Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is proud to announce that we have raised $3,239 to donate to Pink Haven Coalition and $2,274 to donate to Operation Olive Branch.

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots organization supporting Palestinians’ critical needs, including but not limited to mutual aid requests. At a time when bipartisan consensus in the federal government is genocide, any donation is not enough, but to those moved by this mission, please donate to Operation Olive Branch.

Pink Haven Coalition is a lifesaving organization helping trans people in hostile states access medical care. Trump and Republicans campaigned on stripping the rights of trans people, especially trans immigrants and incarcerated people, while Democrats like Seth Moulton lay the blame for their election loss on trans people—the latest in a long line of betrayals by the Democratic Party on trans rights. To those moved by this mission, please donate to Pink Haven Coalition.

We are proud of DSA’s work for a free Palestine and to protect our LGBTQ+ siblings.

DSA supports ceasefire, arms embargo, and divestment resolutions in our cities and unions across the country, working in coalition with Palestinian, Muslim, and Jewish community and advocacy organizations.

Our members protected Somerville Central Library from the far-right menacing of a drag queen story hour. Our endorsed Somerville City Councilors Willie Burnley Jr. and J.T. Scott helped lead the fight to make Massachusetts a safe haven for gender-affirming medical care. We work in the Mass-Care coalition for Medicare for All, including gender-affirming care and abortion on demand and without apology.

In the face of exterminationist Republicans and indifferent Democrats, Boston DSA will always stand with Palestine and trans people.

JOIN BOSTON DSA: bdsa.us/JoinUs

POST-ELECTION MASS MEETING: bdsa.us/NovGM

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, November 13 (6:45 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): November General Meeting (In person at 2973 16th St, Suite 300)

Thursday, November 14 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, November 15 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, November 16 (11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Tabling with Palestine Solidarity Working Group at Ferry Building Farmer’s Market (In person at 1 Ferry Building)

Saturday, November 16 (12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.): Organizing Against State Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (Zoom and in person at Alliance for Social and Economic Justice, 2973 16th St, Suite 300)

Monday, November 18 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): DSA Maker Monday w/ Labor (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, November 18 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, November 20 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): What is DSA? (In person, location TBA)

Thursday, November 21 (6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, November 25 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, November 25 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at 220 Golden Gate)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Organizing Against State Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

This Saturday, coalition partners with Bay Area Popular Convention for Palestine are hosting a discussion and analysis of how state repression of the Palestine solidarity movement is impacting student, community, and labor groups. What are ways we can can support each other within and across these sectors? RSVP to join the discussion of this and other vital questions. This will be a hybrid event on Zoom and in person at the Alliance for Social and Economic Justice at 2973 16th St., Suite 300 on Saturday, November 16, 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

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Maker Monday with Labor Group

The Tenderloin Healing Circle and Labor Group are getting crafty on Monday, November 18 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m at 1916 McAllister. We’ll be crafting buttons and flyers with lino prints, markers, and more. Come make art with us!

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Tenderloin Healing Circle

We’d like to invite you (yes, you!) to join the Tenderloin Healing Circle every 2nd and 4th Monday of the month! We serve food right before the meeting at 6:00 p.m., and meet from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 220 Golden Gate Avenue.

This is a free healing circle for the neighborhood. Join other Tenderloin folks for support, hope, and food. All are welcome. The venue is wheelchair accessible, bathrooms are available, and masks are encouraged.

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No Appetite for Apartheid in SF!

Inspired by long-standing Palestinian boycott tactics and the BDS call, the Palestine Solidarity Anti-Imperialist Working Group are canvassing local stores and asking them to pledge to become Apartheid-Free by dropping products from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and colonization of Palestine. It’s time to turn up the heat on this apartheid regime and take apartheid off our plates!

Want to show your support? Sign our Apartheid-Free Pledge so business owners know how popular this movement is with their local customers. After signing the pledge, we would love to see you at any of our upcoming campaign strategy sessions and canvassing days. Check dsasf.org/events for updates.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

This is our third and final installment in our mini-series on Norman Wallace Lermond, famed socialist and naturalist from Maine. In this episode, we look deeper at Lermond’s hand in forming the Maine Socialist Party. His position as Party Secretary, his failed campaign for Governor, and his life outside of political organizing. Please listen and share!

The post A Maine Socialist – Norman Wallace Lermond, pt. 3 appeared first on Pine & Roses.

In early October, the Twin Cities DSA Steering Committee voted to adopt this resolution, which calls on the chapter to use its resources to support the passage of the congressional Joint Resolutions of Disapproval recently introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders. This group of six resolutions, put before both houses of Congress, would block over $20 […]

How do we fight Trump? With a united front of working class organizations.

On November 5, Donald Trump was elected, again. How did this happen? At the heart of the disaster is the failure of the Democratic Party. For decades, Democrats have operated as just another party of big business, corporate policies, and the status quo.

While corporate Democrats fell to crushing defeat, socialists won elections across the country. Portland was a bright spot. We elected two endorsed city councilors after an incredible campaign of door-knocking and organizing — and voted in four democratic socialists to city council. Five of the twelve winners signed our Renters’ Bill of Rights.

But our victories exist against the context of a wider victory for the right-wing. What to do now? In Portland DSA we passed an emergency election response with a clear goal: build a coalition to fight for left-wing policies in Portland, and to oppose Trump, and the hard right, conservative, capitalist policies of the Republican Party.

To build a strong coalition, we will invite unions, Palestine solidarity organizations, sympathetic local and state officeholders, and labor solidarity groups to an activist conference to discuss our strategy.

This plan is unified around a set of demands: No abortion ban, no genocide, no deportations. DSA chapters across the country are already making these demands. In Portland, we are also looking ahead to a socialist vision for city council: A Green New Deal for Portland, a Renters’ Bill of Rights, and a jobs program for Portland.

Together, we will work with a coalition of Left organizations to plan a joint forum on the strategy for Portland’s Left, an inauguration day protest, and a longer term left-wing, anti-Trump coalition.

Portland DSA is calling on other chapters to pass the same resolution! We are experiencing an enormous moment of opportunity, as liberals and progressives question their approach of the last 8 years. The strategy of lesser-evilism, and running within the two-party paradigm has left us without a clear response to Trumpist populism. As people begin to question the role of the Democratic Party, it is the job of socialists to convince them of the need for a new party for the working class.

Our chapter is asking DSA to convene the same sort of coalition nationally. The Left is growing, workers deserve more, and together we can build a party and defeat the Right!

November 9, 2024

This coming Wednesday 11/13, Common Council will be voting on the City's budget. Conservative Common Council members are introducing amendments that would defund and eliminate essential city services like youth programming and critical infrastructure. We're calling for Common Council to reject these cuts and pass the budget.

These cuts would completely paralyze the city’s ability to do its basic functions: repairing streets and sidewalks, promoting affordable housing and supportive services, and providing childcare for young children and working families. Not to mention, they would reverse so many of the progressive initiatives we have fought for these past few years. Here are some examples:

• Defunding of a city attorney position would disrupt the city's ability to enforce regulations that serve residents' interests, like stopping apartments from being turned into AirBNBs.

• Defunding the city's health insurance would make it even harder for working class people to run for local office

• Defunding the city's contribution to dozens of nonprofits who provide essential services which include food banks, childcare, support for senior residents, and legal aid.

We are calling on members of Ithaca DSA to join us this Wednesday at 5:30 PM at City Hall (108 E Green St, Ithaca) and tell Common Council to reject austerity amendments and pass a People-First Budget. The people first budget implements:

• Substantial funding to address homelessness

• Planning how to implement reparations for Black Ithacans

• Low-cost improvements to winter sidewalk maintenance

These amendments are capitalizing on the legitimate concern Ithacans are feeling about higher taxes, but they're false solutions and the costs will be borne in working people's lives. Our DSA-endorsed council members have identified and proposed cost-saving cuts of half a million dollars for unfilled staffing positions in the police department. Right now, the City is planning to unnecessarily tax residents for positions that have been unfilled for years.

We're petitioning council to keep funding for community, youth, and infrastructure, but cut the excess from the police department — and most importantly, pass this people-first budget.

In Solidarity,

Ithaca DSA

October 21, 2024

Cornell University targeting anti-genocide protestors with suspension, as well as the threat of expulsion and deportation

Ithaca, NY  — On October 17th, four Cornell students, including the former Co-Chair of Cornell YDSA and the President of Cornell Jewish Voices For Peace were suddenly notified of their suspension from the university for participating in anti-genocide protests on campus before promptly being arrested by Cornell University Police and taken away in handcuffs. 

"Cornell's recent suspension of four students for their involvement with a protest was a harsh, unaccountable, and repressive act of administrative violence," said DSA-endorsed Tompkins County Legislator Veronica Pillar. "Rather than protecting students, Cornell's actions further endanger the community. I urge Cornell administrators to reverse their decision, and I stand in solidarity with the multitude of students, faculty, staff, and alumni calling for due process, human rights, and an end to investments in genocide. Free Palestine."

"Cornell University claims to uphold values like free inquiry, expression, and community, yet its retaliatory actions against these students—suspending, arresting, and banning them for participating in a peaceful protest—directly contradict these principles," said DSA-endorsed Alderperson Kayla Matos of the Ithaca Common Council. "Cornell can practice these principles by reversing these suspensions and respecting students' right to free speech and assembly.

This comes after Cornell's suspension of Graduate Student Momodou Taal, who the university had threatened with deportation before public backlash caused his suspension to be walked back. After Taal's initial suspension, Joel Malina, Cornell's VP of University Relations, in a private meeting with students and parents, affirmed that Cornell University is comfortable with inviting the Ku Klux Klan to university campus. Cornell University's willingness to deport a Black immigrant student for exercising his right to free speech while simultaneously welcoming white supremacists onto campus is blatant white supremacy and we condemn it unequivocally.   

“As of late Cornell University appears more concerned with surveilling and policing its students than with educating them,” said Jorge DeFendini, Chair of Ithaca DSA. "I urge the university to adhere to its mission of 'Any Person, Any Study,' and allow all students to exercise their right to free speech without vindictive retaliation from the administration." 

Ithaca DSA condemns Cornell University's retaliation against its students and stands in total solidarity with these brave protestors in their principled stance against the genocide of Palestine. We call on the university to reverse these suspensions, drop arrest charges, and adhere to the student body's resounding call to divest from companies complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza. 

Solidarity Forever & Free Palestine.

Steering Committee of Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America

May 29, 2024

Over 48,000 members of UAW 4811, higher ed workers in the University of California system, are standing up and striking back against unfair and illegal repression by their universities. These workers make the university system run with their labor, by instructing classes and bringing in grant money with their research. The wealth they create is then invested in weapons manufacturers and other companies that supply, support, and enable the genocide in Gaza, the illegal settlement of the West Bank, and the day to day violence of Israel’s apartheid regime. This Monday, May 19, they began their strike. 

These workers heeded the call put out by their fellow students, joining the movement for a ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian liberation. Union members were tear-gassed, beaten, and intimidated – first by counter protesters and then by police called by the University of California.

The response to students and workers exercising their right to free speech was repression and violence. But these academic workers are unionized, and have legal protections from unfair labor practices like this. And they have a tool to protect their rights: the strike.  

With this strike, UAW 4811 makes the following demands:

1. Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to protest.

2. Right to free speech and political expression on campus.  

3. Divestment from UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza. 

4. Disclosure of all funding sources and investments, including contracts, grants, gifts, and investments, through a publicly available, publicly accessible, and up-to-date database.

5. Empower researchers to opt out from funding sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression. 

UC academic workers are fighting against repression on behalf of students and workers everywhere, from California to Palestine! Their fight is our fight, and we stand with them!

As DSA members, we know that the workers at the University of California are fighting not just for their own safety and right to peacefully protest, but for workers all across the world, especially in Palestine. Workers at UC are taking a bold step, striking not only for better working conditions, but to defend their fundamental political rights and freedoms. After all, it is our collective power to withhold our labor by which these very rights are guaranteed. We know that the struggle for a better future begins on the shop floor, and as democratic socialists, we stand loudly and proudly alongside all workers who demand political freedom and an end to the genocide in Palestine.

Therefore, as Ithaca DSA members we commit to:

• Amplify the demands of the rank-and-file through public statements of support

• Hold UC accountable to meet the just demands of their workers

• (IF APPLICABLE: We will join striking workers on the picket line and provide material support to help them stay strong)

When workers, students, and social movements stand together demanding an end to US complicity in Israel’s genocide, we will win!

First Published October 29, 2023

Ithaca DSA supports Professor Russell Rickford and is disgusted by the attacks being leveled at him. He has been accused by Cornell campus groups and media outlets of celebrating Hamas’s violence against Israeli civilians and promoting hate speech. These accusations are based on a short and decontextualized video clip of a much longer, 19-minute speech that was given at a rally in support of the Palestinian people, co-organized by Jewish Voices for Peace and the Ithaca Committee for Justice for Palestine and co-sponsored by the Ithaca DSA and other local organizations. Professor Rickford did NOT support or glorify violence against civilians. In fact, he stated "I hate violence. I hate violence. I can’t stand guns. I come from a deep tradition of peace. I come from a deep tradition of resistance to militarism, and to war. I would never presume, on principle, I would never presume, to tell an oppressed people how they should seek their liberation... I abhor the killing of civilians. It’s horrific," (full transcript of speech here). 

The deliberate misrepresentation and decontextualization of his speech is an affront to open dialogue and free speech, which Cornell purports is a key value of the university. We call on Cornell to take the side of Professor Rickford, instead of those making bad faith attacks, undermine free speech, and distort others’ viewpoints for political gain. 

Professor Rickford is a wonderful scholar, teacher, community member, and activist who does not deserve this incredible outpouring of hate and disinformation. 

Sign a petition to support him here.

Adopted by ROC DSA Steering Committee November 10, 2024.

The legacy of the Democratic Party is the re-election of Donald Trump. This outcome followed decades of neoliberal policies and triangulation, which resulted in hollowing out the Party’s remaining commitments to the working class. As President Biden promised in 2020, “nothing would fundamentally change” during his term. Kamala Harris’s candidacy offered only the continuation of this message.

By rejecting any serious effort to improve material conditions for the working class, Democrats aligned themselves to the status quo, ceding ground to a Republican Party that vows to burn the system down. Abandoning transformative policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, the Democrats left no way to act on the “hope” they so readily encourage.

Instead, Democrats tacked further right, adopting anti-immigration rhetoric of “securing the border,” conceding to corporate interests, sidelining Palestine activists, encouraging disastrous climate policies, and promising the “most lethal fighting force in the world.” Harris touted the endorsement of Dick Cheney, architect of the Iraq War, and welcomed Republicans into her administration. In the face of these actions, the Democrats’ denouncement of Trump’s fascism and claim to protect democracy appeared hypocritical. As National DSA identified, it is the “Democratic Party establishment’s failure to present a credible alternative to the right wing,” that led to a right wing victory.

It is not working class policies that are unpopular, but the Democratic Party. In state after state, socialist candidates and progressive policies prevailed with the backing of DSA. Representative Rashida Tlaib nearly doubled Harris’s vote count in Dearborn, Michigan, while Gabriel Sanchez became the first socialist in Georgia’s House of Representatives, and Louisville, Kentucky chose J.P. Lyninger’s “no compromise, class struggle message” for city council. Voters in Missouri, who overwhelmingly favored Trump, legalized abortion and increased the state’s minimum wage; and in New York, Proposition 1 (the “Equal Rights Act”), received more votes than Harris.

While we are critical of the Democratic Party’s failures, we hold no illusions: A second Trump term will be disastrous for the working class. Aspiring to dictatorial fascism, Trump will encounter no guardrails from a reactionary Supreme Court. Access to abortion, gender affirming healthcare, and gay marriage are each under threat, and millions face “mass deportation now.” Workers confront the dilution of their power to unionize, while corporations will benefit from increasing government handouts.

We must adopt a policy of total resistance to this agenda. There can be no countenance for “Trump Democrats” who acquiesce to fascism. Congressman Joe Morelle, who previously decried Trump’s “violent attempt to overthrow the will of the American people,” now congratulates Trump on his victory and urges us to “set aside our partisanship.” We refuse to work in coalition with fascists.

The choice between socialism and fascism represents an irreconcilable political difference: That all people are created equal and deserving of the opportunity for a dignified life, or that some must dominate while the rest are disposable. On issue after issue, Harris conceded to the second vision, making her an untrustworthy ally.

We cannot expect capitalist parties to cater to the needs of the working class. We must build socialism from the ground up. In the past year, ROC DSA organized to defeat the undemocratic business improvement district, mobilized for Palestine, campaigned for public power, supported unions, and more. DSA’s 2024 program, Workers Deserve More, presents a series of proposals that would radically improve people’s lives and create a winning coalition. We must create the conditions to realize this victory. 

We can only do this by building a mass movement. Now is the time to join DSA, or get more involved. We must all take responsibility to resist the rising tide of fascism. DSA provides a space for participatory democracy, and ownership of political decisions—somewhere you don’t need to be a capitalist to get a seat at the table. A better world is possible.

The post Chapter Statement on the 2024 Election first appeared on Rochester Red Star.