Rev. Andrew Wilkes calls for a Moral Coalition to Create Lasting Structural Change
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 4: DSA Looks Inward
July 07, 2020 03:44
By David Roddy and Alyssa De La Rosa
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 1
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 2
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 3
4: DSA Looks Inward
On Sunday, January 20, 1985, President Ronald Reagan was sworn in to a second term. DSA’s aspirations for a Mondale presidency–which DSA Labor Commission vice-chair Timothy Sears described as an opportunity to tell the truth about “[Reagan’s] phony ‘recovery’ with its staggering interest rates and declining standards of living, about the insane arms race, about the brutal budget cuts and the dirty little war in Central America–were now irrelevant.
With the departure of Manning Marable from formal organizing within DSA in 1984, Cornel West took the mantle as the organization’s leading Black scholarly voice. West described DSA as, “The first multi-racial socialist organization close enough to my kind of politics that I could join.” Like other people of color that comprised DSA’s National Minorities Committee, West was critical of DSA’s decision not to back Jesse Jackson’s primary campaign, noting at the time, “Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic nomination constituted the most important challenge to the American left since the emergence of the civil rights movement in the fifties and the feminist movement in the seventies. Unfortunately, the American left, for the most part, missed this grand opportunity.”
Following the defeat of Mondale, the Democratic Left devoted an entire issue to the question of building multi-racial coalitions, featuring leading Black members of DSA. In this issue, DSA leader and Jackson campaigner Gerald Hudson noted, “In the summer of 1983, few on the black left doubted either the necessity or the possibility of creating a multiracial coalition. We had always been convinced that black unity was necessary to achieve ‘liberation,’ but we no longer believed it to be enough. Racism could not be eradicated from American society, nor the abject poverty of a third or more of Afro-Americans eliminated, without the creation of a broad-based movement for social change. We had good reason to be hopeful. In Chicago, in Boston, around the candidacy of Jesse Jackson for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, movements embodying these convictions had emerged onto the bleak landscape of American politics. By mid-1984, though few of us doubted the necessity of such a coalition, many of us had come to doubt its possibility.”
Hudson observed that “This subject has led to debates within DSA,” continuing that “Many black leftists were dismayed with and puzzled by the failure of important segments of the white left to support either Mel King’s mayoral campaign in Boston or Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. After all, the movements that grew around the candidacies of these men sought the empowerment of blacks through programs and demands that were of general benefit. Moreover, they made explicit overtures to the progressive white community. When that community did not respond, many of us were baffled and disappointed.”
Hudson locates “class first” politics as the source of the white progressive community reluctance to embrace the Rainbow Coalition, stating“ many democratic socialists came to believe that it was possible to discern a saving unity in a progressive economic program. The enormous appeal of this idea should not be underestimated. Did not the various oppressions out of which these movements arose have an economic aspect? Though racism or sexism was not reducible to their economic aspects, that they had such an aspect meant that their victims would benefit from an economically based progressive program.”
However, Hudson also observed, “Racism and sexism, insofar as they cannot be economically defined, go unopposed. When movements develop that do oppose these problems, they go unsupported by supporters of economically based coalition politics. Moreover, although white leftists may agree, for example, with the need for a full-scale effort against racism, in practice they often perceive the need for a coalition that includes constituencies that will not accept an anti-racist campaign (e.g., in Boston many leftists saw the need to mobilize racist white ethnics and called race a divisive issue in the 1983 mayoral race). Unfortunately, we have not been willing to step back and assess the failures of economically based coalitions and examine the complex issues involved in the building of such coalitions. ”
The Black Left and the Democratic Party
For West, the question of the rightward shift of the Democrats under Mondale, “the efforts for black unity and the political articulation of people of color in this country is now sophisticated enough to link its concerns with the downtrodden white working poor and the morally sensitive white middle class–as evidenced in the Jackson campaign. Soon the domestic front political pressure is brought to bear on the Democratic party to either embrace or exclude progressive forces. If it chooses the former, leftist possibilities loom large within the two-party system; if it chooses the latter, the only alternative becomes that of wholesale assault on the two-party system with the creation of a third political party.”
Still, some Jewish members of DSA remained skeptical of Jackson’s ability to attract Jewish voters. Paulette Pierce, at the time a member of the National Executive Committee of DSA’s Feminist Commission, wrote forcefully against this mindset: “Jewish progressives charge anti-Semitism, and black progressives suspect that a not too subtle racism may be at play. Without an open and perhaps heated exchange about this issue, the left will find it impossible to organize successfully within the black community, and black leftists already in progressive organizations like DSA will find it increasingly difficult to function… We are accused of engaging in racially polarizing politics and told to grow up and content ourselves with an integrationist strategy.” Pierce argued that “it is implicitly racist to assume that a coalition strategy which puts racial issues at the core of its politics cannot succeed. At best, such a position assumes that racism is presently so entrenched in our society that multi-racial alliances based on equality are currently impossible.”
Pierce also highlighted the chilling effect DSA’s endorsement of Mondale had on its small Black membership: “What is deeply troubling to many blacks including this writer is why so many of the constituencies targeted by the Rainbow Coalition stayed away and chose to support the neoliberal domestic and cold-war foreign policies of Walter Mondale…What is left unstated but may be the most important reason why white progressives stayed away is their fear that a coalition which puts antiracism at the center of its politics will alienate white labor, the constituency which many on the left still believe is essential to a successful progressive alliance…Obviously, Jackson was not the perfect candidate, but why must the black candidate be perfect? In anticipation of those who will ask, ‘Must we then accept the worst?’, Jesse was not the worst, Mondale was.”
Once again, those in the organization that were sympathetic to a sort of progressive Zionism took exception. Jeffry Mallow, who first criticized Marable for his endorsement of Jackson, responded to Pierce: “ The January-February issue of DEMOCRATIC LEFT was more than a little troubling for a Jewish socialist to read…we have Paulette Pierce’s apologia for Jesse Jackson’s antisemitism, wherein she…portrays the “hymie” remark as a one-time gaffe, rather than one of many antisemitic slurs which Jackson has uttered over the last decade” and “implies that Jews and other whites are racist because they refused to vote for a black anti-semite. Frankly, what attracts Jews to the democratic left is that they do not have to ignore their identity, divorce their people, and support everybody’s self-determination but their own. Let’s hope that, at least in DSA, it stays that way.”
The National Minority Commission and the 1985 Convention
The result of these divisions was the whitening of an already white-dominated organization. A report back from the 1985 convention noted that “Low participation of Black and Latino delegates, however, was a cause for concern. While every major convention plenary afforded minority representation from the podium, there were still fewer Blacks, Latinos, and Asian members at Berkeley than at the New York convention in 1983.”
The Commissions, meanwhile, organized to change Harrington’s proposed economic policy draft for the 1985 convention arguing ”Any left should examine the economy from the point of view of the working class-this draft does not. Any accurate view of the US working class would have to notice that our society is stratified by race…It is the responsibility of a socialist organization to offer an analysis that includes within its perspective the economic realities of the entire people.” This language was accepted and the convention had a special plenary on race and the left where “Cornel West advocated an anti-racist, anti-imperialist strategy for the organization….Speaker Bev Stein described Portland’s role in building the Oregon Rainbow Coalition. Mel Pritchard of San Francisco spoke of the complex issues faced by DSA’s minority members. Jim Jacobs called for focused organizing to counter racism in white communities, and Dolores Delgado Campbell outlined Latino issues and concerns.”
Mel Pritchard, who came out of the New American Movement, was elected Organization Secretary for the National and Racial Minorities Committee at the 1985 Convention. He spoke to us about his frustration with DSA at that time, arguing that at the time of the merger DSOC “weren’t going to do any conscious anti-racism work. That was essential to their strategy in organizing…That’s not gonna work. I was hoping the merger might create more of a case to do anti-racism organizing.” However, he found the economism advocated by the former acolytes of Max Schactman previously in DSOC left little hope that the anti-racist work carried about in NAM by the likes of himself and Manning Marable could viably continue within DSA. Within a year he left “because the Shachtmanites who institutionally controlled DSOC controlled DSA”
Dolores Delgado Campbell, another speaker on that panel and co-chair of the Latino Commission at the time, related to us about the difficulties in retaining members of color in the organization: “We had people who were drawn by what we said we represented but it wasn’t enough for them. They were drawn by people like Manning Marable and Harrington recruited people like Dolores Huerto and Eleicaio Medina, who were major leaders in the UFW. ”
Nonetheless, Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha–the Commissions newsletter–noted that “by majority votes the delegates supported our positions of the draft economic plans and Central American [solidarity] work,” indicating that the organization was broadly sympathetic to the work of the Commissions.
That year, the Latino and Anti Racism Commissions developed a series of local leadership “Facing Racism” talks, designed to highlight that “the authentic popular struggles of people of color are constituent parts of the left we seek to create.” Beverly Stein, the Co-Chair of Portland DSA, noted in Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha that “the events were very successful, attracting new face to DSA and giving us an opportunity to educate, primarily the white left, about racism.”
Lookings Toward a future Rainbow Coalition
By the spring of 1986, DSA began warming relations with the Rainbow Coalition, with both Michael Harrington and Jesse Jackson addressing the opening session of a conference titled New Directions, which brought together the various strands of labor and social movements together to organize for a leftward shift within the Democratic Party.
Writing in the November/December 1986 edition of the Democratic Left, DSA Afro-American Commission chair Shakoor Aljuwani argued for DSA to take an active role in a potential Jackson 1988 campaign; “The Rainbow Coalition showed that it is possible to build a broad and powerful constituency of the “locked-outs and drop-outs,” the poor, and working people - groups that in other countries form the base of parties of the left. It was the major progressive voice to counter the onslaught of conservatism. It brought dynamism to the otherwise lifeless efforts of the Democratic party against the Reagan offensive.”
Aljuwani spoke to the need for the organization to embrace the consciously multi-racial strategy of the Rainbow Coalition, writing that “In the moral vision and political program of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition there exists a deliberate attempt to embrace the interests and needs of Afro-Americans, the elderly, women, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, small farmers, Jews, Arabs, displaced industrial workers, trade unionists, gays, peace activists. The major problem has been convincing the three major liberal constituencies – labor, feminists, and Jews – of the seriousness of that vision and rhetoric. It is here that DSA can play a major and possibly even a key role. Some in DSA have raised the question of whether the Rainbow Coalition will be a tool only for ethnic political interests or become a broadly based multi-issue grassroots movement. Our response to the Rainbow can help shape the answer.”
Manning Marable, divorced from DSA following the 1984 Presidential election, noted the profound need for a progressive program to address rising rates of Black impoverishment: “In New York City, between 1980 and 1992, 87,000 private-sector jobs were lost. During the same time period, the number of African-Americans living below the poverty level increased from 520,000 to 664,000 people. The average black family in New York City now earns $24,000 annually, compared to over $40,000 a year for whites.”
Cornel West and the Development of DSA’s Anti-Racist Politics
In 1985, Cornel West–Chair of the Afro-American Commission preceding Aljuwani–developed a pamphlet for DSA’s strategic position on racism titled “Towards a Socialist Theory of Racism.” West laid out the following questions addressing DSA’s orientation to race: “What is the relationship between the struggle against racism and socialist theory and practice in the United States? Why should people of color active in antiracist movements take democratic socialism seriously? And how can American socialists today learn from inadequate attempts by socialists in the past to understand the complexity of racism?”
West criticized socialist movements that placed “racism under the general rubric of working-class exploitation…At the turn of the century, this position was put forward by many leading figures in the Socialist party, particularly Eugene Debs. Debs believed that white racism against peoples of color was solely a “divide-and-conquer strategy” of the ruling class and that any attention to its operations “apart from the general labor problem” would constitute racism in reverse.” West criticized this position as an “analysis that confines itself to oppression in the workplace overlooks racism’s operation in other spheres of life.”
He also criticized a conception of racism that “acknowledges the specific operation of racism within the workplace… but remains silent about these operations outside the workplace. This viewpoint holds that peoples of color are subjected both to general working-class exploitation and to a specific “super-exploitation” resulting from less access to jobs and lower wages. On the practical plane, this perspective accented a more intense struggle against racism than did Debs’ viewpoint, and yet it still limited this struggle to the workplace.”
West presented an alternative theory of racism for DSA, arguing the “racist practices result not only from general and specific working-class exploitation but also from xenophobic attitudes that are not strictly reducible to class exploitation. From this perspective, racist attitudes have a life and logic of their own, dependent upon psychological factors and cultural practices…To put it somewhat crudely, the capitalist mode of production constitutes just one of the significant structural constraints determining what forms racism takes in a particular historical period. Other key structural constraints include the state, bureaucratic modes of control, and the cultural practices of ordinary people. The specific forms that racism takes depend on choices people make within these structural constraints.”
West placed the “whitening” of DSA between its first and second National convention in the context of a historical “black suspicion of white-dominated political movements (no matter how progressive)” due to “the distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of color…”
He elaborated that this disparity was amplified by “the disproportionate white middle-class composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the participation by peoples of color,” and pointed out the paradox that “this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to antiracist struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist movement. Progressive organizations often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to attract a critical mass of people of color because of their current predominately white racial and cultural composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily-white, and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join.”
West thought that “the only effective way the contemporary democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because the bulk of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans) is to be sensitized to the critical importance of antiracist struggles. This “conscientization” cannot take place either by reinforcing agonized white consciences by means of guilt, nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no practical implications.” He further argued that “a major focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead democratic socialists to act upon their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the world; it also will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within concrete contexts of struggle. This interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and the realization of two overlapping goals: democratic socialism and antiracism.”
West’s piece became the primary anti-racist text of DSA, and whether followed or not, would serve as the road map to steer the organization forward.
The Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act
A Critical Response To Our Current Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected America, particularly our country’s most vulnerable communities, notably the poor, working class, disabled, and Black and brown communities. Even before we found ourselves in a global health crisis, 87 million Americans found themselves without enough health insurance to cover their needs or entirely uninsured. The capitalist system has made health care a privilege accessible only to the wealthy, rather than a recognized necessity made available to all.
Because most individuals in the country have employer-based health insurance, the unemployment crisis that has resulted from the pandemic has left tens of millions more without insurance or the funds they need to obtain medical care. No one should have to delay diagnosis or treatment of any medical issue as the coronavirus continues to spread.
While we have long argued that access to medical care should always be enshrined as a human right, the coronavirus has made it clear to many that single-payer health care is a vital public health and safety concern. We could not have prevented this virus, but the lack of a universally-available health care system during this pandemic has cause incalculable but entirely avoidable harm.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Bernie Sanders have introduced the Health Care Emergency Guarantee (HCEG) Act, which seeks to mitigate the impact of this crisis by extending Medicare coverage to the uninsured and covering out-of-pocket health care costs for the duration of the pandemic. This will bridge the many gaps in our current health care system that have been so clearly highlighted by this crisis. While this is only a stepping stone on the path to Medicare For All, we believe that it takes necessary, immediate action to ensure every single person in the country, regardless of immigration status or income, has access to health care at a time when they need it most.
A summary of the bill can be found here, and the full text is available here.
Join Our Campaign For The HCEG Act
The time has come for us to organize and demand that the members of our government take action. One of the easiest ways for the individual to help the movement is by contacting your senators and representatives and urging them to offer their support to the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act. We encourage you to write, email, or call their offices and demand that they take the necessary action to mitigate this crisis. This issue simply cannot wait.
If you do not already know the names and contact information of your congresspeople, you can look them up here. Once you know where to reach them, you can:
- Write or email a version of this template letter to your congresspeople. Copy it word for word or personalize it to share more of your story and why the HCEG Act and Medicare For All are a priority to you. We know this pandemic and the lack of guaranteed health care affects us all in different ways.
- Call your senators and representatives at their office and let them know that you support the HCEG Act. Feel free to use this phone script or to advocate for health justice in your own words.
Remember, we are more powerful standing in solidarity together than any one of us can be alone. If we collectively raise our voices and put pressure on our elected representatives, we can compel them take the necessary steps to safeguard each and every person against the ravages of this pandemic.
We will also be hosting a virtual phone bank on Tuesday, August 25th from 5-8pm. We will be calling on our neighbors in Snohomish County to join us in calling and writing their representatives to demand that they take these critical actions and extend healthcare coverage to all for the duration of the crisis. You can sign up to take part in the phone bank here.
If you’re looking for other ways to get involved, consider:
- Reach out to your congresspeople on Twitter and share your thoughts on this proposed legislation.
- Write letters to the editor at local newspapers and national publications, further publicizing the issue.
- Educate your friends, family, coworkers, and other members of your community on the importance of single-payer health care and the necessity of taking immediate action to prevent further unnecessary harm during this crisis.
Further Reading and Resources On Health Care During The Pandemic And The Necessity of Medicare For All
- Here’s How to Cover Uninsured Americans During the Pandemic (Politico)
- Big Problems Demand Big Solutions: Congress Must Expand Medicare Coverage to Everyone in America for the Duration of the Crisis (Labor For Single Payer)
- As Poll Shows Nearly 90% Democratic Support, Biden Told Hostility to Medicare for All ‘No Longer Tenable Position for You’ (Common Dreams)
- Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA (The Lancet)
- Joe Biden is Wrong About Single-Payer and Coronavirus (Jacobin)
- Keep Calm and Fight for Medicare for All (Jacobin)
- Our Public Health Infrastructure Is Losing a Fight With Capitalism (Jacobin)
Socialism Will Win
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
PRESS RELEASE: Boise DSA to Provide Solidarity Funding to Local Workers Protesting Unjust Treatment
Boise DSA Contact: Alex Rinehart
Phone: (208) 481-4679
Email: alex.rinehart@protonmail.com
Pie Hole Workers Contact: Miles Ranck
Phone: (208) 353- 3022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Boise DSA to Provide Solidarity Funding to Local Workers Protesting Unjust Treatment
Boise, Idaho, June 30, 2020--- Boise DSA, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, voted unanimously to provide funding in support of protesting workers who were unjustly terminated at Pie Hole on Broadway. As members of the largest socialist organization in the United States, we support workers as they pursue a living wage and democratic controls in the workplace.
On June 24, 2020, the workers of Pie Hole Broadway made an official statement asking the business owners for a $3 essential worker raise and more decision making power. “As the impact of COVID-19 continues to hit our community, it is vital that our essential workers are justly compensated and receive fair treatment in the workplace” Alex Reinhart, Co-Chair of Boise DSA said Tuesday. “That is why we are supporting these workers.”
When the Pie Hole owners received the demands the workers were met with hostility. Instead of meeting to address the demands, the owners ordered the workers to train new hires. After refusing to train their obvious replacements, two-shift leads were fired and asked to leave the property. In a show of solidarity between the workers, the vast majority of Pie Hole employees voluntarily resigned.
We at Boise DSA are outraged at the Pie Hole owner's response. Reinhart explains “Every day, workers sell their time and effort to create the things we need to live and thrive. Now more than ever, it is clear that the blood, sweat, and tears of those who prepare our food are essential to our community and that the value of their work is far higher than what the market-determined.”
After being unjustly fired, Pie Hole workers are now demanding to be rehired and the meeting of original demands to occur with the owners. We at Boise DSA stand firmly with these workers and our unanimous vote to provide solidarity funding to the Pie Hole workers is just one step of many we are willing to take. We support the workers of Pie Hole Broadway as they demand what is due to them as workers and as human beings: economic and social democracy.
We are proud of Boise DSA and Red Republican faction members involved in the organizing process. Socialists will always be at the forefront of the class struggle. We encourage everyone to donate to their solidarity fund: https://donorbox.org/worker-solidarity
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Defunding the Liberal Police
Last week, Burlington acting Chief of Police, Jon Murad, was allowed to address a 1,000-person Black Lives Matter rally in Burlington. Faced with pressure from hundreds of residents at public hearings demanding the City defund the police and remove 30% of cops from the street, Murad gave a skillful, liberal defense of expansive policing and the large budgets this requires. The affect of this was not exactly clear (he wasn’t booed off the stage), but the message did conflict with popular chants to abolish the police later on the march.
VTDigger published an instructive profile on Murad. You can read that here. It is an expose on how the Chief of Police, and policing itself, are tied in multiple ways in net of business, racism, and militarism.
As Alex Vitale demonstrates in The End of Policing, police are an armed apparatus of an economy based on profit and class division, needed to oppress, exploit, and subjugate, especially people of color. Modern policing grew from several strands of ruling class violence: colonial occupations, strike breaking, suppressing working class protest, and slave patrols. Capitalism requires this in order to protect huge class inequality and sustain the flow of profits. Policing is centrally about racism, militarism, and defending the power of capital over our labor, our lives, and our planet.
In Murad’s biography, many of the institutional connections underpinning modern policing are clear: he completed 2 degrees at a ruling class university (Harvard), worked as a security consultant for banks and other large corporations, identifies with the military and U.S. imperialism, demonstrates a long-term commitment to policing propaganda, and had a quickly advancing career with the NYPD under the infamous police commissioner William Bratton.
Bratton is the best known advocate of broken windows policing, an invasive and racialized form of social control that urban police departments around the world have adopted, several under Bratton’s personal direction. Bratton, a Democratic, also emphasizes the importance of public relations, spinning the most egregious practices and results from broken windows and stop-and-frisk risk to insulate the legitimacy of policing from justified criticism and attempts to defund.
Bratton was also a mentor of Burlington’s former Police Chief Brandon del Pozo. Del Pozo was forced out after a presiding over police killings and violent attacks on Black residents, plus police harassment of civil rights activists. During his tenure del Pozo claimed an unlimited appetite for more cops to do social good, embracing the liberal hope that police can be a progressive social force. This also goes along with racially diversifying policing, which both Murad and Bratton promote, but which research show has little to no effect on out-of-control police violence and killing.
As Vitale documents, the invasive “community” policing Murad did in New York housing projects is exactly what the anti-racist movement for police defunding, against mass incarceration, and for abolition points to as the problem.
The multiracial rebellion for Black lives and the thousands in Burlington who have rallied and testified and protested have successfully put defunding police and firing violent and abusive cops on the public agenda for next year's budget. But on the other hand, it's also the case that policing has support from the sectors of real estate, retail, banking and finance, military industrial complex, Democratic Party, Republican Party, major media and the highly motivated police and military associations.
Unfortunately, some groups that should be on our side are not. While several unions and union federations have sided with the movement for Black lives, the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) executive director, Steve Howard, has sided with policing and retaining cops in unions. Pro-police union bureaucrats, along with the economic and political rulers, all hope, not without some basis, to ride out the moment with delay, redirection, scare tactics, and cosmetic reforms. They will not willingly work to undermine the policing that helps maintain the existing system of racial injustice and class inequality.
A key question is how can we continue to escalate and strategically expand the brilliant and inspiring protest movement that has got us this far. The current level of protest and lobbying pressure on the Mayor and City Council has forced some recognition of the problem. But it may not be enough given the powerful forces arrayed against police defunding.
KRJ on Defunding the Police, Christian/Buddhist spirituality, and her NYC City Council Campaign
Authoritarian "Democracy" and the New York Democratic Primary
Support for Urooj Rahman: https://fundrazr.com/71fsC0?ref=sh_09Ftc6_ab_5z27OP7I9s75z27OP7I9s7
https://www.cunyclear.org/ Twitter: @CUNY_CLEAR
DSAForTheMany is @nycDSA's Multi-Candidate slate for state offices. The endorsed candidates are Jabari Brisport, Julia Salazar, Marcela Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant Forrest, & Zohran Mamdani.
For federal races NYC DSA has endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Samelys Lopez while Lower Hudson Valley DSA has endorsed Jamaal Bowman.
Polls stay open until 9pm. If you haven’t voted yet and feel safe heading to the polls, make sure your vote is counted. If you’re having issues at the polls or questions about voting please call 866-700-5927.
Statement regarding Eugene Mayoral Primary Endorsement
Since the conclusion of the Eugene Mayoral race, a candidate previously endorsed by Eugene DSA expressed “pride” in an attraction to adolescent children. We unequivocally condemn these comments, and urge any person with these interests not to seek office, but rather to seek help so that they may protect their fellow community members.
–Eugene DSA Coordinating Committee
Statement on Layleen Polanco and BC Board Member Darcel Clark
Darcel Clark should not be on the BC Board of Trustees. Her record as Bronx District Attorney is incredibly disturbing, from the egregious conduct of her office withholding exculpatory evidence while attempting to prosecute people like Pedro Hernandez, Otis Smith, and Walliris Velez to her role in the Kalief Browder case. Her recent decision not to press charges against anyone in connection with the death of Layleen Polanco reaffirms our position. Layleen Polanco was an Afro-Latina transgender woman who died in Rikers due to complications related to epilepsy in June of 2019. On June 5th of this year Clark announced she would not be pressing any charges against guards or staff at the prison. In her original release Clark included Layleen’s deadname. Just one week later NBC released surveillance video showing staff at the prison failing to attend to Polanco for an hour and a half, despite knocking on her door and seeing that she was unresponsive. Polanco was in solitary confinement despite the prison and prison doctors being aware of her epilepsy. When guards finally entered the cell they could be seen laughing. Polanco was in prison because she could not pay her $500 bail. Her case is sadly another example of the criminalization of transgender women and vulnerable communities through over policing and criminalization of poverty. The failure to care for Polanco while she was imprisoned and Clark’s decision not to press charges exemplify the disregard the criminal justice system has for transgender lives. YDS of BC once again calls for Clark to be removed from the BC board of trustees.
Sign the petition to remove Clark from the BC Board of Trustees here.