Two Dead at the Hands of Lazy Cops in Kent County

In the Greater Grand Rapids Area, the police have now twice used a dangerous car chase maneuver against an unarmed, fleeing individual, leading to their death. These individuals were wanted for nonviolent crimes and should have been detained using standard protocol. To be clear, the car maneuver we’re talking about is the PIT maneuver, in which a pursuing vehicle swerves into a fleeing vehicle’s back tire in order to cause a spin out. It was never designed to be used against humans, and even the police have even admitted that the maneuver was used incorrectly in both cases. They just aren’t going to do anything about it.

The first instance was April 8th, when Riley Doggett (17) was a passenger in a stolen vehicle being pursued by the police. The driver crashed, and Riley got out of the car and fled until the police caught up and swerved into the fleeing teenager, fully running him over. He died from his injuries days later. The Kent County Sheriff’s office callously remarked that “[Riley’s] actions unfortunately placed him at high risk for a deadly encounter, whether with a citizen or law enforcement. It was fortunate for the community that a Kent County Deputy was the one to confront Mr. Doggett during his crime spree.” Apparently, we as citizens of Grand Rapids should feel safer knowing that our cops are slaughtering people without a trial. The footage of the event can be viewed here, though viewer discretion is advised due to the disturbing content.

The second instance was on the morning of April 17th, when Samuel Sterling (25) was filling up his tires and officers from multiple agencies showed up at his house with a warrant for breaking his parole. A chase ensued, and Samuel was eventually caught by an officer using a PIT maneuver to pinch Sterling against the side of a Burger King. The driver reversed, and Sterling fell to the ground. He can be heard saying to the officers, “I got no gun, bro…why you hitting me like this?” The cops then cuff him, take his belongings out of his pockets, and stand around his body, doing nothing to help him. An officer can be heard telling two firefighters to keep his cuffs on because he was a “wanted, violent felon.” This isn’t true. Samuel’s three felonies were for carrying a concealed weapon and theft, all nonviolent crimes. You can watch the video here, though again, viewer discretion is advised. Samuel died just a few hours later in the hospital. 

To add insult to injury, only the offending officer in the second instance is being charged with murder. This is likely due to the fact that this crime falls under the jurisdiction of our progressive state attorney general, Dana Nessel, because the offending officer was a member of the state police. The Kent County Sheriff’s Deputy Josiah McMains is left in the hands of the extremely conservative Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker, so they get off much easier. This is further evidence that the divide between “criminals” and non-criminals is not only socially constructed, but arbitrarily enforced. Becker is throwing the book at Riley’s friend, charging him with Fleeing and Eluding Causing Death, and attempting to try him as an adult. Meanwhile, the blood-thirsty thugs in blue will seemingly continue their vehicular rampage until they’re forced to stop by a higher power, because it saves them time and effort during a chase. What sort of a justice system is that?

All of this feels familiar when we remember the doorbell footage from April 4, 2022 which showed Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr struggle to detain Patrick Lyoya, get frustrated, and unceremoniously end the struggle with a bullet to the back of Patrick’s head. At the time Chris Becker assured us that, despite his work being so closely aligned with the GRPD, he did not know Officer Schurr personally and wouldn’t need to recuse himself. More than two years later, and we’re still waiting for that trial to happen and Patrick’s family is still waiting for justice.
And as if this isn’t bad enough, the Grand Rapids police are now campaigning for the right to sue their detainees in civil court; even though they can beat an innocent man without fear of being charged. This means that after arresting you, an officer will be able to steal from you via civil suit. It’s vital that we organize now to rein in our out-of-control law enforcement before it becomes too late. Fight police oppression by protesting any chance you get and vote against this dishonest “Back the Blue” initiative, we can’t afford to give these thugs any more power to oppress us.

The post If the Police Can’t Catch their Criminals, They’ll just Kill Them Instead appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

For five years flight attendants have been locked in contract negotiation with American Airlines (AA) to bargain for a better contract. Since then inflation has increased by more than 30%, yet starting pay remains frozen at $27k a year. 

The flight attendants and their union have authorized a strike with a 99% majority, but government agencies won’t let them. The Railway Labor Act requires flight attendants to obtain approval from the National Mediation Board (NMB) before striking, which the NMB has refused. The NMB’s limit on the right to strike impacts more than the 27,000 flight attendants at AA. In fact, it hurts all railway and airline workers in the nation, their families, and the communities they live in.

With no legal ability to strike, negotiations have been left at a standstill, which benefits no one but AA. They get to freeze employee wages while continuing to inflate their prices and fees. This story repeats across all industries because our government prioritizes the interests of capitalists who own corporations over the interests of workers who keep them running day in, day out.

The AA contract negotiation has gone on for five years: two under Donald Trump and three under Joe Biden. Republican and Democratic politicians may strongly disagree on specific policies, but they regularly come together to keep workers down (for example, Joe Biden recently appointed a Republican to the NMB).

As socialists we recognize the ability to strike as fundamental and necessary to fight the tyranny of capital. Any and all action to restrict this ability should be opposed and overturned. 

Follow the APFA on social media to keep an eye out for how you can support their fight for a better contract.

Scientists working for the oil companies have known about climate change since the 1950s. It’s been a scientifically accepted fact since the 1980s. Millennials have grown into middle age listening to the debate between fossil fuel industry plants and reality. And while the pundits argued, climate changed. 2023 was the hottest year since records began in 1850. And 2024 is hotter than that!

Climate change is linked to more frequent natural disasters everywhere. In 2023 alone Canada lost 5% of its forest area to wildfires, China was inundated with more than 9.5” of rain in 24 hours around Beijing, and entire towns in Libya were completely destroyed by sudden flooding.

Grand Rapids had 47” of snow last year, 30 inches less than our average of 76”. Winter sports in Michigan may be a thing of the past. In recent winters, activities such as snowmobiles and skiing have been canceled due to warm temperatures.

Without radical changes, Michigan’s climate could be similar to Oklahoma or North Texas. And summers in Texas may get hot enough to cook a person. We’ll likely see climate migration in the coming decades. Given our current housing crisis, will we be prepared?

Our food systems have been developed based on existing climate patterns. What will happen when those change?

CAPITALISM IS THE PROBLEM

In North America, the European settlers who brought the concept of money had to systematically eradicate the North American indigenous cultures that revered the Earth.  If Capitalism could  save us from  climate change, it would need to somehow reconcile the parts of itself that created the issue in the first place. “Green” Capitalism presents us two options:

Individual Consumer-Based Solutions Are Insufficient

We know that individual solutions aren’t enough to prevent climate catastrophe. Just 100 corporations have been responsible for releasing 71% of greenhouse gasses. In one year, the richest billionaires each produce as much carbon as someone in the 99% would in 1,500 years.

So even if we got the entire working class to ELIMINATE their “carbon footprint” (a term created by the oil industry), we wouldn’t be anywhere close to making the change necessary! Additionally, many of the products for these consumer-based solutions require continued exploitative precious metal mining in Africa, for lithium and cobalt. 

Carbon Offsets Are a Shell Game

The world’s largest companies and Grand Rapids City Government plan on reaching net zero by using carbon offsets. Many consumers are even presented with the option to add $2 to your plane ticket to offset “1,000 air miles” or $17/year to offset your breath.

This money goes to projects like Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in PA–a nature preserve since the 1930s–or Hudson Farm Club in NJ–Billionaire Peter Kelogg’s private hunting club. Things under no threat of bulldozers. There is no additional benefit, just an excuse to continue business as usual. In fact, in a 2021 study the Grantham Research Institute of Climate Change and the Environment found that carbon offsets have substantially increased pollution. And why wouldn’t they? Logging companies can just clear cut the land next door and forest fires don’t care about human contracts.

SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

The solution is simple: LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND! We have pulled out enough fossil fuels that, if burned, would send us into catastrophic climate change. If we stopped burning fossil fuels today and figured out what to do without them tomorrow, the positive effects would still outweigh the negative effects. We don’t need more exploration and extraction. We need a just transition now!

There are common sense solutions that could slash emissions today, like regulating the oil industry and heavily taxing billionaires who are making the worst climate impacts. A competent government would be banning cryptocurrency mining and closing the MPG loophole for ultra-heavy vehicles like SUVs and modern trucks, while improving and expanding public transit, which would drastically reduce emissions and simultaneously reduce traffic, transportation costs, and car accidents.

America’s green transition is moving so slowly because our leaders insist on waiting for private utility companies to switch to renewable energy at a pace that stays profitable. Instead of wasting time while these companies drag their feet, we should be creating and supporting public utilities with the resources and the will to build green energy. NOT TOMORROW BUT TODAY!

Just last year the NYC DSA won a massive campaign to pass the Build Public Renewables Act, which invests heavily in new green energy production and requires the state owned power company to go completely green by 2030. This isn’t a pipe dream, it’s already happening in this country!

The post The Time is NOW for Climate Action! appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Our Maine Mural podcast is happy to offer this audio recording of T. Sinclair’s article, “Conservative SCOTUS Justices are Waging a Reactionary Revolution,” on the concerted takeover of the Supreme Court by far-right reactionaries and their rising threat to democracy.

The post Maine Mural: Conservative Justices are Waging a Reactionary Revolution appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Last Tuesday was election night across New York State. The night highlighted both the enduring challenges and promise of the rising Socialist movement. In the most widely covered race of the night, Reactionary forces across the Right and Center, including AIPAC, funneled tens of millions of dollars into the 16th Congressional District to secure the defeat of DSA-endorsed incumbent, Congressman Jamaal Bowman by George Latimer. While at the state-level, all eight DSA incumbents in the State Senate and Assembly won their reelection bids, and they will be joined by DSA-endorsed candidate, Claire Valdez, who won her insurgent campaign to represent the 37th Assembly District in Queens. Tonight, we will hear from David Vibert, a steering committee member of DSA’s National Electoral Commission, to give his perspective on last week’s elections and their ramifications for the socialist movement in New York state and beyond. We will also hear from RPM’s own Jack Devine and Alex Randazzo on their breakdown of Bowman’s defeat, and what his loss tells us about the evolution of the 16th district since he first won the seat in 2020 and what we can learn in his loss 4 years later.

With recent Supreme Court rulings further criminalizing homelessness and stripping government authority to enforce major 20th century reform legislation, we are belatedly publishing this resolution from our 2024 Chapter Convention on the undemocratic nature of the first US Constitution and the place of the battle for democracy in our organization’s socialist vision.

Whereas

The United States is run by and for the capitalist class, and this class rule takes the specific form of the liberal-constitutional regime outlined in the Constitution.

This Constitution was imposed undemocratically by an alliance of slaveowners and capitalists in order to secure their property against popular democracy, and yet the working-class majority who would not even have been eligible to vote on it at the time of its ratification have been forced to live under its provisions ever since.

The political institutions established by the Constitution are intended to be an obstacle to democracy at every step, including, but not limited to: the outrageously unrepresentative Senate, the Electoral College, and the glut of the imperial Presidency and the surrounding bureaucracy.

The Constitution has allowed for further usurpations of popular sovereignty, including, but not limited to: judicial review by a panel of unelected judges who serve for life, the establishment of a repressive standing army, and the sale of elections, public officials, legal services, and the press to the highest bidder.

The process the Constitution provides for its own amendment is intentionally very difficult, stultifying, and anti-majoritarian.

The historical tendencies towards the concentration of capital in few hands and the concentration of people in few states has rendered any constitutional paths that may once have been open to the socialist movement forever closed, obstructing progressive reform and leaving those reforms already won through historical mass struggle defenseless as the political servants of the capitalist class conspire to strip them away.

The DSA has pledged to fight for a “a world organized and governed by and for the vast majority, the working class,” which is clearly impossible under the current Constitutional regime and cannot be won through the antidemocratic channels of reform laid down by the Constitution.

DSA’s platform affirms that DSA is an antiracist organization dedication to the abolition of white supremacy yet the Constitution was written by slaveowners and to this day serves to deny self-determination to Black, Indigenous, and other oppressed populations,

We understand that the fight for socialism is the fight for democracy but, with no democratic means of reforming the undemocratic Constitution, we must follow the revolutionary path to democracy in order to take the democratic road to socialism.

Therefore, be it Resolved, 

Cleveland DSA affirms, from the DSA Political Platform, that “the American political system was not made to serve the working class” and that “the nation that holds itself out as the world’s premier democracy is no democracy at all” by officially raising the demand for a new and radically democratic constitution, drafted by an assembly of the people elected by direct, universal and equal suffrage for all adult residents with proportional representation of political parties, and rooted not in the legitimacy of dead generations of slaveowners and capitalists, but that of a majority consensus of the working masses. 

Additionally Cleveland DSA urges DSA as a whole to take up a stance of opposition to the Constitution, openly indicting it as antidemocratic and oppressive, encouraging all DSA members in elected office to do the same, taking concrete actions to advance the struggle for a democratic republic such as agitating against undemocratic judicial review, fighting for proportional representation, delegitimizing the anti-democratic U.S. Senate, and advancing the long-term demand for a new democratic Constitution. We declare that to be a socialist is to fight for an expansive working-class democracy in which the state and society are democratically managed by the majority. In the U.S. this means demanding a new Constitution.

Be it finally Resolved, this resolution shall be published on the Cleveland DSA website.

The post Winning the Battle for Democracy appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Mark your calendars!

Our next chapter meeting is Saturday, July 20th at 10am. It will be an hybrid meeting, you can attend in-person at the Ventura Diversity Collective or online via Zoom.

This meeting will serve as our annual chapter convention. If you would like to vote in, or, volunteer for a chapter leadership position please RSVP!

This year we face an unprecedented challenge. Our chapter’s steering committee is currently at a critical juncture. We are in urgent need of new leadership. As of now, only two members are committed to continuing on the committee. Without additional volunteers to step up and take on leadership roles, we face the very real possibility of having to dismantle our chapter. The work we do is vital. Our efforts to promote social justice, economic equality, and democratic socialism in Ventura County depend on a strong, active steering committee. Your passion, ideas, and dedication are what drive our movement forward. Without a full committee, we cannot maintain the momentum necessary to achieve our goals. We are calling on you, our members, to consider taking a leadership role in the steering committee. Your involvement is crucial. By stepping up, you will help ensure that our chapter remains a vibrant and effective force for change in our community.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

For immediate release 
Jun. 20, 2024

The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) opposes the efforts to recall members of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors as privatizers seek to further undermine the public school system.

The recall effort comes as several board members, including DSA-endorsed member Missy Zombor, supported necessary funding measures to continue vital school services despite pressures from the Republican-led state legislature to further cut education funding. 

“This is a political game, and it is the city’s families and public educators who will lose: Milwaukee DSA recognizes this recall as an attempt by school privatizers to further undermine the public education system in Milwaukee and beyond, turning that system into a profit-making venture instead of a necessary hub for quality learning,” Milwaukee DSA Co-Chair Pamela Westphal said. “Now more than ever, the children of Milwaukee need the social and educational benefits of public education to enrich their lives, we must stand up and fight back against privatizers who are trying to break those social bonds.”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has already threatened to withhold millions in state funding from Milwaukee’s students over delayed financial reports from 2023, leading to the resignation of the district’s superintendent and comptroller.

“Some of the biggest failures of the United States’ domestic policies of the past 50 years have involved selling off our public services to those seeking to exploit the working class for profit. Milwaukee DSA recognizes this as an avenue for harm, not growth,” Milwaukee DSA Communications Officer Greg Brown said. “People in Milwaukee who want to see better education outcomes in our community should focus on building a robust public system with proper funding and public control instead of further stripping that system of its resources for privatization and profit, a common goal of the leaders of this recall effort.”

Milwaukee DSA publicly endorsed Zombor in her 2023 election and is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, just society and sustainable environment.

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This episode is a condensed recording of a live conversation between Andrew Wilkes, Gary Dorrien, and Andrew Wilkes exploring the power of the Black Social Gospel for the Civil Rights Movement through the present struggle for liberation and equity in the U.S. and beyond.