place in the first five years of life, which is why it is essential that children receive high quality, trauma-sensitive care in early childhood. When we send our children back to school, we need to make sure the environment can provide this for them. They deserve it. 


Right now, our country is showing that we do not value their education. We do not value the quality of their care. Preschool aged children need touch. They need to play with their friends. They need their bodies to be comfortable and unencumbered by a mask in order to learn. They need to see their teachers’ mouth move to learn language. They need to be able to nap. They need their special education providers to help them in the classroom. They need to see their teachers smile. They will need all of this even MORE after what they all have gone through these past few months. The schooling experience we would be sending them back to on June 1st would not be that place.


Teachers are scared and worried, rightfully so. We will be overworked and underpaid, in masks and long sleeve button down shirts in the summer heat nonetheless. Of course, two of things aren’t new. We have always been overworked and underpaid. But at this moment in history, we have a chance to change that.


Help families with unemployment if they choose not to or cannot send their child back to school yet. Compensate teachers fairly. Provide more stabilization funds to programs that cannot open yet. Continue paying open programs a stipend for each child enrolled in the program, as the cost of care has risen. The early childhood education system has always been in survival mode but the response to this pandemic, if handled with care, can help programs thrive for the first time in history. We are asking Governor Scott to help us make history and change the landscape of early childhood education in Vermont forever by hearing our pleas.


Thank you.

Over the past few days, Atlanta has seen an organic, spontaneous working class uprising inspired by the uprisings in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country. Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms has joined forces with Governor Brian Kemp to launch a brutally authoritarian crackdown on the protests, invoking the national guard and hostile military tactics. This looks like war because it is war. This is class war being waged by the ruling capitalist class and their jackboot cronies against Atlanta’s Black working class.

The Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America (MADSA) unequivocally supports the working class uprisings developing in Atlanta and across the country led by the anti-racist Black working class. We support the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the efforts of the leading Black working class to defeat mass incarceration and the neo-fascist police state. We stand in solidarity with George Floyd, may he rest in power, with his family, and with the millions of Black people who fear death because of the violence of white supremacy in the United States.

The racist and white supremacist institutions of capitalism that oppress people of color must be immediately dismantled, and they can only be dismantled by a mass movement. Over the past few days, our members have been on the ground working to build this movement, standing side by side with the working class in its struggle for Black liberation and racial equality. Over the coming weeks, we will do our best to play a principled and helpful role in this non-violent anti-racist movement.

The images and videos of police officers brutalizing Atlanta workers are sickening. No amount of “administrative leave” can change the inherently oppressive nature of the Atlanta Police or the police at large. There is a pattern of injustice and impunity that’s survived decades of elections, all under Democrats. The racist policing system itself must be totally upended.

We demand that Mayor Bottoms and Governor Kemp immediately:

• Remove the National Guard
• End the city curfew
• Restore MARTA services
• Release everyone arrested during all protests
• Demilitarize, disarm, and defund the police

The sign outside the CNN Center has already been repainted, but the life of George Floyd can never be replaced. Instead of addressing the needs of the Black working class, Mayor Bottoms has chosen to lecture the people of this city about property rights. She has shown that she values property over human life, and that her allegiance lies with the ruling class, not the working class majority of Atlanta.

We’re exhausted with the blame games. “Outside agitators,” organized crime, “thugs,” even foreign intervention! We are living in unprecedented times but this isn’t a gaudy spy novel. There is no sinister plot – we are seeing the natural, organic response of the working class to capitalism in crisis. Of course there are uprisings when there is nearly 30% youth unemployment and when the police are wantonly killing innocent people.

All footage of the protests clearly show that the police are the instigators of violence, in Atlanta and elsewhere across the country. The killings of George Floyd and so many others are inexcusable. The brutally militaristic police response to peaceful protests is unjustifiable. In the face of state violence, the working class is simply defending itself. The only way for this violence to stop is for the police to stop being violent.

Unfortunately our rulers are determined to make us disbelieve our own eyes and ears. They are inventing boogeymen and scapegoats. They demand more brutality against the people whose labor makes the world run. They threaten arrest, imprisonment, disfigurement and death to people across every age, race, and gender who just want to live in peace and be free of police brutality.

Atlanta has a history with the civil rights movement, but the struggle for civil rights and racial equality is clearly unfinished. We have a chance now to write our own history and set an example for unity and clarity in a time of injustice and uncertainty. We strive to build a new world rooted in justice, liberty, and peace for all people.

The Metro Atlanta DSA has officially endorsed and calls on our members to attend the Protest March & Rally for Justice for Black Lives on Sunday, June 7th at 12pm. We echo the organizers’ demands:

• Pass the Hate Crimes Bill
• Repeal the Citizen’s Arrest Law
• Bring Killer Cops and Lynchers to Quick Justice
• Criminal Punishment Reform
• Stop Police Brutality & Militarized Policing

No Justice, No Peace
Metro Atlanta DSA Executive Committee

Photo credit: Steve Eberhardt

June 02, 2020 00:49

The Racial Solidarity Committee of the Sacramento, Democratic Socialists of America stands in solidarity with our comrades fighting for Black liberation across the country and world. We stand in solidarity alongside Sacramento’s Black working class leadership as they organize and demand justice on our streets. We rebel in the name of Stephon Clark, Darrel Richards, Marshall Miles, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and all victims of police violence, domestic and abroad. Mayor Steinberg would have you believe we’ve made progress. Yet we do not believe the continued targeted policing and murder of Black people constitutes “progress.” As socialists, we understand that capitalism depends on the racialized division of the working class and necessitates state violence to enforce those divisions.

Therefore, we support all those who righteously stand empowered, and demand as a bare minimum:

• The city listens to and enacts all demands listed by our comrades with Decarcerate Sacramento and the Anti-Police Terror Project .
• There be no funding taken from the CARES Act to fund the police in any capacity, and ensure that the CARES Act funds are distributed with a racial equity analysis and justification. ¹
• COVID austerity measures should begin with our city’s largest budget, the police. The 2020 -21 overall police budget should be reduced by at least 20%, not including the restoration of the looted $10 million from the Measure U funding. Furthermore, any lawsuit settlements with the police department should also be deducted from police budgets. ¹
• Mayor Steinberg and Governor Newsom not only call for the charging of all 4 officers involved in George Floyd’s murder, but actively advocate to apply pressure on the Govenor and DA in Minneapolis to bring these charges.
• Tangible policy changes that address the ongoing murder of and violence against Black people, by divesting from the school to prison pipeline, creating affordable housing, investing in mental-health resources, and the active engagement with and empowerment of community by establishing citizen oversight review boards with subpoena power.
• Governor Newsom and the State of California must lift the protections for police officers that unfairly provide them impunity granted under articles such as the Peace Officers Bill of Rights. Impunity Black people are never granted. The police should be accountable to the people they serve.
• Continued demilitarization and defunding of the police. The militarization of police signifies that they are at war with the communities that they purport to protect. By defunding the police we free up money and resources to support institutions, organizations and resources that will truly serve our communities.
• Cancel any funds the city would contribute to bring Major League Soccer to Sacramento

We call on our fellow Sacramentans to get organized, support all Black lives, Black healing, and support Black liberation from this fascist police state. This is not a riot, it’s a rebellion.

In solidarity,

Racial Solidarity Committee, Sacramento DSA

¹ Credit to Dr. Flojaune Cofer.