Happy Pride Month! As a bisexual woman of color and as a new mom, I am so proud to share this time with you as we celebrate the beauty of the queer community. I am thankful to stand beside all of you as we fight for liberation. Yet the capitalists and the police state have tried to co-opt our struggle. Everywhere you walk in New York you can see banks, corporations, and cop cars decorated with rainbows in an effort to conceal that these institutions remain forces of domination against the oppressed people of the world. The Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) will take to the streets on Sunday, June 27th to stage the third annual Queer Liberation March. We’re joined by Natalie James, Saje Liese, and NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for city council Tiffany Caban to discuss the upcoming action and much more.

The city and county of La Crosse are each receiving over $20 million in stimulus funding. The broad left community must act together to ensure that public oversight and input are the driving force in spending this funding. This level of funding is a once in generation opportunity to pay for projects that can save lives and uplift our community as a whole. Please get involved in the decision making process.

Coulee Tenants United, CouleeDSA’s tenant organizing working group, is participating in 2 nights programming at the La Crosse Public Library on Housing and Homelessness this month. CTU is a working group dedicated to educating, organizing, and empowering renters in the Coulee region.

Part 1 on June 21st at 6:30 PM is focused on homelessness, while part 2 on June 28th at 6:30 PM covers housing, development, market and non-market solutions, and tenancy struggles. Follow the links to get registered. Program recordings will be available for those who can’t make it in person.

Long-term, systemic solutions to the housing crisis require large up front investment. Demanding that this historic stimulus bill is leveraged to better our community through permanent projects should be a priority. Reach out to us at CouleeDSA@gmail.com or at our Facebook page if you want to get involved.

The post Housing and Homelessness programming with CTU: Systemic problems and Solutions first appeared on Coulee DSA.

On June 8th, the Washoe County Dems announced that they would coordinate the state’s Democratic election campaigns, receiving statements of support from Governor Sisolak, Sen. Cortez Masto, State Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, and State Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.

This decision to run these campaigns outside of the state party is, in reality, an attempt to run these campaigns outside the oversight of Nevada Democrats. It is a move that purposefully circumvents the mandate of the State Central Committee and disregards the results of our free and fair officer elections. We decry this shameless bid to ignore the voices and values of the Nevadans these representatives claim to serve.

We recognize that this is only the latest development in a continued assault on the right of Nevada Democrats to govern their own party. Ever since the election of Chair Whitmer and the Progressive Slate, the political elite has made it clear that it has no intention of respecting the choices of rank-and-file members.

It is time for us to send a message: free, fair, and open democracy is not a slogan – it is a foundational principle that we, as a party, must embody.

It is for this very reason that we organized around Chair Whitmer. It is for this reason that we voted for the Progressive Slate. It is for this reason that we are proud to continue to support their bold agenda of transformative change – bringing genuine inclusivity, transparency, and bottom-up democracy to our party. We remain united in our vision for a better world and a party that gives us all a say in building it. Directing our movement is not a privilege granted to us by our representatives, it is our right.

Nevada’s working people deserve to be treated as partners in the democratic process, not as subjects to be dictated to by a wealthy and privileged elite.  In the coming primary season, Democrats will remember who among our representatives stood for the choice of the people and who stood only for themselves.

Left Caucus and Las Vegas DSA remain committed to their mission of lifting up the voices of Nevada’s working class and marginalized communities, transcending our differences and uniting us in our shared struggle for justice, equality, and democracy. When we fight together, we win together.

June 1st marked the start of a newly elected SC, contact buffalodsa@gmail.com to get involved and subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date >>>>>

You’re listening to Revolutions Per Minute live on WBAI 99.5fm. We’re a socialist radio show and podcast from members of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with 95,000 members nationwide and NYC-DSA is its biggest chapter. We are run by our 7,000+ members and organizers who are working together to build democratic socialism in all five boroughs. As our returning listeners are well aware of, there is currently an ongoing struggle for Public Power here in New York. Earlier today, ecosocialists organizers held a rally outside city hall to demand the transformation of our statewide energy system necessary to avoid climate catastrophe. We’ll share with you protest sounds and speech from the action. Later in the show I’ll speak with DSA anti imperialist organizers Olivia Katbi Smith and Dylan Saba about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israeli aparthied. DSA supports freedom of movement and equal civil and democratic rights for all people across the world. Palestinians are no exception. We’ll discuss how an anti imperialist analysis reveals how ruling classes across the region and especially here in the United States profit and are empowered by the current state of affairs. International working class solidarity is the only solution.

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In what was recently precipitated by a court order expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, during the week of Eid, Israeli forces have tear-gassed Al-Aqsa mosque, leveled press and residential buildings with rockets, fired white phosphorus into the streets, ransacked Palestinian businesses, and killed over 232 Palestinians so far, 62 of whom are children, most of whom are certainly civilians. By the time you read this certainly even more unconscionable acts will have occured. 

In response to these events, the UK’s Boris Johnson called “for both sides to show restraint.” Representatives of the European Union called on “all sides to engage in de-escalatory efforts.” US Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated “we urge de-escalation on all sides, we also recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and to defend its people and its territory. It is critical for all sides to ensure calm and de-escalate tensions and avoid violent confrontations.”

One can see why some people may find this rhetoric appealing. Finding fault in “both sides” is an effective way to communicate a sophisticated and plausibly sympathetic perspective without having to define any real positions for what that perspective might be. And to call for de-escalating violence is a particularly deft move — “violence” and “escalation” are concepts that don’t exactly poll with your typical disinterested Westerner, and you don’t even need to assert where or how much there is violence, necessarily, just that wherever it might happen to be you think it’s not a good idea that it’s there. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the violence could simply stop? And why couldn’t it?

But an appropriate analysis of these events should identify such statements as an obscene false equivalence, as can be similarly identified by the left in the slogan “All Lives Matter.” “All Lives Matter,” as a slogan, while in the broad sense seems obviously true, nevertheless in context plays a role of its opposite, championing death. “All Lives Matter” as a slogan serves only as a reaction to the struggle against the police killings and incarcerations of Black lives sloganized by “Black Lives Matter” to dismiss a neo-colonial injustice as unnecessary or unimportant — reactionary in the most literal sense. To characterize what happened to Palestinians over the past few weeks as “violence on both sides” is to similarly play a role in enabling the violence that has been taking place unilaterally and over decades.

From any proper account of the struggle, the false equivalence with Israel/Palestine is plain: not only are the deaths from the struggle disproportionately Palestinian (at rate of 87% since 2000), but the military and political conditions are wholly incommensurate. From 1948, roughly a million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, while Israelis face no such displacement. Israel controls essentially the entirety of the territory, 98.4% claimed as its own and the remaining 1.6% of Gaza strip under tight control. The 1.8 million Palestinians living in Israeli live under a second-class citizenship: almost all land in Israel is prohibited for Palestinians to own and any residency in Jerusalem by Palestinians is revocable at any time. The 2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza live under Israeli imposed blockade, prevented from reliable access to food, clean water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, or education. 

And placed with the statement “we also recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself” as the United States Secretary of State did, the United States not only willfully mischaracterizes the struggle but also plays into a well-worn Zionist rationalization. From the Zionist perspective, there can be no limit to the destruction and violence incurred so long as there is some detectable resistance on the other side which will allow it to be justified as self-defense. Any ounce of Palestinian backlash, no matter of the Israeli atrocity which provoked it, can be asserted to be some fresh aggression for Israel to have been responding to. So rather than Israel as a merciless bomber of a civilian population it will be argued in the West that Israel has shown incredible restraint but is simply the much superior fighter, as for example this Lockheed Martin backed Australian think tank argues. The same justification has been used by Israel historically before, such as with the “preemptive strike” justification for the Six-Day War in 1967 wherein Israel completely wiped Palestine from the map.

But the empty condemnations responding to this latest escalation are more than just words, they are indications of a broader worldview which is wholly unequipped to address the root problem. Liberal leaders in the West have called for a ceasefire and it is currently being enacted. And so from “both sides” rhetoric we have a “both sides” policy: we are told that the problem is not the disproportionate violence, or the 90,000 recently displaced persons, or the whole colonial project, but the fighting itself, specifically, certain types of violence associated with the military or terrorism seen as disruptive to the current status quo. It is a solution that is not a solution, a peace that is not a peace, an answer made only to satisfy the artificial created demands of liberal decorum and international law but none of the material injustices. And in doing so it has satisfied everything it needs in order to ensure the continuation of the 7th largest importer of United States military weaponry and a major justification for United States military funding domestically. 

What is missing from this liberal conception of Israel/Palestine is a historical, material, and international class analysis. Israeli and Palestine are not two objects floating in space, disconnected from political, social, or economic forces, happening to bump into each other at random, like two strangers arriving at the same corner from different directions. (A ceasefire would be suitable for such things, if they existed.) Israel is a colonizer of Palestine, the United States is an imperial power against the Middle East, Jerusalem real estate is resettling Sheikh Jarrah, and violent IDF soldiers are carrying out ethnic cleansing against an Palestinian population, all of which are struggles of oppressors against oppressed in an international system of exploitation known as capitalism. It is these relations that govern these world events and the behaviors of those within it, not the vacuous “both sides” geopolitics of liberal imagination.

Similarly insufficient is the impulse to insert a different explanation for the Israel/Palestine struggle in substitution of class analysis, such as religion, as has been argued in the United States, even amongst those associated with the left. Does Israeli require Judaism to colonize, or Palestine require Islam to resist? Little more than we should believe that the Indian Removal Act was a Christian evangelical expression or that the Seminoles resisted displacement only out of regard for Little Giver or for Breathmaker. What religious distinction denoted redlining in the 20th century? Assertions like these appear designed to confine the stakes of the Israel/Palestine struggle to a difference of the subjective or of the spiritual only, a characterization which has never resembled the colonization of Palestine.

The liberal conception of Israel/Palestine not only contains no understanding of space but also no understanding of time, like a judge with no memory who is therefore easily fooled or a bribed guard whose recollection of events becomes increasingly hazy. From a snapshot of just these past few weeks (well, perhaps a blurry one) Israel may look like a parked vehicle, but it has been driving straight over Palestine for the past century. The journey of modern Israel has been fueled by imperialism and colonialism from the outset — in WW1 as a spoil of war for defeating the Ottoman empire, the British empire was granted the war-torn territory of Palestine in what was called the British Mandate for Palestine — after it had promised the indigenous Palestinian Arabs of the region autonomy in each exchange for their support in the war (a promise it clearly broke). Britain had in fact made conflicting commitments during WW1; the British had also promised Palestine to the French and had also outlined a vision for a Jewish homeland in Palestine known as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was no matter of conscience but an imperialist stratagem with a veneer of Zionist propaganda: the gesture was deliberately to win favor with Jews in United States in hopes to bring the United States into the war and to settle Palestine with a pro-British population which would allow them access to the Suez canal in support of their colony in India. So it’s in the context of these origins that understand the modern state of Israel: a Western Imperial power ceasing land through conquest, sending settlers from the West to occupy indigenous lands, and maintaining control for its continued hegemony. 

And it is this Israel/Palestine colonizer relation which so much dominates the nature of this struggle that news of a ceasefire remains an unconvincing counterfactual. Could international agreements like a ceasefire qualify as steps towards improving the relationship between Israel/Palestine? Could Biden’s ceasefire in fact be decolonial? Once again history humiliates this idea. Israel has violated ceasefire agreements in 1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, at least three times in the 1980s, at least five times in the 2000s, and at least four times in the 2010s, in the form of “preemptive strikes,” targeted raids, and political or military assassinations. That Israel has done anything other than defended against imminent attacks, policed local instabilities, and killed suspected terrorists when it has repeated its cycle of promise, provocation, invasion is something that Israel has never reckoned with. The present ceasefire has already been introduced by raiding Al-Aqsa with tear gas. Plans for Israel to break the ceasefire in what it will term as a preemptive strike have already been advanced by a Senior Netanyahu aide. While a good faith commitment to ending violence and provocation and the transition to peaceful coexistence in the form of a ceasefire would be uncontroversially a good thing, in the medium and long term that’s never what it has been or can presently ever allowed to be because verbal international agreements are not what dictates world events but the ever evolving international class struggle.

So on this point let there be no confusion. We should be against colonization. We should be against violence. We should want peace and the end of the struggle. to want the day to pass when for the last time all the firing will truly and finally cease. We should want it so badly, in fact, so as to hope to no longer be able to afford to think or to feel in ways that enable that violence, that willfully or incidentally turn a blind eye, or that play directly into its hands. And it’s from the place that we will see the violence behind the calls to end the violence, the ways that the firings will continue because of the terms under which they will be ceased. We must resolve not to deny the reality of this struggle or where in it we must stand.

References

• “There’s Nothing Complicated About What’s Happening in Palestine,” Jacobin
• “Eid al-Fitr,” Wikipedia
• “Celebrations in Gaza as ceasefire takes hold,” Al Jazeera
• Tweet by @mohamendshnewa
• Tweet by @SulomeAnderson
• Tweet by @MechaWonders
• Tweet by @AMofatteh
• Tweet by @Africa4Pal
• Tweet by @vrmyj20
• Tweet by @PalestineUpdat
• Tweet by @shahidjourno19
• Tweet by @BorisJohnson
• “Israel/Palestine: Statement by the Spokesperson on the latest escalation,” EEAS
• “US condemns rocket strikes by Palestine on Israel, calls on both sides to de-escalate tensions,” ANI
• “This chart shows every person killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2000,” Vox
• “Gaza Strip vs Israel,” Index Mundi
• “Palestinian refugees and the right of return,” AFSC
• “Forced Displacement in Palestine and Israel,”AFSC
• “Israel-Gaza live: More than 52,000 Palestinians ‘displaced by airstrikes’ as Biden shows support for ceasefire,” Independent
• “Gaza Strip: A beginner’s guide to an enclave under blockage,” Al Jazeera
• “Israel, Hamas, and the right to self defence,” ASPI
• “The six-day war and Israeli self-defence: Questioning the legal basis for preventative war,” J. Quigley
• “U.S. arms exports, by country,” Statistia
• “Indian Removal Act,” Wikipedia
• “Native languages of the Americas: Seminole Legends, Myths, and Stories”
• “Palestine: World War I and after,” Encyclopedia Britannica 
• “Balfour Declaration,” Encyclopedia Britannica
• “Self-defense or provocation: Israel’s history of breaking ceasefires,” IMEU
• “Infographic: Who violates ceasefires more, Israelis or Palestinians?” The Electronic Intifada
• “Violence at Al-Aqsa mosque just hours after Israel and Hamas announce ceasefire,” Independent
• “Senior Netanyahu aide: Israel to carry out preemptive strikes on Hamas,” Middle East Monitor

Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America is unequivocally opposed to recent anti-transgender legislation in Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, and 30 other states. While the exact content of these bills varies by state, the goal of each is to criminalize the existence of transgender people and/or penalize anyone who supports transgender people.

Transgender people already face harassment and discrimination on a daily basis. These additional laws install additional methods of persecution against trans people for the “crime” of existing in public.

While we believe these laws are blatantly unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down, we also acknowledge transgender people already fight harder than most to simply exist. Transgender people face much higher rates of violence than cisgender people. In 2015, nearly half of all transgender people were subject to verbal harassment within the past year and 9% of all transgender people were physically attacked for their gender identity. More than half had been subjected to emotional or physical abuse by partners. Rates of attempted suicide are likewise much higher. Transgender people also experience high structural barriers to accessing healthcare. One in five transgender people are uninsured and nearly one in five reported being refused medical care because of their gender identity. Transgender people deserve the same rights and privileges afforded to cisgender people, as well as to live their lives free of harassment and discrimination.

We stand in solidarity with our transgender comrades around the world in condemning these actions and those politicians who promote them. Furthermore, Las Vegas DSA strongly encourages the Nevada Legislature to pass SB139, which would mandate coverage of medically necessary procedures for transgender people. We also encourage our Nevada Congressional delegation to pass the Equality Act, which would expand anti-discrimination laws to cover transgender people, before the midterm elections.

Last night, hundreds of people occupied the amphitheatre area in front of the Brooklyn Museum to share stories and collectively mark the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. At least 15 NYPD vehicles lurked on Eastern Parkway 100 yards away. The police presence included the large vans used to transport people who have been arrested as well as two vans for NYPD’s notorious Strategic Response Group, a “riot control” division which has violently arrested, pepper sprayed, and intimidated anti-racist and anti-fascist protestors consistently over the last year. SRG was established in 2015 and has an estimated yearly budget of $68 million. 

We know it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change our city for the better by redistributing the massive amount of resources NYPD uses to harass and intimidate New Yorkers and investing that money in healthcare, education, housing, parks, art, and other things that will actually improve our quality of life and keep our communities safe. Tonight on Revolutions per Minute, we hear from DSA-endorsed candidate for City Council District 22 Tiffany Cabán, a long time de-carceral activist, on why she was proud to sign on to DSA’s vision for real public safety and budget justice. We’ll also be taking your calls live with Kay Gabriel, an NYC-DSA member and Defund NYPD organizer. 

Learn more about Tiffany Cabán and her campaign at www.cabanforqueens.com.

Has your City Council candidate signed on to the Real Public Safety pledge? Visit bit.ly/defundpressure2021 to find out and get involved. 

Revolutions per Minute looks forward to seeing you at the Defund NYPD week of action May 31 - June 6! View a full schedule and sign up at https://www.defundnypd.com/woa.