How Can Educators Stop Unsafe Openings? Lessons from the Red State Revolt

As President Trump pushes to open schools as if COVID-19 were under control, and Governor Little cuts Idaho’s education budget by $99 million (with more austerity certain to come), let’s look to West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, where teachers found that striking was possibly their only tool to fight for the welfare of themselves, their students, and their communities.

Former teacher, labor organizer, journalist and DSA member Eric Blanc will join us to discuss how the collective action of Idaho educators could stop unsafe openings of schools.

RSVP at:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/dsa-night-school-how-can-educators-stop-unsafe-openings-lessons-from-the-red-state-revolt

By Trenten Ingell and Joshua Sodicoff

You — and thirty thousand of your peers — are getting shafted by the University of Michigan, the leaders and best… go blue! Our fair-enough university boasted on the flyers you read as a prospective student, the banners that line campus, and many other methods of communication we receive about its immense power. It holds an endowment equivalent to the yearly expenditures of the government of Jordan, the largest stadium in the United States, and many of the top academic departments in the world. If it’s so great, and surely any representative of the University would agree, then why have they failed in supporting students beyond their most basic responsibility during the COVID-19 crisis? From the few weeks preceding spring break through now, the University has dealt with the needs of undergraduates strictly on the basis of necessity and not of humanity. In the process, they’ve failed to account for the nuances of these issues and have created new, unforeseen problems. From the very beginning of this crisis, these systemic failures have stood out to us. That is why we’re trying to organize students and other stakeholders in our community to speak out against our administration and the lack of accountability that’s led us to our current situation.

We want to acknowledge that we understand and accept that many of the actions that the University has taken during the current pandemic were necessary from a public health perspective. Do we miss our friends, having places to be, and Ann Arbor? Of course. But we’re realistic, and we know that an open campus during a global pandemic would only lead to disaster. That being said, at almost every point the University made one of these critical COVID-19 decisions, they botched it. Because of their inability to act, they have cost students their time, money, mental health, and for some, their ability to return home.

Do you remember how the University chose to cancel classes three days after the end of spring break? Other universities, also on break, gave students fair warning so that they didn’t have to engage in unnecessary, costly and potentially hazardous travel. But ours cancelled after we came back from break, some of us traveling across or even out of the country. It was only predictable that some of us would return to Ann Arbor with COVID-19. In addition to their delay in cancelling classes, the University gave no other information on how operations would proceed. Students were left in the dark about important decisions and left to react to them day-by-day. Surely, managing a crisis is difficult. But how did administrators not give credence to the impact of leaving a student body the size of a city in the dark? In travel costs alone, the University cost its student body hundreds of thousands dollars. This number is especially large when you consider that a strong majority of University of Michigan students are in-state.

Far more grievous was university housing’s actions to reduce the population density of on-campus living. What started with a series of emails pleading for students to move escalated to a notice that all students without a sufficient reason for staying on-campus would have to leave as early as March 17th. This was just three days before Governor Whitmer signed a statewide moratorium on evictions. The language in this email suggested students would lose keycard access the following morning if action was not taken. Only after the deadline set out in the email was any clarification given on the policy. Clarification that did nothing to mitigate fears that the University continued to hold the power to forcibly remove students from their rooms. The power structure in tenantship at the University implied that resistance was futile, and so the University conducted mass evictions.

Meanwhile, while universities across the country announced housing refund policies as part of a coherent COVID-19 response plan, the University remained silent on this issue until March 20th. Administration wondered why students remained in their prepaid housing when no guarantee of compensation for leaving was made. Housing’s decision to offer a measly $1,200 refund for half a semester of rent, utilities, and dining was a slap in the face to students who pay astronomical costs for these services. Room and board is, on average, $12,000 a year. We were told to leave campus right after spring break, halfway through the semester, equating to three thousand dollars in lost costs. Meanwhile, $1,200 is what we would have received if we were eligible for federal relief checks (another topic we could wax poetic on). Americans agree that this check wasn’t enough to make up for lost wages, and for University students who did not budget for the costs associated with providing for themselves, it goes much less far. Furthermore, upon cursory research, we found that the University’s disruption of services clause in the Community Living at Michigan document calls for a proportional refund in the event that Housing is unable to fulfill its obligations, like providing food or rent. In every sense, residents of university housing were shortchanged, and the continued lack of proportional reimbursement remains a gross violation of the University’s own policy.

The University’s best claim to an adequate response — its rapid transition to online coursework — also failed large swaths of students. Yes, some professors developed a strategy for continuing to provide coursework. Between us, we had great-to-fair experiences with the transition online but this is not the overwhelming response. Some courses that could have moved lectures and discussions online with enough thought simply reduced their requirements to short weekly assignments. Labs and other hands-on courses lost most, if not all, of their value. There was never any sign that departments were monitoring the continuity of coursework. When professors knew no one was watching, many chose to do the bare minimum. But still, with access to our course evaluations and Canvas pages, the University will pretend it did enough because we have the credits from this semester on our transcript. We know that this accomplishment is incomparable to the same of any other semester. When we come back, students will pay for the gap between expectations of their online learning experience and the reality of severely diminished outcomes from the change in environment and learning style. Whether this includes students being unprepared for further coursework from less attentive prerequisites or students abandoning tracts of coursework entirely from a department’s response to online classes, we will figure out soon enough

Of course, as we navigate through the pandemic, we will share our personal journey to fight against the University. From the very beginning of the crisis, when the University refused to publicly announce if a proportional refund would be offered as it pressured students to leave university housing, the both of us thought it was important to rally student voices against the failures of the administration. We started with a petition to request the University follow the stated policy of prorating services not rendered with respect to housing and dining — a fight that has since evolved into collaboration on research and representation for a class action lawsuit against the University. During this endeavor, we learned more about the scale and variety of problems that our peers were facing, from unresponsiveness of departments beyond housing to dissatisfaction with online coursework. We felt uncomfortable stopping our efforts at an issue that was close to us as former university housing residents when we saw that all of our peers were, in some way or another, receiving unjust treatment.

In the process of developing our requested response, we attempted to reach out to diverse voices in our community. The first step of this was the creation, and subsequent distribution, of a Google Form with questions about student priorities. It also provided space to describe what elements of crisis response students found most important. We saw that students overwhelmingly supported a proportional refund for aspects of the winter term, a reduction in tuition for the spring, summer, and fall terms, and greater transparency in decision-making. With data and additional suggestions from this form, we reached out to a GroupMe we had made for students interested in supporting a fuller response from the University for help in writing a document detailing our rationale and our finalized list of demands. We also reached out to the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), a union representing graduate student instructors and student staff assistants at the University. Recently, GEO successfully negotiated a new contract despite the pandemic. We sought their input on issues of strategy and for feedback on our draft demands. Ultimately, we settled on the following:

1. A 50% discount for tuition and fees for the Spring, Spring/Summer, and Summer 2020 terms, a 25% tuition discount for the Fall 2020 terms, with an additional 25% discount in the event that classes continue in an online format.
2. A pro-rata refund, retroactively effective March 12th for room and board, tuition, and fees for the Winter 2020 term.
3. Subsidies for rent payments for students living off campus, and university assistance in terminating leases in the event that classes continue in an online format in the Fall.
4. Additional academic resources, including additional tutoring and make-ups for lab courses, meant to compensate for the decrease in quality of the second half of the Winter 2020 term.
5. A 50% reduction in expenditures toward executive officers and service units as well as a half reduction in utility costs passed on to students as a means of partially offsetting these demands.

Instead of helping students negotiate with landlords, the University ardently pressured students to leave. Instead of providing further financial assistance to its students during a turbulent economic period, the University and its administration ranted about its own supposed financial struggles in an attempt to explain why it was unable to address even the most basic of student concerns. The dust has settled now, and we want to address the glaring flaws in the University of Michigan’s response to COVID-19 through these demands.

The primary criticism of these demands has been the associated numbers. Originally, we tried to conduct research into university financials to develop a full picture of where tuition goes and what costs might be lower under the current circumstances. We quickly found a bit of opacity with cash flows beyond the department level, making it difficult to back up any decisions we made. Instead, we decided to err on the side of requesting more than we expected to receive. In the event that we negotiate with the University, compromise is to be expected. So why start with a weak position?

Our current issues revolve now around tackling the repressive set of policies and bureaucracy that the current university administration has established. The existing structure of our university does not allow the students to have any voice in discretionary spending or crisis-related decisions, and because of that the University has been unable to understand or react to student needs as they come. If the University wants to exert its institutional authority over us as students, so be it. But this should at least be done with some effort to buttress the social safety net of the student body at large. They have these investments and liquid assets to use. They are, as an institution of learning, tasked with promoting a quality education and charming college atmosphere which we have all likely come to appreciate in our academic careers. Not only has the University failed to provide the basic service of a safe and secure environment for its students, it has robbed many of those students the financial safety net that has yet to be provided by any state or federal institution.

We have to be clear about what the consequences of a poor long-term response from the University may be. Already, the University is counting on a net outflow of students due to an unwillingness to pay full price for an inferior semester. In response, they admitted 500 more freshmen than originally intended. Students will transfer out, take gap years, or in some cases end their college careers entirely. As the economic outcome of the pandemic becomes more clear, we think that a higher proportion of students than originally accounted for will take one of these paths. Students already taking off and unable to pay tuition are unlikely to return. For the University, this will mean lower revenue far beyond just the Fall semester. Some students will likely attempt to bridge this difference with loans, a risky choice to make in the midst of a growing national college debt crisis and in one of the worst economies of the last hundred years. For many, this choice will surmount to indentured servitude to lenders for years. Because students will return, whenever that may be, with a shallow understanding of content they were supposed to have learned this semester, they are more likely to perform below standards that have yet to be addressed by anyone at the University. This is a perfect storm of negative factors, leading to a student body depressed in all senses of the word at the most crucial time in their development. We will have the burden of a crisis completely outside of our control on our backs for the rest of our lives. From an organizational standpoint, this is also very bad for a university that prides itself on its alumni network and extensively solicits donations from its graduates. If it means anything to you, reader, we promise to complain about the response to anyone who asks about our thoughts on the University after we graduate…

We have been led to believe as students that the University has an abundance of resources available to students on and off campus. The list goes on of the great facilities, departments, and amenities of living. It leaves a bitter and unsavory taste in our mouths as we are told by this same university that it is now unable to provide the necessary financial support to its students through this crisis, and that it has somehow lost all ability to forgive tuition and housing payments, or spare even a single cent on lowering tuition for the upcoming term. They have led us to believe that the University will hemorrhage from the effects of COVID-19 and they will need to make cuts in how much they are able to provide to students during this time. This is one of the greatest fabrications the University has engineered. We understand that it is not as simple as breaking open the piggy bank of a multibillion dollar endowment; it is a reallocation of assets and a change in policy that accommodates the circumstances of the current pandemic. What would you estimate the University’s current assets sum to, in total? I guarantee you, you will underestimate the bloated behemoth that is the account book of any institution of higher education. As we begin to imagine this staggering amount of accumulated assets, we must consider what is necessary for an institution of learning to guarantee for its students.

The choices administrators have made so far have had severe material consequences for their students. And the inaction of our University has set a precedent for institutions of learning to pass on their financial liabilities to their student body. As we aim to unionize and negotiate a fair deal for students, we ask you, the reader, to consider for yourself the consequences of a silent and apathetic student body during this crisis.

We have reached out to dozens of orgs other than YDSA at the University of Michigan, our sole organizational sponsor, and we have yet to receive a single response. We assume that org leadership naturally doesn’t want to invoke the wrath of the University on their funding and relationships to the wider community. But because we now have a system where students are being seriously harmed, we must act. If we as a student body do not voice our dissent of the current university policy, we will be robbed once again and will have no one but ourselves to blame. Ignoring this opportunity to engage with the system endangers both your own and your fellow classmates’ financial security. You have nothing but the time and ability to spread this discourse of a fair deal for students, but we perhaps naively have expected this out of the student body, the supposed leaders and best that Michigan has to offer.

We implore you to consider once again what your interests are as a student. As someone who is currently paying for housing and tuition, ask yourself some questions. Do I think the Board of Regents has my best interest at heart? How can I expect a fair deal from the University’s administration who continue to act in the self-interest of the University’s capital interests, and have been nothing but antagonistic to the housing and academic needs of its students? If I can’t expect any form of refund or financial aid during this time, what is it that I can do to help myself and my fellow Wolverines?

Well, we are here to answer that last question! As representatives of Students for a Fair and Transparent COVID-19 Response, we are here to demand the University answers the needs of its students before the Board of Regents make budgetary decisions for this upcoming Fall term. It is imperative that we are proactive during this crisis, and that we can unify as a student body to pressure the University to listen. We have many avenues through which we intend to organize, such as tuition strikes, threats of mass-disenrollment, and media outreach. Feel free to ask us questions or give us feedback at either of our emails, ingellt@umich.edu and sodicoff@umich.edu. If you have a problem that you have faced because of the University’s response to COVID-19, we want to know and we want to help! This struggle is ours to solve in concert, to understand our rights as students during this time, and to set precedent for the University to respond fairly to our needs during times of crisis.

Of Pandemics and Academics: How the University of Michigan Robbed 30,000 Students was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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

Nominations are open for two leadership roles: one is a Steering Committee position, the Internal Organizer, and the other is for a second Harassment and Grievance Officer. Please go to this link if you want to nominate yourself for one of these positions. To be eligible, you need to be a member of DSA and up-to-date with your dues payment and reside within West Suburban IL DSA territory. If you have a question about your membership status, please contact the Membership Organizer, Lisa, at mbr.org@wsildsa.org.

Voting for these positions will take place at the WSDSA annual convention, which is scheduled for Sunday, July 12 at 11 am via Zoom. Nominations close on Saturday, June 27 at 5 pm and the membership will be contacted via email on Sunday, June 28 with the convention agenda. This email will include the nominees and their statements so folks can familiarize themselves with them before voting takes place.

If you have any questions about the nomination process, voting, or anything else related to the WSDSA convention, you are welcome to contact the Steering Committee at info@wsildsa.org.

We, the members of Tampa Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), have developed a list of demands to address the violent policing system that fails to efficiently serve and protect members of the Tampa Bay community—particularly our communities of color. The urgency with which we present these demands is driven by the brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25, 2020, the most recent in a long line of black lives lost to police brutality. Black Lives Matter.

Tampa DSA demands justice for all acts of police violence that have and continue to threaten the health, safety, and livelihood of our communities. As a democratic socialist organization that is committed to fighting all forms of systemic oppression, our list of demands is presented within an intersectional, class-conscious framework that seeks to ultimately dismantle an inherently oppressive policing system. This vision can be achieved through a series of justice-oriented actions that include demanding accountability for racist police brutality and repurposing our bloated police budget to better serve the interests of our communities.

We demand that the City of Tampa:

• Cut 15% of the Tampa Police Department’s budget (which currently accounts for over 38% of our city’s general fund and 18.6% of the total city budget) and redirect this money towards public transportation, low-income housing, education, and community public health centers by 2022.
• Decouple access to healthcare from policing by building separate institutions for clinical dispatches. Increase the number of 24/7 Adult and Child Mobile Crisis Teams responding to mental health crises, ensuring that each team includes both a Certified Peer Support Specialist and a licensed clinician. Dispatch only EMTs to calls of drug overdoses. Dispatch licensed clinicians with law enforcement to all calls related to domestic violence.
• Ban the use of pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bag bullets, LRADs, and armored vehicles by TPD against public demonstrators.
• Ban the use of facial recognition software, such as Clearview AI, that infringe upon privacy rights.
• Cease using quantity of arrests as a performance measure to assess officers of the TPD and instead focus on history of misconduct.
• Keep the curfew related to public demonstrations lifted indefinitely.
• Remove requirements for permits to exercise first amendment rights.
• Adopt a policy to reduce asset forfeiture (which currently accounts for approximately one million dollars of TPD’s budget) including a provision prohibiting the TPD or its employees from benefiting from seized assets. For assetsnthat cannot be returned to the arrested party, the assets should be liquidated and the resultant funds should be diverted to public education and/or mental health services.
• Dissolve Tampa PD and Hillsborough County School Board’s School Resource Officer (SRO) Program and to completely replace SROs with licensed clinical social workers, psychologists, and nurses in public schools by 2021.
• Ban the use of no-knock warrants and choke holds.
• Decriminalize drug possession and sex work.

We demand that Mayor Jane Castor:

• Call on Governor DeSantis to immediately end the deployment of the National Guard within the City of Tampa.
• Fire Police Chief Dugan for the Tampa Police Department’s violent use of force against peaceful protesters.

We demand the Tampa Police Department:

• Issue summons or citations in lieu of utilizing custodial arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors.
• Investigate prevalence of white supremacist groups and individuals within TPD.
• Adopt policy requiring full transparency in officer conduct and training history.
• Disarm all patrol officers by 2022.

Regarding the City of Tampa’s contract with the Tampa Police Benevolent Association, we demand:

• The City of Tampa renegotiate its contract with TPBA once it expires after 2022 to remedy provisions that currently act as impediments to accountability for officers who use force in violation of the law or policy.
• Amendments to the existing contract should:
  • Mandate yearly fitness for duty evaluations.
  • Make personnel records of TPD officers accessible to the public.
  • Keep complaints on file, even if the allegations are not deemed to be substantiated.
  • Keep letters of counseling in personnel files permanently.

We demand that State Attorney Andrew Warren:

• Institute an office-wide policy that assistant state attorneys are not to seek cash bail.
• Institute an office-wide policy that assistant state attorneys should advocate that defendants be released on their own recognizance unless the defendant is a danger to the community or a flight risk.
• Immediately drop all existing charges for nonviolent misdemeanor cases.
• Immediately stop the direct filing of juvenile cases into the adult criminal system, regardless of the severity of the crime.

We demand that the Chief Justice of the 13th Judicial Circuit and the Clerk of Court:

• Continue the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures for the duration of the pandemic.

The post Demands regarding policing in Tampa: appeared first on Tampa DSA.

For Immediate Release

June 10, 2020

Pittsfield, MA- The Berkshires chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America supports non-violent protest, including the ongoing efforts of local anti-fascist volunteers around the world, internationally recognized as antifa. Antifa is not an organized group but an idea that supports and defends peoples’ right to live free from oppressive abuse of power. 

“Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer unfortunately succumbed to the histrionics of the right last week, taking sides with Donald Trump in blaming antifa for outbreaks of violence at recent protests, and suggesting that antifa posed a threat to residents of Berkshire County,” says Berkshires DSA Co-Chair Christian Kennedy.

Berkshires DSA wholeheartedly supports Tyer’s desire to protect our communities from violence. We therefore call on Tyer and other elected officials to denounce and make clear the threat posed by alt-right terrorist groups. Moreover, we call on Tyer and other elected officials to support the Black Lives Matter movement and to defund the police. Funds should be diverted from policing to critically needed social services and programs in Black, Latinx, indigenous, and other communities of color.

“Antifa is not an organized group,” says Kennedy. “Antifa is an orientation to confronting and crushing fascism, whether at home or abroad.” 

While the right blames antifa for violence at recent protests, these accusations have all been proven false. The FBI Washington Field Office, for instance, found that there was “no intelligence indicating antifa involvement/presence” in the DC protests.

Antifa has made its presence felt in defending against fascism around the world in numerous significant events and ongoing actions, such as the Battle of Cable Street in London 1936, the Battle of Waterloo 1992, and the Unity Carnivals. More recently, in 2017, antifa played an important role in protecting activists protesting against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA; despite their efforts, activist Heather Heyer lost her life to a neo-Nazi. As Democratic Socialists, we support the fight against fascism and stand in solidarity with our comrades who identify as antifa. Recent events have illustrated that standing up to fascism is more important now than ever, as the COVID-19 crisis intensifies the crises of structural racism and police brutality. We support the protesters across the country and around the world, and we will continue to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly democratic socialist presence in American communities and politics. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for the few. DSA members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people.

For media inquiries, please contact Amillie Coster (413) 854 5611, amilliedelphina@gmail.com

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%.

The North Carolina Piedmont chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America strongly and unequivocally supports the nationwide uprising for justice for Ahmaud Arbery, Akiel Denkins, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, and the countless Black victims of white supremacist violence and the police state.

We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter and police abolitionist movements throughout the Triangle and the United States. We condemn the police-instigated violence, including the use of chemical weapons like tear gas, and the violent arrests of demonstrators perpetrated by the Raleigh Police Department and State Capitol Police. We will continue to offer our support and join in the streets with all antiracist groups in the Triangle combating police violence, racism, and white supremacy. We also believe there is no such thing as looting by the oppressed, when we live in a land stolen from indigenous peoples and built by slaves. As anti-capitalists, we know that the real looting is done to working people by their bosses and a government that rules in the interests of those bosses.

As a democratic socialist organization, we fight for police and prison abolition because we know cops and cages don't keep us safe: we keep us safe. Toward these goals, we call on Wake, Durham, and Orange Counties and their constituent municipalities to: 1) demilitarize and defund their police forces; 2) empty their jails and prisons, which are hotspots in a pandemic that is already killing Black, Brown, and poor people disproportionately; 3) end cash bail; and 4) reappropriate funds from the police toward health care, housing, and other life-affirming social services that truly allow our communities to thrive. We will continue to support the leadership and organizing of formations like Durham Beyond Policing and Raleigh PACT, which have already made significant progress toward divesting from police and investing in communities of color.

We share the rage of all those who are making themselves heard on the streets after years of being suffocated by policing and poverty, after years of being looted by corporations, landlords, and billionaires. We will fight for a world where Black people can breathe freely. As socialists, it is our duty to fight for prison abolition, dismantle white supremacy, and build a just and liberated world.

For Immediate Release

June 8, 2020

PRESS RELEASE: BERKSHIRES DSA STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER

Pittsfield, MA — 

George Floyd.

Breonna Taylor.

Tony McDade.

Three Black individuals murdered by the police. Three among thousands.

Police violence stops here. Racism stops here.

The Berkshires chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) proudly adds our voice to the global chorus: BLACK LIVES MATTER.

We join our comrades in the streets to protest police violence and the racist order it upholds. For us, the struggle for racial justice is inseparable from the struggle for democratic socialism. We seek a world defined by our lasting commitment to each other rather than the fleeting economic value of our labor. And we will defend the vision of democratic socialism against racists, and against fascists. Right now, that means we find ourselves in the streets.

At this moment, the path to democratic socialism brings us head-to-head with anti-Black racism. We do not shy away from this confrontation, and we call on our members to join the protests unfolding across Berkshire County, and worldwide. We invite all residents of Berkshire County to join us in the streets, and we call on elected officials to support racial justice by demanding greater police accountability and by redirecting resources from the police to public programs that serve Black and Brown communities.

The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly democratic socialist presence in American communities and politics. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for the few. DSA members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people.

For media Inquiries, please contact Amillie Coster (413) 854 5611, amilliedelphina@gmail.com