Here’s your November Dispatch! This month, check out DSA electoral wins, an international labor panel, and more. Read on to get involved.

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 Maria — Thankful for the DSA Difference
• Sunday 11/12 — Join our National Labor Commission and International Committee for Autoworkers of the Americas!
• Updates from the Green New Deal Campaign Commission
• Statement: DSA Condemns the Censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
• RSVP for Still Here Still Queer: Queer Socialist Work in DSA Wednesday 11/15
• Housing Justice Commission Steering Committee Applications Open! Deadline Friday 11/17
• Check Out our DSA Store Relaunch!
• Sign Up for Red Rabbits Security Trainings
• Work for DSA! Positions Available

From Maria — Thankful for the DSA Difference

I am so thankful for you.

Together, DSA members have…

• Mobilized members to picket lines across the country to support numerous successful strikes in 2023, including those of Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, SEIU, WGA, and many others, most recently (pending contract ratification votes) UAW and SAG-AFTRA workers. This year has seen the largest number of striking workers since the 1990s.
• Organized over 1,000 members to make 220,000 calls to generate pressure on Congress for a ceasefire, with 22 Representatives as of now signed on to the Ceasefire Now resolution.
• Brought hundreds of members to Washington, D.C. to demand a ceasefire and an end to the massacre in Palestine, and to numerous local protests and direct actions.
• Passed multiple union resolutions calling for a ceasefire.
• This Tuesday, elected ten nationally endorsed candidates to local office in Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts, and dozens more locally endorsed candidates across the country, including multi-candidate slates for governing bodies and landslides for two incumbents in New York City, epicenter of the backlash to our stance in solidarity with Gaza.
• Drove or contributed major voter contact muscle to multiple ballot initiative victories:
  • Protecting abortion by enshrining the right in the Ohio constitution
  • Blocking funds to build a “cop city” police training facility in Colorado Springs
  • Expanding democracy on the Houston city council
  • Protecting our landmark rent control measures from the Portland, Maine landlord lobby’s second rollback attempt

DSA is dangerous to the ruling class.

We are a triple threat — building multiracial, internationalist working class power in the political arena, the economic arena, and in the streets. And we do it by funding ourselves and acting as we find strategic, not wealthy funders, even in the face of relentless intimidation.

This weekend, warmongers in both parties will celebrate veterans while continuing to make policy decisions that send our siblings to war and starve and rain bombs on civilians. DSA will stand with our comrade Representative Rashida Tlaib instead, the only Palestinian-American member of the House, under bipartisan attack for shining a light on genocide.

Read and watch Rashida Tlaib’s speech on the floor of the House.

In solidarity forever,

Maria Svart
DSA National Director

Sunday 11/12 — Join our National Labor Commission and International Committee for Autoworkers of the Americas!

Labor work and internationalism go hand in hand! Join DSA Labor on Sunday 11/12 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT for Autoworkers of the Americas. On the call, you’ll hear from workers in the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil on international solidarity in the auto industry. RSVP today!

Updates from the Green New Deal Campaign Commission

Check out what the Green New Deal Campaign Commission — and chapters who have been Building for Power for a Green New Deal — have been up to in September and October.

Statement: DSA Condemns the Censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib

This week, in a shameful bipartisan attack, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 234-188 to censure Congresswoman and DSA member Rashida Tlaib of Detroit. Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of the House, has shown immense bravery in exposing the truth about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians while she endures vicious and racist attacks, which now extend to the halls of government. She stands strong alongside fellow DSA member and Representative Cori Bush of St. Louis as an original co-author of the Ceasefire NOW resolution. And like Rashida, we will not back down. You can read our full statement here.

RSVP for Still Here Still Queer: Queer Socialist Work in DSA Wednesday 11/15

The Queer Socialists Working Group invites all comrades to join us for our first Still Here, Still Queer educational event on Wednesday 11/15 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT. This event will highlight the work being done to advance queer rights by several DSA chapters. The registration link can be found here. There will be excellent discussion of queer activity, and how you too can fight for queer liberation in your own chapters and working groups!

Housing Justice Commission Steering Committee Applications Open! Deadline Friday 11/17

The Housing Justice Commission is getting ready to elect a new Steering Committee! If you are interested in becoming a candidate, please fill out this form no later than Friday, 11/17 at 11:59pm PT. Elections will be held 12/1-12/8, and the new term starts on 12/15. Not ready to become a candidate, but you’re interested in HJC’s work? Sign up here!

Check Out our DSA Store Relaunch!

Check out our updated DSA store! Featuring union-made apparel, buttons, posters, and more, the new store is now more intuitive and easier to use. Be on the lookout early next week for new items!

And now you can find chapter items through the store as well! When you buy chapter merch, proceeds go directly to the chapter.

Sign Up for Red Rabbits Security Trainings

The Red Rabbits is reorganizing with a mission to provide security training to every group in DSA, regardless of size or location. These trainings include:

• a basic InfoSec course for anyone holding the password to official DSA social media or member lists
• marshal training on providing physical safety for in-person and virtual meetings
• advanced marshal tactics and strategies when participating in direct actions and public events

We need to change DSA’s security culture, and above all ensure that we remain safe and capable of working on a socialist future together.

We need all hands on deck, so please designate a security contact and we’ll be in touch. Our primary aim is to begin by providing training to everyone who holds access to member lists and social media accounts. Please reach out to redrabbits@dsacommittees.org for more details, or fill out the contact form here.

Work for DSA! Positions Available

Join our team! Available Positions:

• Finance Director: If you’re a financial expert with a strategic mindset and the ability to lead, we want to hear from you.
• Data and Technology Manager: Do you thrive in a tech-driven environment and have a knack for managing data and technology resources? This role might be perfect for you.
• Development Database Coordinator: Attention to detail and organization are your strengths. Join us to support our development efforts and make a real impact.

Application Deadline: November 26, 2023

For inquiries or more information, please contact jobs@dsausa.org.

The post Thankful for the DSA Difference — Your November Dispatch appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

It’s been quite a few months since we last updated everyone on the work we’re doing here at Syracuse DSA – Mutual Aid Committee! We’ve been quite busy with several different projects, so here’s a look into just what’s been going on, what’s on the horizon, and how you can get involved!

Sonny’s Free Store

We’ve now successfully hosted our free store (lovingly named in honor of founding member and former chair, Sonny Fantacone) at several local events. At its core, a free store demonstrates the basics of what we as democratic socialists believe people and communities can do to provide for one another. If we are more willing to give of ourselves and our excess to our fellow humans instead of to landfills, then our society as a whole will prosper. To that end, we accept donations of food, clothing, and other goods  and, when we have enough and the opportunity presents itself, we set up a “Free Store”!

At our past free stores, we’ve primarily offered clothing, but at our recent CNY Pride Free Store, we noticed that the few books we brought flew off the shelves immediately! In order to better respond to this apparent community need, we sourced more reading material for our booth at the Westcott Cultural Street Fair. With the assistance of our newest co-chair, Amelia, we’ve also been able to work in tandem with Onondaga Food Rescue Network through the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA), which allowed us to introduce both non-perishable items and fresh, local produce to our offerings. We got a lot of questions about where our storefront was located during the Westcott Street Fair, so our members are now looking into the possibility of doing pop-up store fronts all across the city, in the hopes of  making our free stores more accessible to those in need. 

Additionally, we will be fundraising at this year’s Plowshares event for both future iterations of Sonny’s Free Store, as well as for another project we have on deck for next year, thanks to some help from Philly DSA and a couple of enterprising scientists in California (more to come on this project later!). 

If you’d like more information about our future projects, want to donate funds (and maybe buy some DSA swag?), or would like to come check out some of the amazing artists and activists from the surrounding area, come visit us at Plowshares! 

And if you’re interested in donating to our free store, have questions about when/where our next one will be, would like to have us at your event, or anything else about working with Syracuse DSA Mutual Aid, please feel free to contact us at: syrdsa.mutualaid@gmail.com

Mutual Aid Bags

Something else we’ve been working on over the past several months are our first round of Mutual Aid (MA) Bags. MA bags are reusable grocery bags that we fill with things like bottled water, single serving cereals, non-perishable snacks, first aid supplies, feminine & general hygiene products ,  combs for hair, and other staple items. We also try to include at least one “non-essential” in each bag as well—things like re-usable water bottles, sunglasses, perfume, tea, and coffee. For our first round, we successfully collected enough materials to create 22 MA bags and determined that the best way to distribute these bags would be for members to store a handful in their cars, handing them out as they come across folks in need.

We’re looking to expand this project by working with other local organizations doing similar community outreach, thereby enabling us to create further rounds of MA bags that fit the specific needs of diverse groups of Syracuse residents. At the same time, we’re hoping to pull together enough donations to do a round of bags to provide “Thanksgiving Dinner”-style MA bags to around a dozen needy families, as well as a possible pop-up store front for families or individuals that may be struggling during the holiday season.

If you would like to donate non-perishable items for traditional holiday dinners, inexpensive toys, children’s books, inexpensive gifts for adults, or any other items that might go into these holiday MA bags/free store, please contact us at: syrdsa.mutualaid@gmail.com

Check out a comprehensive list of items we’re looking for at the bottom of this post!

Care, Not Cops

In the wake of multiple deadly police encounters in Syracuse this past year, our chapter decided that we need a space within our local organization to organize around issues of policing and police accountability. We firmly believe that most emergency calls do not require an armed police response, and we should instead pursue non-violent alternatives for addressing things like mental health crises or domestic disturbances. We also need to better hold cops accountable for their misdeeds, and doing that starts with engaging the community in dialogue to determine how we can build these better alternatives to police response, together.

We focused on the idea that “we keep us safe” and came up with the name Care Not Cops. The goal is to create resource lists of individuals, organizations, and programs that a person in crisis can call for assistance in place of calling the cops. 

As many of us know, having several officers respond with guns drawn often escalates many of these already tense situations, often leading to tragic consequences. In the past year alone, there have been multiple instances of officer-involved shootings, all of which must be investigated by the Attorney General’s office as per a law that was established on April 1st, 2021. At the time, advocates argued that this would improve police accountability. However, since its inception, the law has often served as a stall tactic rather than as a legitimate means of holding out of control officers truly accountable for overstepping the bounds of their legal responsibilities. Over the past 6 months alone there have been at least two notable cases where body-worn camera footage was either withheld from the public (even after internal investigations were concluded) or cameras were never activated prior to (or during) the incident. Shockingly, investigations carried out by the AG’s office found no wrongdoing in either case. 

Unavailable camera footage is just one of the worrisome details in these cases and going into all of the gritty details would require a long update in and of itself. For now, we’ll say that due to Syracuse’s history of policing, as well as its history of racial & social inequity, many of our members feel it is necessary to begin working on expanding the space for abolitionist organizing, starting with promoting better alternatives to call during an emergency than cops. 

To that end, we have an available resource called the 911 Alternative Sheet that we are always updating and expanding. If you have any suggestions for resources that you think should be listed, please reach out to us at: syrdsa.mutualaid@gmail.com

Items needed for Holiday Mutual Aid bags/Pop-up Store Front

• Inexpensive children’s toys
• Children’s books/coloring books
  • Crayons, markers, colored pencils, watercolor paints and brushes
• Inexpensive gifts for adults
• Hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, socks, balaclavas, etc. for kids and adults
• Small blankets
• Small craft kits
  • Craft paper, construction paper, plain writing paper, etc.
  • Tape, glue sticks, white glue
  • Yarns, threads, crochet hooks, knitting needles and other common crafting items that can be used by folks to make their own holiday gifts.
• Common holiday decorations
• Holiday greeting cards & envelopes
  • Stamps for mailing cards
• Non-perishable items for holiday dinners
  • Stuffing mix
  • Canned vegetables
  • Quick bread/Cake mix
  • Gravy mix
  • Canned berries/other canned fruit
  • Instant mashed potatoes
  • Powdered milk

The post Come See What We’re Up To At Mutual Aid! appeared first on Syracuse DSA.

Join DSA to Defend Rashida Tlaib in the Movement for a Ceasefire

Yesterday, in a shameful bipartisan attack, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 234-188 to censure Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, Michigan. Tlaib is a member and representative of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the only Palestinian-American member of the House. She has shown immense bravery in exposing the truth about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians while she endures vicious and racist attacks, which now extend to the halls of government. 

This vote comes as Rashida stands strong alongside fellow DSA member and Representative Cori Bush of St. Louis, MO as an original co-author of the Ceasefire NOW resolution. Her unwavering dedication and leadership in the movement of peace and liberation of all people is a threat to the capitalist war machine. 

DSA is proud to call Rashida a comrade. Throughout her long career of public service in Michigan and beyond, she has not backed down against the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. She has taken on Marathon Oil and the Koch brothers after they dumped toxic dust on her district in Detroit. She is a fixture on picket lines and has hosted workplace organizing trainings, empowering her constituents to fight austerity and corporate greed by strengthening their unions and forming new ones. She is central to the life of the Detroit DSA chapter and movement coalitions in her district.

But this move to censure is not just about her. It was designed to distract from the majority public support for a #CeasefireNOW and to intimidate anyone who criticizes American imperialism. It is part of an attempt to stifle the voices of the millions of people who have gone to the streets to demand a ceasefire and the millions who want peace and justice for the Palestinian people. But like Rashida, we will not back down. The Democratic Socialists of America stands in steadfast solidarity with the Palestinian people, with Muslim, Arab, and Jewish people around the world, and with Rashida. 

Twenty-two Democrats in the House voted alongside Republicans to attack Rashida – but the entire bipartisan establishment is complicit in creating a climate of fear and hate for Arab Americans across the country. These Democrats, many in thrall to the same AIPAC money that funds the far-right, speak over the millions of Jewish Americans who stand for Palestinian freedom. These “progressive” Democratic politicians claim to be anti-racist and pro-immigrant but then vote to spend billions for death and destruction in Gaza, despite the vast majority of their own constituents supporting a ceasefire. They attack Rashida because she exposes their corruption and cowardice in refusing to stand up to American war profiteers and their puppets: when the chips are down, they choose to side with the ruling class and forever wars. Rashida chooses to side with the working class, peace, and justice. 

To defeat the powerful forces that wage war on working people both here and abroad, we need to build an alternative to the empty politics of the Democratic Party. Rashida says: “Millions of ordinary people like you must take to the streets, organize your neighbors and coworkers, lead your unions in massive strikes, and unite across faiths and nationalities to wield our power as the working class. But don’t do it alone; join DSA.”

The post Democratic Socialists of America Condemn the Censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Today, our members celebrate as Issue 1 is passed and abortion rights are secured for all Ohioans. Abortion is healthcare, and healthcare is a human right. We will not let politicians, lobbyists, or their billionaire financiers take away our right to reproductive freedom, nor will we let them punish medical providers for providing critical care. They lost in August, and they lost again today.

Many organizations and volunteers have come together to secure this victory. We are proud to be seven of those organizations, united for a common cause. Together, DSA chapters in Ohio contacted tens of thousands of voters. We gained invaluable knowledge and skills in this election cycle. We will use these skills to change the political landscape in Ohio.

We proved that the people of this state have not surrendered their rights. Republican power in state politics reflects only how they have gerrymandered the state, even after Ohio voters resolved, twice, to establish fair districting. We still have much more work to do to make Ohio a truly democratic state where basic human rights are guaranteed; DSA is committed to that fight.

The fight for abortion rights doesn’t end here, and our battle for universal healthcare is just beginning. We continue to call on federal and state elected officials to codify Roe. To the thousands who volunteered statewide: we need your help to secure an Ohio for all people. You can help us prepare for the next fight by joining and building your local DSA chapter!

We have work to do to make Ohio what it can and should be. Join us: dsausa.org/join

Akron DSA is proud that Ohioans voted to legalize cannabis for recreational use in Tuesday’s election. As a chapter, we’re happy to have played a small role: we knocked on more than 650 doors in multiple cities in the greater Akron area to help encourage voter turnout.

Issue 2’s passage is not the end: Future efforts around cannabis must include prosocial considerations such as criminal record expungement, youth prevention efforts (including bans/restrictions on deceptive packaging that looks like candy), and measures to protect workers and patrons from second-hand smoke.

Want to help join in the fight? You can find out more about DSA and join here.

The post Fall 2023 appeared first on Socialist Forum.