Welcome to Our New Co-Chairs

First, we are excited to announce new Co-Chairs: Matt H from Birmingham and Wren P from Honolulu! Both have years of experience in climate organizing and will join Nicole M (NYC) to lead the steering committee through 2024. See our full leadership here.

Chapter Campaining & Organizing

Throughout the year our committee has distributed almost $6,000 in grants to chapters with GND/Building for Power campaigns. Since our last recap these grants helped Louisville DSA print 100 stickers for bus rider canvassing and St. Louis DSA secure public meeting space and printed lit for their GND for St Louis campaign.

Anyone can donate to the grant fund here!

In November we hosted our final Campaign Huddle for 2023, in which 18 comrades from 15 chapters attended to sharpen their campaign strategies and set goals. Sign up for a 2024 huddle, the last Wednesday of every month.

Then in December, our committee hosted its second member call-a-thon of the year as part of DSA’s “Give Your 1% for the 99%” initiative. Contributing 1% of your income for the greater collective good is common in working class organizations like unions, and we need to build the same kind of power in DSA. Hundreds of DSA members have signed up to give their 1% for the 99% to ensure we have the collective democratic power to win real change. If you haven’t made the switch to Solidarity Dues yet, sign up today!

Steer-co members Lori D and Marc K attended a Regional Organizing Retreat in Los Angeles. They presented to comrades from San Luis Obispo, Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego and Los Angeles chapters on our mandate and how to get involved.

The Metro DC chapter had their annual local convention and voted to make their campaign to establish public power, We Power DC, one of five chapter-wide priority campaigns again in 2024. We Power DC organizers also published “The State of Public Power in 2023” in the Washington Socialist, recapping the BPRA win in New York, ballot initiative outcome in Maine, and the outlook for municipalization in the District moving forward. Read all about it here!

Finally, we are pleased to report that YDSA’s NCC passed a proposal to expand YDSA organizing to include Building for Power campaigns! Schools are hotbeds of labor and climate organizing and we are excited to collaborate with YDSA chapters.

Solidarity with Palestine

We hosted a phenomenal panel with the International Committee called Ceasefire Now for People and Planet. Panelists discussed this resurgence of a Left anti-war movement in the context of the climate crisis and explored how ecosocialist organizers can deepen internationalism and anti-militarism within domestic climate organizing. For security reasons we are not providing a recording or panel content, but we’ll have many more panels in 2024 and beyond.

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The year is over but our work continues. Our committee is here to help chapters of all sizes come up with winnable campaigns under our Building for Power framework. Interested? Check YES on our signup form:

The post GND Campaign Commission November & December Recap appeared first on Building for Power.

By Rose L, aka Rosenriot

Content Warning: This post contains discussions of queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, racism, white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, and genocides.

Every anti-Zionist queer person has heard it by now:

“How can you support Palestine? They’d behead you for being queer over there!”

It’s a question that isn’t really a question. It’s a statement, rooted in queerphobia, islamophobia, and racism. What people who say that don’t realize is that we are killed for being queer over here.

Southern Queers know it best: The United States of America is not safe for queer people. In North Carolina alone, there’s been attacks on drag shows everywhere from bars to libraries, laws have been passed forbidding schools from talking about queer existence, and gender affirming care has been banned for minors. 

Nationwide, while queer flags and imagery are sold by major corporations for profit the creators of those flags often don’t see a cent, and are left homeless and begging for mutual aid online. Murders of trans people have increased, particularly murders of black transwomen. Books depicting queer people are banned from libraries. Even in “safe states” hate groups like Moms for Liberty are on the rise, pushing for less and less queer representation in society and media. North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has called queer people, “filth”, “maggots”, “flies”, and “what the cows leave behind.” If anything, queerphobia has skyrocketed in response to increasing queer visibility in American society. 

Queerness is sold. But we are not safe.

Queerness is marketable. But we are not liberated.

“No Pride For Some of Us Without Liberation For All of Us” is a call for intersectionality and solidarity often attributed to transwoman and activist Marsha P. Johnson, but was actually originally written by Micah Bazant in 2015. Bazant, notably, identifies as quote “a white, trans, timtum, anti-zionist jew.”

2015. Micah Bazant’s quote displayed on a banner at North Carolina Pride in Durham, NC by queer and trans people of color.

Anti-zionism is necessary for queer liberation. When one looks at the people often responsible for queerphobia in America, they are overwhelmingly looking at Zionists. The President of Focus on the Family, a Christian Fundamentalist organization, Jim Daly, wrote an article supporting Israel on October 9th. Focus on the Family has previously called being LGBTQ+ people, ”a particularly evil lie of Satan.” On October 12th, aforementioned Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson called for a day of prayer and declared North Carolina's solidarity with the state of Israel.

But why does Mark Robinson, a man who equated queer people to “filth”, and Focus on the Family, who believe queer existence is a satanic deception, have such unwavering support for Israel, which often presents itself as a haven for queer people in the Middle East? For the last decade or so, Israel has flown in American drag queens to perform in Tel Aviv, and hosts Pride parades and festivities. Surely Mark Robinson, Focus on the Family, and people and organizations like them should condemn Israel and its promotion of such “filth” and lies.

However, contrary to Israel's many claims, it doesn’t actually provide that many material queer rights. Israel forbids same-sex marriage. When it comes to queer Palestinians, Israel outs them to their families and communities to sow division. And on November 6th, after queer people across the world highlighted these discrepancies in reaction to October 7th, Israel’s official X account reposted a skit by the Israeli equivalent of Saturday Night Live, set at the fictional “Columbia Untisemity'' depicting a “blue haired liberal” saying “I'm not antisemitic, I'm racist fluid”. When challenged on the subject of queer rights, Israel stooped to using the same bigoted rhetoric the American right wing has said about queer people for years. As of this article’s publication, Israel has yet to remove the repost.

The marketing of it’s pro-gay image by Israel is a tactic called “pinkwashing”, a term popularized by activist Sarah Schulman. It is a propaganda tactic for countries to convince the world that everything they do is justified because they fly the Pride flag high.

But Israel isn’t the only place that does pinkwashing. America and its liberal cities have pinkwashed for over a decade. The North Carolina capital city of Raleigh boasts one of the largest Pride parades in the South, and never fails to mention its push for inclusivity and diversity on its website. It has passed ordinances protecting its queer citizens, but in reality, North Carolina queers can’t even afford to live in Raleigh to benefit from those protections. This is in large part due to skyrocketing housing costs, which results in the most marginalized queers being pushed farther and farther away from safety: by poverty, gentrification, a hostile police force, and the increasing presence of hate groups. Pinkwashing is merely a lukewarm defense for colonizer tactics, from gentrification to genocide.

Queer people know genocide all too well. The general public knows that Jews were targeted in the Holocaust, but so often they forget the Romani, the disabled, the political revolutionaries, and yes, the queers, who were targeted as well. In fact, one of the earliest, most famous photos of Nazis burning books isn’t of them burning Torahs, or burning leftist leaflets. They burned published medical research on trans people by Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Institute for Sex Research in Berlin. Nazis later went on to burn the institute and its archives to the ground, and then they moved on to burning queer bodies too.

Today, Queers in the South face discrimination simply for where they live. The rest of the nation, and to an extent, the rest of the world, view Southerners as racists, bigots, and Evangelical zealots, as well as assume a general lowered capacity for intelligence amongst those in the region. The truth is however, that the American South is extremely diverse and defies all stereotypes. The South natively belongs to our Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, for whom the land should return, and which many still call home despite numerous attempts by colonizers and the Federal government to displace or erase them. The South contains approximately 59% of the country’s Black people, and 32% of the country’s LGBTQIA+ population, the highest of any region in the US. Despite this, Southerns are still perceived as straight, white, Christian cis men. Diversity is reserved for places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, and this perception leads to the most marginalized populations in our country receiving the least support. Southern politicians, queer and not, are often not representative of their marginalized constituents, leading to mass divides in the protections that marginalized people receive at state levels- often none- and the harsh realities they face. The people are not its politicians or its government, and this is true everywhere, including Palestine.

Israel’s pinkwashing not only erases the truth, it erases the existence of Queer Palstinians, who very much exist. This is best exemplified on Queering the Map, a community-based online collaborative platform on which users submit their personal queer experiences in relation to a place on a map. It often serves as a safe space for marginalized queers around the world to tell their stories. Since Israel ramped up its bombing of Gaza, it has become a memorial for Palestinian queer experiences:

“...Being gay in Gaza is hard but somehow it was fun. I made out with a lot of boys in my neighborhood. I thought everyone is gay to some level.”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Realizing the feelings I had for you were more than adoration, realizing that wanting to see you everyday, to be with you and talk to you, for you to call me by my petname that you gave me. I miss you beyond words can describe.I wish if I had the courage to tell you but again I was scared, I didn’t want to cause you any trouble. Now both of us [live] outside [the] Gaza strip, but much far away from each other. I love you, despite what is always on my mind.”

-Anonymous from Rafah, Gaza

“I wish I could watch the sunset over [the] Gaza sea with you. For one night I wish this occupation was no longer and that we could be free for once on our own land.”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Danced in the street with her [here].”

-Anonymous from Ramallah, Palestine

“I found out I was queer here. Whoever is reading this, I just want you to know that you are valid and Allah loves you the way you are. We exist and it's not wrong. Stay brave and beautiful.”

-Anonymous from Al-Mazra a Ash Sharqiya, Palestine

“Here was our first date, we sat, talked about our childhood[s], queer culture, food and bagpipes”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Being out doesn't mean anything to me. I wish to see Haifa. I wish to see the village my parents had to leave. I wish to see my brother who got killed. I wish to be free but my freedom is beyond being out. It's being Palestinian first and foremost. God have mercy on my brother and my Palestinian siblings.”

-Anonymous from Bethlehem, Palestine.

“Played with his hair [here].”

-Anonymous from Betunia, Palestine

“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward."⁠

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Please know despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians. 

We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”

-Anonymous from Khan Younis, Gaza

Furthermore, there are prominent Queer Palestinians and Queer Arab and Muslims organizations that have called for a free Palestine. Bashar Murad, a queer Palestinian musician often referred to as “The Lady Gaga of Palestine” has spoken out in articles by Them.us, Teen Vogue, NPR, and the BBC, calling for an end to the occupation since long before October 7th. alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Queer Crescent, and Hidayah have all made explicit statements connecting queerness and Palestinian liberation.

Israel, despite its claims of being queer friendly, forces queer Palestinains to choose between their identities, then bombs them regardless of their choice. Then, it claims it is justified, because Palestine doesn’t have pride parades. Nevermind the fact there are hardly any roads left to have a pride parade on. Nevermind the fact that a Palestinian genocide will leave no one left to be in a pride parade. Nevermind that pride parades are not liberation.

Queerness is sold. But Queer Palestinians are not safe.

Queerness is marketable. But Queer Palestinians are not liberated.

Still, some may argue that Palestine has not earned Queer solidarity or liberation. That it is not progressive enough, not queer enough, not worthy. The irony is, queers have been told this for years about their own identities: that they are not enough. Not gay enough, not trans enough. Not bi enough, not ace enough. The devastation these expectations have brought to the queer community is immeasurable and should not be passed off onto Palestine.

Solidarity is not transactional. Liberation cannot be achieved if there are barriers for entry. Solidarity does not come with a “you must be this woke to be liberated” brochure that only the most progressive hand out to the have-nots. Queers deserve liberation, now. Palestine deserves liberation, now. All those marginalized and oppressed deserve liberation, now, and they all require solidarity to achieve that, without expectation, without prerequisite.

The queer identity is not a justification for genocide or a lack of solidarity. Queer identity demands solidarity with all those oppressed, and all those who are victims of genocide. There is no amount of pride flags America can fly above its capitol buildings that will excuse the mass genocides that it is currently committing here and across the world. And there is no amount of pride flag stickers that Israel can slap on a bomb to make the Palestinian genocide humane. These countries are in bed together for a reason. There is no amount of queer money they can take, no amount of drag queens they can platform, no pride parades or limited edition pride collections at Target that can make Native American genocide, or Queer genocide, or Trans genocide, or Palestinian genocide, or Congolese genocide, or Armenian genocide, or any genocide acceptable. None of it is acceptable.

North Carolina queers must demand a Free Palestine, with our voices, our divestment, our influence, our art, and our power. We will not condemn the Palestinian people in their resistance. We will fight until there is Palestinian joy on Palestinian land, unoccupied, thriving, with olive trees as far as the eye can see, and we will see that in our lifetimes.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

About the Author:

Rose L (they/them), also known by their drag persona ROSENRIOT, is a member of NCTDSA, activist, and queer performer living and working in Central NC. They’ve lived in the South for over half their life, and can be found handing out water and sign-making supplies at protests around the area.

By Frank Emspak

For those not familiar, the Princess and the Pea is a fable where a princess can’t sleep because of a pea under her mattress. Although it’s technically about someone finding true love because of their weird sleeping habits, it can also be interpreted as being about the fragile egos and impossible desires of the mega-rich.

My takeaway from this fable is that a little annoyance can go a long way. The tactic of using a small annoyance to build a popular campaign is part of a strategy to rebuild our unions. This tactic should contribute to building political support for the pending court cases aimed at undercutting Act 10. We can build support and membership for public sector unions who might undertakes this strategy and position unions as allies or advocates for groups, beyond the immediate focus of union organizing efforts.

In Wisconsin union density has dropped by about 50% compared with pre-Act 10. The biggest hit, of course, was the public sector. But “right to work”, attacks on Project Labor Agreements, and prevailing wage didn’t help. Nor has the loss of plants like GM in Janesville, Oscar Meyer, and Master Lock, as well as the continued migration of unionized financial services work out of the state and out of the union, as carried out by Tru-Stage.

However, this past year organized labor has moved from defense to offense, with some important organizing victories… and now with legal attacks on Act 10. In addition, a parallel judicial effort is underway to force a decision as to whether the Public Authority, the legal home for the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, is a public entity subject to state laws or a private entity subject to the NLRB.

Both legal challenges seek to regain rights lost under Act 10. At the same time, efforts to organize on the ground continue.

Over the course of the 20th century, the legal framework tended to follow the actions on the ground. In the thirties, after the first national labor relations act was declared unconstitutional, a huge wave of organizing swept the country along with the expected repression and unrest. It was then that the courts reversed their view, and the NLRB was declared constitutional.

The Brown v Board of Education decision, ending de jure segregation, followed a similar path. By 1954, there had been almost 10 years of protests and increasing unrest, especially in the South. Legal segregation was an international embarrassment to the US, and so the US Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Here in Wisconsin, prohibitions against public sector unions, especially teachers unions, ended after another record number of disruptions among public school teachers at the beginning of the fall school year. It is important to note that the new laws provided a means to allow state, county, and municipal governments to recognize a union. But in exchange, the union was required to follow a system of rules to be eligible to use those means. In both Federal and State labor law, the range of remedies permitted to unions under the new collective bargaining systems restricted their ability to use direct action: that is, strikes, secondary boycotts, or a closed shop. While the laws did compel an employer to bargain if the union followed the procedures laid out in the respective laws, nothing in either state or federal legislation compelled the employer to reach an agreement with the union.

Winning the Legal Battles

It is all of our interest to build a political and organizational environment to make it easy for the courts to ratify the situation on the ground.

While the courts do act independently, they are also attentive to public opinion, and they are especially attentive to managing unrest. I think it is fair to say that the chances of a favorable court ruling would be increased if University faculty and staff, as well as nurses, could convincingly show they had overwhelming support amongst their fellow workers. 

There may well be majority support for collective bargaining amongst nurses and other public sector workers. A large percentage of the public supports unions. But it is one thing to support collective bargaining in a poll, and another to participate in achieving it. As of yet, that last step has eluded us. Or to put it another way, there is every reason for an organizing committee to act like a union and mobilize around an issue in the workplace without waiting for the possibility that the legal situation will be clarified in labor’s favor. In fact, the achievement of a new collective bargaining law, or even the return to the status quo ante, does not guarantee progress. It guarantees a system of control. It guarantees a process. It may allow an increase in the financial stability of our unions, but given the undemocratic nature of the budget process in Wisconsin, the process cannot be counted on to provide the relief public sector workers need and deserve.

However, developing a majoritarian, on the ground, workplace-centered movement will achieve what we all need: strong democratic unions with workplace organizational strength. The existence of such a movement may help convince the judges to restore laws that provide labor rights, and procedures that make sense.

How can this be achieved? Demonstrating and demanding collective bargaining rights is certainly a first step, but it is only one aspect of the fight. Mobilizing the workforce on an issue of importance to themselves is another. Mobilizing in the workforce as part of a conscious campaign to show what a collective of workers can do can be key to the achievement of any legal victory.

What might a workplace issue look like? It would need to be something that is important to the workforce. It would need to be measurable. It would need to winnable: that is, an issue that the employer could agree to, without the need to go to the legislature for money or permission. Workers could be asked to support this union-driven campaign without necessarily joining the union, but there would be no question in anyone’s mind that the campaign was a union initiative, aimed at improving or remedying an important problem.

What type of issue do we have in mind? Here’s an example which would apply to medical personnel at all levels, but also to the thousands of academic staff and technicians employed by the UW and other public agencies: the “right to know”. (Remember, this is just an example. Depending on the workplace, workers in any particular place may decide on another issue). The “right to know” means that anyone exposed to any chemicals, drugs, solvents, insecticides, pesticides, or other potentially carcinogenic substances would have the right to know that they had been exposed; when, to what, and the relevant scientific information with respect to potential health hazards. Management would be responsible for making this information available in some comprehensible format. This makes common sense. It is something that could be achieved, if the employer wished. It is needed. It is the type of campaign that demonstrates to all, even those of our fellow workers who are undecided about the union, what the union can do to improve working conditions.

A serious campaign of this nature would also demonstrate to the courts that without a union the employer did little or nothing. Hence the issue of collective bargaining is not some theoretical legal issue or abstract right, but a potential lifesaving matter for workers.

A campaign like this would show that collective action—the essence of unionism—makes sense. As such, the union organizing campaigns presently underway would have a specific, meaningful activity to show non-members why it is important to join the union: not only because they will gain rights which may pay off in the future, but because they will exercise collective rights they have here and now, and help pave the way for a better future. If, for some reason, the court cases are not definitive, a campaign such as the one described will have given the unions and workers involved the experience of a successful collective action, and thus grow their capacity to effectively mobilize on other issues.

Frank Emspak

Professor Emeritus, School for Workers, University of Wisconsin

Enjoy your December National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, the year in DSA, Palestine solidarity actions during the Congressional recess, free resources for DSA members, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From the National Political Committee — Solidarity Brings Us Closer
• Get Your Union-Printed Bandana by 12/31! And Sign Up for a Solidarity Dues Phonebank
• Applications for the 2024 YDSA Conference are Open! Apply ASAP
• Limited Spots Open on Budget and Finance Committee — Application Deadline Tuesday 1/2
• Welcome New National Electoral Commission Leadership!
• DSA Members — Get a Free Subscription to In These Times Magazine!

From the National Political Committee — Solidarity Brings Us Closer

As the year draws to a close, we’re naturally looking back at the incredible things DSA has accomplished in 2023. But in a year like this one, where we’re at the end of a few months’ worth of weeks that feel like decades, it’s hard to see past the massive task in front of us: stopping the genocide in Gaza and fighting for a free Palestine. 

That work cannot and will not stop. DSA members are continuing to rally, march, and organize creative actions with masses of people turning out in communities all over the country. DSA electeds in office have been bravely speaking up against censure, organizing local resolutions, standing with protesters in legislatures, hunger striking, naming names, and disrupting the holiday parties of those in the ruling class who are enabling Israel’s atrocities. Earlier this month at a labor solidarity rally organized with DSA at the White House, United Auto Workers joined the call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza — the largest union to do so yet, and a major breakthrough for building a working-class foreign policy in the United States.

We have our final No Money For Massacres phonebank of the year tomorrow night, Thursday 12/21, and we’ll be picking them back up on January 4, 2024 — sign up and join us to make these important phone calls and throw your weight behind demanding a Ceasefire NOW! And as of today (December 20, 2023), both the House and the Senate have adjourned for the holidays, which means Representatives and Senators are all heading home to their districts. This time of year is a favorite for in-district fundraisers, meet-and-greets, and photo ops, so you can expect your electeds to be out in the community early and often — which gives you and your DSA chapter an ideal opportunity to reach them directly to talk about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Check out our quick guide to organizing Palestine solidarity actions through this Congressional recess!

Even with this monumental task at the forefront of so many of our minds, we deserve to spend a few minutes reflecting on some of the wins, big and small, that DSA has fought to achieve over the past year. Our collective efforts are making a difference in the lives of working people everywhere, and that is cause for celebration. We encourage you to spend some time reminiscing about some of your local wins with your chapter comrades; it’s a valuable task that builds solidarity and steels us for the big fights ahead. The NPC and DSA staff did a bit of this ourselves and here are just a few of the many things that popped up:

• We held the first in-person DSA Convention since COVID started. We met in Chicago in August to engage in robust and comradely debate and organization-building with over 1200 of our closest comrades, charting the path forward for the next two years.
• DSA chapters across New York state built and led a coalition to pass the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), the largest, most aggressive, and most comprehensive piece of Green New Deal legislation we’ve seen anywhere in the country.
• Our Strike Ready Campaign trained over 250 Solidarity Captains to lead Strike Ready work in their chapters, initially leading up to the possible Teamsters strike and providing further support to the UAW Big Three strikes. This connected the work of on-the-ground union solidarity and relationship-building through a national network that kept us at the forefront of this crucial work.
• Ohio chapters worked together in every corner of the state to protect the right to abortion with an amendment to the state constitution. While rights are being restricted in many places, these comrades fought like hell and actually saw abortion rights expanded.
• Over 1200 of your fellow DSA members helped ensure that our organization has a durable funding source for the work we want to do by switching to Solidarity Dues and working to turn out their comrades to do the same. Have you made the switch yet?

The incredible thing is that these are just a few of the victories. Our 69% win rate for nationally  endorsed campaigns on election night means that new ballot measures and freshly elected politicians will be coming into place as we roll into the New Year, setting us up for significant growth as we show an alternative way forward in a system that can otherwise seem hopeless.

We encourage you to lean into that hope as the calendar changes over. A better world is possible and the solidarity that we’re building is bringing us ever closer. A very happy holiday season to all of you; we wish you plenty of good rest, good cheer, and solidarity forever!

Get Your Union-Printed Bandana by 12/31! And Sign Up for a Solidarity Dues Phonebank

As a member-funded organization, having the resources to keep building working-class power in 2024 is up to us. That’s why over one thousand DSA members have committed to giving their 1% for the 99% by switching to Solidarity Dues. If you haven’t made the switch yet, sign up by Sunday 12/31 and get a union-printed Solidarity Dues Bandana!

Already made the switch and ready to ask your comrades to do the same? Sign up for a Solidarity Dues phonebank and bring your chapter to an upcoming training this January. Onward, together!

Applications for the 2024 YDSA Conference are Open! Apply ASAP

Applications are open for college or high school-aged socialists to attend the 2024 YDSA Conference in Atlanta the weekend of March 1-3, 2024. Join YDSA to learn about how young socialists around the country are fighting for and winning trans liberation, reproductive justice, a stronger labor movement, and more. Learn more and find the application here! Slots are filling up, so apply ASAP. 

Limited Spots Open on Budget and Finance Committee — Application Deadline Tuesday 1/2

Applications for very limited slots for people with directly applicable financial skills are open for the national Budget and Finance Committee. If you have both directly applicable fiscal skills and experience and the ability to attend all meetings, consider applying to assist with the ongoing budget process for the upcoming fiscal year, as well as the process for next year. The application deadline is Tuesday 1/2, and the application form is here.

Welcome New National Electoral Commission Leadership!

Congratulations to the National Electoral Commission’s (NEC) incoming steering committee! Our newly elected leaders are Skye O’Toole, Katie Sims, Nick Conder, Tzara Kane, Sam Rosenthal, Irene Koo, David Vibert, Ben Lenz, Grace Mausser, Robert Nichols, Derek Tulowitzky, Chanpreet Singh, and Wamiq Chowdhury. Huge thanks from the outgoing NEC to everyone who participated in the election — a critical kickoff of our transformation from a national committee to a national commission. Stay tuned to learn how members across DSA can get involved in 2024!

DSA Members — Get a Free Subscription to In These Times Magazine!

As we wrap up 2023 and go into the New Year, left magazine In These Times is offering a free subscription to DSA members! Click here to sign up. And enjoy your reading!

The post Wins in Hard Times — Your National Political Committee newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The holiday season is in full swing, and as some people head toward time off and relaxation, workers in many industries are facing their busiest time of year. We are joined live by Connor Spence, a worker-organizer at Amazon’s first union distribution facility, JFK8 on Staten Island. Connor discusses his work as a co-founder of both the Amazon Labor Union and the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus, and how Amazon workers organized and won new leadership elections in their union.  Now they'll be upping the pressure on this mega corporation to bargain a first contract with workers at JFK8. We also talk about Amazon Labor Union’s recent organizing around Palestine solidarity and the movement to stop the US-Israeli war machine from the bottom up.

 

Connor was recently illegally terminated by Amazon for his organizing activity. Read more and donate to the solidarity fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/connor-spenceillegally-fired-alucaucus-organizer

 

Learn more about Amazon Labor Union: https://sol.alu.network/

 

Follow the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus at @ReformALU. 

It’s been quite a year for the fledgling (founded in early 2022) California DSA. That’s because it’s been quite a year for the multiracial working class, which has supported a flood of successful union contract campaigns, largely due to a spectacular wave of powerful strikes, alongside a brand-new anti-war movement representing a cross-section of the left. California DSA members have been involved with all these activities and more—and California Red, your bimonthly socialist newsletter, launched on Mayday of this year, has been covering as much of them as we can.

The Events

Although 2023 is technically the year we speak of, it began thematically with the emblematic UC academic worker strike in late 2022.  More California DSA members participated directly in this strike than any in history (admittedly the history of California DSA only goes back to February of 2022, but still.) We don’t have a precise count. Nonetheless it’s safe to say hundreds of DSA members took part, including the president of UAW 2865. And the strike, with 48,000 workers walking the lines, was the biggest in academic labor history, and so successful that it inspired a spate of copycat strikes around the country.

It didn’t take long for the next big one: SEIU 99, representing classified workers in Los Angeles Unified School District, struck for three days in March, winning a 30% raise for the lowest paid workers. The secret ingredient to the union’s success? Full on solidarity from United Teachers Los Angeles, who left their classrooms to honor the picket lines of their support workers. The enormous numbers in the streets and popular support from parents and students demonstrated to a chastised administration that it would be best to settle with UTLA as well, which, without the need for its own walkout, negotiated a strong contract on the basis of its obvious ability to mobilize its members. Dozens of dual DSA/UTLA members played a strong role in the actions leading up to the contract settlement.

Soon enough these public sector unions were followed by their siblings in private industry. As a third of a million UPS workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters across the country prepared to hit the bricks, with demonstrations and “practice strikes” following a 97% strike vote, DSA chapters sent members to join them via a Strike Ready campaign. As with UTLA, UPS workers didn’t have to strike due to their evident readiness to do it. At the last minute of an extension on the first strike deadline the union and corporation reached a deal. Despite arguments over whether UPS workers could have gotten an even better contract if they had struck, everyone agreed that the contract was the best since the 1997 strike, bringing up the least paid workers and gaining important health and safety improvements.

In Hollywood, the Writers Guild of America and SAG/AFTRA, representing 175,000 writers and actors, did have to strike against the arrogant movie studio bosses, and these were long ones, with WGA out on the lines for 148 days and the actors for 118. Determined to gain pioneering protections against potential damage to their livelihoods from advancing artificial intelligence, and make up for years of inflation eroding wages, movie workers received unprecedented solidarity as they outlasted the wealthy and powerful movie studios. Dual DSA-LA/UTLA members helped to organize a big turnout of UTLA to the WGA lines in June, and the LA chapter, with its innovative “Snacklist” deliveries, raised $87,000 worth of food by the end of September, earning a shoutout in WGA publications. And movie workers returned to the sets with strong wage gains and a solid foot in the door on AI.

Overlapping with the Hollywood strikes were rolling strikes by hotel, restaurant and casino workers in UNITE HERE-represented workplaces in LA, Las Vegas and Detroit. The largest health care worker strike ever erupted in October for three days with 75,000 members of a Kaiser union coalition in four states walking out.  

The big enchilada

But the big enchilada was the United Auto Workers “Standup” strike starting September 15 against the Big 3 carmakers in the union’s traditional jurisdiction. Shawn Fain, elected in spring with a rank-and-file caucus majority to control the international executive board, had promised that these negotiations would be different, and he was as good as his word. Replacing the traditional class collaborationist approach of his corrupt predecessors with a sharply militant rhetoric and actions to match, he headed up an innovative strategy of striking selected factories owned by all three automakers at once. 

Sitting at three negotiations tables, the union punished the companies when bargaining progress stalled by striking additional workplaces; when the companies were demonstrating good faith, no more factories were struck—until progress slowed and more facilities were called out. The picket lines were solid; once more DSA members showed up wherever they could. In California that meant parts suppliers in Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, where picketers withstood private goon squads, attempts to ram them with cars, and in one instance, a drawn gun.

Following the pattern of other unions’ settlements during the year, when negotiations were concluded at the end of October after the union’s longest strike in a quarter century, auto workers had achieved their best results in decades: a 25% salary increase over the life of the contract (and more for the lowest paid categories of workers), bolstered retirement benefits, and the right to strike over plant closures, among other advances.

More strikes and heightened class consciousness

Over half a million workers have been out on picket lines in 2023. The strike wave shows no sign of abating, with the California Faculty Association, representing full- and part-time professors in the 23-campus California State University system, and IBT, with blue collar workers, shutting down four campuses this month and threatening to shutter more if the administration doesn’t address issues of low pay, two tier salary schedules, and inadequate staffing.

The actions of 2023 have featured heightened solidarity and a new level of class conscious rhetoric out of the mouths of leadership. While top AFL-CIO officers continue, alongside most Democratic politicians, to refer to union members as the aspirational “middle class” of America, leaders of the striking unions have moved on to a more precise vocabulary, and their public pronouncements reflect that understanding. After four decades of neoliberal attacks on wages, unions, government, taxes and regulation of corporations, large sectors of the working class have gained an insight: only their own collective action can reverse the tide.

Shawn Fain exhorted his members to make the connection directly, saying “Let’s stand up for ourselves and for the working class.” Taking a page out of Bernie Sanders’s book, he told the media that billionaires have no right to exist. Teamster leader Sean O’Brien, elected with the support of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, warned during bargaining, “The longer this contract negotiation goes on, the longer Wall Street is going to be affected. And that’s OK, just as long as Main Street gets taken care of at the end of the day.”

Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, dispensed with euphemism, telling an interviewer: “I am anti-capitalist”. She also said, “I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.”

Where does it go from here?

Since October, alongside the upsurge in labor, a massive anti-war movement has arisen opposing US support for Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza. Large contingents of DSA members have been present at the rallies and marches in California and across the country. Despite national AFL-CIO admonitions for local labor councils to stay out of foreign affairs-related issues, a nascent “Labor4Palestine” effort, also featuring strong DSA involvement, represents a potential further expansion of union political consciousness. 

The UAW became the largest national union calling for a permanent ceasefire earlier this month, joining the United Electrical Workers, the Painters, and the American Postal Workers, as well as a growing number of local unions.

No one can predict where things are going; few crystal balls function perfectly in the class struggle. But as Rosa Luxemburg noted in her classic The Mass Strike, political consciousness often lags behind economic consciousness of workers involved in mass actions. Until it doesn’t, when it can take a leap not readily foreseen the previous day.

This question might be posed sharply next year in election season.  Currently many young people involved in the Free Palestine struggle are justifiably angry with Joe Biden for continuing to support the US’s massive shipments of arms to Israel; they hold signs at rallies and marches to “dis-elect Biden” and vow to sit out the coming presidential election. On the other hand, if Biden runs (and he shows no sign of not running) and loses, fascism looms. Here we find a contradiction yet to be worked out. 

It is the role of socialists, historically and in the present, to help move things to the left within the labor movement. That means militant action, but it also means politics. DSA has shown in the past year its staunch solidarity with the working class in motion. To take things to another level—to build on workplace power as a platform for advancing the political conversation—is not the sole responsibility of DSA. But unless we desire to wake up in November 2024 in a police state, it is necessary to be part of that conversation. 

Back to all news

DSA is honored to join St. Louis DSA in re-endorsing Cori Bush for the U.S. House of Representatives, Missouri District 1. Cori has been an exemplar of democratic socialist politics since elected in 2020, and unwavering in her solidarity with the working class.

This year, Cori made history by naming the suffering and injustice borne by Palestinians when few of her colleagues dared, and authored a resolution for a ceasefire in the earliest weeks of Israel’s bombing. DSA has been fighting with Cori and co-sponsors of her resolution ever since. Hundreds of DSA members have made hundreds of thousands of calls to urge support for a ceasefire. We will keep calling. We will fight, no matter how many nasty names Congress calls us.

Cori’s campaign faces formidable challenges as a direct result of her integrity. AIPAC is targeting her next year, along with other democratic socialists in office. Get involved in the NEC’s work nationally or support St. Louis DSA locally to send Cori back to D.C. for another term.

We have the power to protest for peace and fight for a better world when we lift each other up.

The post The power is in our hands appeared first on EWOC.

DSA proudly joins DSA San Francisco in re-endorsing Dean Preston for San Francisco Supervisor, District 5. Dean has drawn the ire of some of the world’s wealthiest interests through his unflagging pursuit of greater equity in the region and checks against police power. It’s on democratic socialists and our allies to send him back for another term. Check out ways to get involved with the NEC nationally or connect with DSA San Francisco to learn how to support Dean in 2024.

DSA and Milwaukee DSA announce endorsement of Alex Kostal for Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, District 3. Through DSA, Milwaukee has reignited a luminous history of socialists in office – let’s keep the momentum going.