Good evening Mayor Harmon and city council members. My name is Ethan Stan, and I am speaking this evening on behalf of the San Luis Obispo chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or SLO DSA.

Earlier this year, our chapter made a statement regarding the City’s overnight car camping ban. We’ll say again what we said then—we believe housing is a human right, and that a housing-first approach should be at the core of our City and County’s efforts to eliminate homelessness and housing insecurity in our community.

That we now have to comment on an ordinance that, if not passed, would likely create exactly the sort of homelessness the car camping ban punishes is shockingly unfair and unjust.

The housing crisis has gotten so extreme that the state government has had to step in and pass the incredibly moderate tenant protections enshrined in AB 1482. These include:

• Rent stabilization—not rent control—that caps increases at 5 percent plus inflation
• The elimination of most “no fault” evictions that allow landlords to kick renters out on a whim
• And does not even apply to units put on the market in the past 15 years
• It doesn’t even apply to single-family homes unless they’re owned by a corporation—which, it should be added, many are due to private equity firms buying foreclosed properties in the wake of the Great Recession

AB 1482 does not apply to small-time landlords. It is not a form of rent control. And as many housing justice advocates across the state argue, it won’t go far enough, only covering a portion of the state’s millions of renters. It wasn’t even opposed by landlord lobbying groups like the California Apartment Association.

That landlords in our community are still seeking to make an extra buck or kick their tenants out in the time between the bill’s signing and when it goes into effect is beyond the pale. These actions are not just counter to our community’s values—they are against the values of a humane society.

Renters make up over 60% of our city’s population. The hourly wage needed to afford a one-bedroom unit in our city without becoming rent-burdened is estimated to be over $25; our minimum wage is still at $11–12. There are already countless people sleeping under bridges and in their cars across town, and the rainy season starts tonight.

Please, pass this emergency ordinance. Thank you.

Celebrate May Day with the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. Host Jack Devine speaks with Emmy and Ariel, two of our street protest marshals, otherwise known as the "Red Rabbits." We discuss how organizers work to keep our comrades safe and make sure our direct actions are effective, especially in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Additionally we dive into the origins of May Day here in the United States in the aftermath of the Haymarket affair and how history shows how important it is for socialist to stand in solidarity with immigrants.

May Day NYC: Workers + Immigrants, We Rise Together
Tomorrow at 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Columbus Circle
10 Columbus Circle, New York, New York 10019 - maydayny.org

This is one of our "Life in DSA" series in which we will examine internal organizational structures that exist to bolster our organizing.

Host Desiree Joy Frias talks with Annie Levin and Josh Feintuch about Sing in Solidarity, the New York City Democratic Socalists of America's Chorus about why music is a powerful part of organizing. We also get to hear a couple songs from the chorus.

We hope you enjoy and come out to join us!

In part two of our two hour Earth Day special we’ll talk about what a Green New Deal could look like at a state level and right here in New York City.

We’ll have Thomas Niles in the studio to talk about New York City Democratic Socialist of America Ecosocialist working group’s new People Power NYC campaign. Our discussions highlights the absurdity of private ownership of our collective resources and how democratically owned energy is necessary for a sustainable future. Additionally we’ll also hear from climate reporter Alexander Kaufman about the historic Climate Mobilization Act that the City Council passed last week.

In part one of our two hour Earth Day special we’re talking about what everybody is talking about these days, the Green New Deal and how it relates to the broader movement for democratic socialism.

We begin with a historical analysis of the original New Deal and how class struggle forced capitalists to give in to workers’ demands for a more just society. Then we’ve got Sarah Lyons in the studio with us right now to break down a recent Green New Deal town hall that happened in the Bronx with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We’ll also be hearing from Tom Pike, a Democratic Socialist of America organizer in Los Angeles about their campaign to shut down fracked gas power plants.

Today, April 19th, is the 76th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during WWII and it was mostly organized by the Bund, a secular Jewish socialist movement. Irena Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto and fled with her mother to the United States when she was eight. She is now a noted poet, writer, Yiddish translator, anti-occupation activist, known for her work in lesbian, feminist and Jewish spaces. This personal interview touches on Irena's childhood, the "zeitgeist" of American Jewish bundist life, coming out in the 1970's, her activism against Israel's occupation, and how she makes sense of the contemporary resurgence of interest in Yiddish. Part 2 of this interview series will feature Daniel Soyer, who will provide a historical and academic perspective on the Jewish Labor Bund.

The foundation of any city is its housing. Everyone needs a place to live. In New York state the only way we can ensure this is to pass a Universal Rent Control campaign that will expand and strengthen our existing rent protections. Our existing laws expire on June 15th, and we must make them better. Join our host Desiree Frias for a conversation with Dennis Osorio, and Cea Weaver who are working on our Universal Rent Control campaign with NYC-DSA.

With NY nurses threatening to strike, millions still uninsured and without care, and politicians co-opting our language to describe their capitalist solutions to our healthcare problems, our fight for universal healthcare is at a crossroads. What does advocating for universal healthcare mean for us as people, as workers, and as socialist organizers in an intersectional left movement? Host Amy Wilson will talk to organizer Emma Claire Foley of the NYC-DSA Healthcare Committee about this pivotal moment for universal healthcare in the United States. Get excited for the campaign for universal healthcare in New York State.

It was illegal to be queer in 1969. Homosexuals – as we were all called then – were labeled dangerous and subversive deviants. We were tracked and surveilled by the FBI, considered security risks by the national security apparatus, and rounded up and driven out of cities and into ghettos. Queer spaces were regularly raided by the police; their arrestees humiliated, brutalized, and even tortured. Many of our people lived in abject poverty, especially those who did not conform to the narrow gender constructs of a hostile society.

This was America on June 28, 1969, when ten police officers entered a bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn with the intent to arrest anyone suspected of “deviancy.” The patrons of Stonewall were divided along perceived gender lines. Cross-dressers, a dated term which included what we now call drag queens and transgender individuals, were separated from the rest and forced to expose themselves to police officers. Women in butch clothing were groped and violated under the guise of frisking; a common practice, as wearing an insufficient number of feminine items of clothing was considered a crime. Anyone found to be in violation of rigid gender norms was arrested on the spot.

When the arrestees refused to cooperate, they were brutalized. When one woman protested her treatment, she was beaten over the head with a baton. As outrage grew among the crowd gathering to witness this injustice, what began as a routine crackdown quickly escalated to two days of violent resistance we now call the Stonewall Riots. It is this event we commemorate every year with the celebration of Pride.

Standing on the shoulders of generations before it, Stonewall marked the beginning of the modern struggle for LGBTQ+ equality and, ultimately, liberation. Though Obergefell v Hodges opened the door to an unprecedented era of queer rights and visibility, reactionary efforts to erase these victories have grown just as pronounced. From a ban on transgender people in the military, to a multitude of religiously justified discrimination bills, to homegrown attempts to roll back marriage rights, all under the watch of an increasingly conservative judicial system, we stand to lose everything we have fought so hard to win.

At every stage of this ongoing struggle, the police, as the sanctioned enforcers of the state, have been our opposition and our oppressors. Indeed, it will be the police who drag us out of bathrooms and business places in shackles, who will harass us when our name or gender markers don’t match our “biological sex,” who will drive us into ghettos when we can’t find work. Why, then, are the police permitted a place at the 50th anniversary of the riot that birthed our movement?

The Nashville Metropolitan Police Department has ridiculed transgender members of our community; fought viciously against community oversight voted by a majority of our city; targets, oppresses, and murders black and brown people; and works in direct cooperation with ICE to tear families apart. We refuse to welcome our oppressors at a table ostensibly set to celebrate our hard-won and still-besieged liberties. It is therefore, in the spirit of the Stonewall Riots that we, the undersigned members of the Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America, call for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s booth to be disinvited and summarily ejected from Nashville Pride.

Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America Queer Working Group