Public speech, political inaction
Still No Appetite For Apartheid!
This January, Salt Lake DSA renewed its participation in the national boycott campaign of Israeli and Zionist foods called No Appetite for Apartheid, launched by the Palestine Solidarity Working Group in 2022, which is itself part of the Apartheid Free Zones campaign and the larger BDS movement launched by Palestinian civil society groups in 2005. We are canvassing local stores to see if we here in Utah can help add to the number of Apartheid Free stores nationwide, which will support the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. See the chapter calendar for biweekly meetings and canvassing update, follow the guidelines in the one-pager below, and join us!
The post Still No Appetite For Apartheid! first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.
Fragile Juggernaut: The Story of the CIO
Who’s Voted? Have you?
by Jay P., Electoral Coordinator
Today, March 5, is our primary election here in Travis County.
Who’s voted for our chapter-endorsed candidate, District Attorney José Garza? Have you?
There’s a list of voting locations available at votetravis.org. The good news is, if you have been to any of them, odds are that you had minimal wait time.
If you haven’t been yet, here’s some bad news: turnout through the early voting period was below 6% of registered voters in Travis County.
Here’s some good news: Travis County has got all the voters we need to win, they just happen to have been sitting on their asses this whole time. Travis County Democrats have stood by past electoral efforts towards goals like humane workplace safety regulations, criminal justice reform in 2020, and last year with the police oversight passed with Yes on A/No on B.
Back to the bad news: as of last Friday, roughly 20% of people who voted in the Democratic primary were GOP crossovers and therefore obvious, rock-solid locks for the opponent.
This is at least 5,800 votes the opponent had, as of last week. The right is aware that the top of our ballot is rotten. They know that local races rarely make noise in an uncontested presidential primary, and they think they can win it on the cheap. The sole candidate running in the GOP primary has said people should vote for the opponent. How the two differ in any particular way, he has not said.
Their strategy has been relentless, defamatory, and disgusting. You’ve probably seen their attack ads, but you may not have heard about the grotesque intimidation and harassment of our canvassers by the opponent’s supporters. If what they have said and done has been enough to give you pause, if you haven’t done anything yet, then I’m sad to report that they got you. If this situation holds, I can see the coverage on March 6th: “Local reformer has a few good years,” “Back to Business,” “DSA in Disarray: Lots of enthusiasts, short attention spans”. I’m not too proud to say these imagined headlines have been screaming at me for weeks.
Some history: in 2020, we worked in coalition to elect a candidate who represented a courageous and meaningful break with the past. This coalition began in 2017 as our campaign with local labor, the Worker’s Defense Project, and other community groups to win paid sick leave. In his original campaign for District Attorney, not only did José promise and pursue accountability for the violence and recklessness exercised by the Austin Police Department, its leadership, and others in response to the 2020 racial justice protest; he has overseen a double-digit drop in violent and property crimes, making Austin one of the safest big cities in the country (no matter what you heard from the online right).
We have achieved this by focusing the office’s resources where they matter most: at the root causes of crime, especially violent crime, in our community. He has endorsed and supported ambitious mental health and criminal diversion programs because we know they work where the incarceration first (incarceration-only) policies of the past haven’t and won’t. He has partnered with local trade unions to connect people with apprenticeship opportunities that can address the same poverty and day-to-day insecurity of being without a good job and a strong union to back you up against the bosses. And the bosses, finally, let’s never forget the bosses—I am certain they would love to see our home-grown Economic Justice Enforcement Initiative go up in smoke, and not have to worry about a top prosecutor who cares about wage theft, workplace safety violations, and the kinds of labor abuses they get away with in other jurisdictions across the country and cost the workers tens of billions of dollars per year. For us, for the multiracial working class of Austin, these are priorities we’ve been working for years to realize, and while much remains to be done, we are immensely fortunate to have a dedicated fighter for that working class in office.
The opponent offers none of this. The opponent has never once said he would protect Travis County’s right to seek and obtain abortion, he has never once said he would protect trans kids and their families seeking lifesaving care. He has said nothing about our priorities for the enforcement and prosecution of justice here in Travis County, and so we must assume the worst.
They have money, they have the apathy of demobilized Democratic Party voters, but we can overcome—because we have people. We are the only ones who can save us, now and always. We need to step up and be comrades for our comrade, who’s given so much to make our cause a fact on the ground.
I said we’ve got people, so let’s see them. We need you to stop reading, open your phone, and find three friends, family, neighbors, or coworkers who haven’t voted yet. Tell them how to make a plan to vote: every location citywide is open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Let them know which forms of ID are accepted at the polls (there are seven types). Offer to give them a ride if they need it, and no matter what, let them know what’s at stake in this election.
Who are our comrades today? If you’re ready for this fight, this is only one way, but a vital and necessary way, to show your solidarity today.
The post Who’s Voted? Have you? first appeared on Red Fault.
2024 Convention – Save the Date!
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Viewpoint: Globalize the Intifada
by AJ
The following article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Detroit Socialist Editorial and Writers’ Collective or Detroit DSA as a whole.
‘Those governments remain determined to persist in their ignoble and dishonorable role as allies of a truly murderous regime.’ Oliver Tambo was not talking about the U.S. veto of the United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Tambo, president of the African National Congress, was talking about the U.S. government’s boycott of U.N. sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1986. The parallels between the movement to end apartheid in South Africa and the calls to end apartheid in Israel today do not begin or end with Security Council resolution vetoes.
In the 1980s, President Reagan supported South Africa’s apartheid government as an ally in the Cold War “fight against communism,” designated Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress as terrorists, and supplied weapons to the South African army. Meanwhile thousands of Americans were arrested at protests outside the South African Embassy, many thousands more joined the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement, refusing to buy South African goods or support companies that did business with South Africa. Additionally, artists and athletes from all over the world joined cultural and sporting boycott’s, such as Arthur Ashe and Harry Belafonte’s Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid.
Similarly, successive Presidential administrations have viewed Israel as a strategic ally in the Cold War and the “War on Terror,” sending more than $318 billion in weapons to the Israeli Defense Force in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. President Biden continues to place this political ideology over the lives and human rights of the Palestinian people, while the American people take to the streets, blockade ships, trucks and weapons manufacturers, and protest cultural events to make their opposition to the genocide of Palestinians heard across the country.
Looking back at the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa gives hope that this moment, with all its horror and pain, is an opportunity for true global solidarity. To remember that as all our liberation was bound up in the liberation of Nelson Mandela and all Black South Africans, today, all our liberation is bound up in the Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation and genocide. Whether we are Jewish, Muslim, Black, White, Arab, Indigenous, Latinx and/or Christian we face a choice between supporting regimes built on separation, militarization, surveillance, and fear or demanding a new paradigm based on mutual aid, respect, and peace in the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, and indeed here in the land between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The export/import exchange between the U.S. and Israel is not limited to physical weapons. The two governments have a collaborative relationship that extends to ideas about policing, borders, border walls, checkpoints, surveillance tower design and implementation, and cyber, drone and communications surveillance tactics and how the U.S. treats the movement of people inside and outside its “borders.” The Congressional Research Service 2023 report on U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel found that Israel’s defense industry “now ranks as one of the top global arms exporters,” selling nearly 70% of their missile defense systems, spyware, and cyber surveillance systems around the world. In 2019, in addition to sending $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel, the U.S. purchased $1.5 billion in weapons and surveillance products from Israel.
Many of the weapons and tactics that Israel uses to terrorize Palestinian people are deployed by the U.S. along the U.S./Mexico border. On the Tohono O’odham reservation in Arizona, surveillance towers, developed and built by Israel’s Elbit Systems, watch residents as they go about their daily lives. That may seem like a long way from us here in Detroit, but we should beware. As Bobby Brown, senior director of Customs and Border Protection at Elbit Systems of America, told The Intercept’s Will Parrish, “the company’s ultimate goal is to build a ‘layer’ of electronic surveillance equipment across the entire perimeter of the U.S. ‘Over time, we’ll expand not only to the northern border, but to the ports and harbors across the country.’” The Mexicanization of the U.S./Canada border that began after 9/11 continues today, and while border militarization and surveillance systems may not yet be as visible as the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints and Elbit’s towers in Arizona and Texas, we should be under no illusions that they are not there. To resist the proliferation of invasive border surveillance technologies is our intifada.
Is this what we want our tax dollars spent on? Taking just the $5.3 billion in 2019 U.S. military aid and payments for weapons systems to Israel and dividing that equally between all 50 states, Michigan would receive $106 million. That is enough, in one year, for 5,300 Detroiters to receive $20,000 home repair grants. The current ten-year Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, valued at a minimum of $38 billion, divided between the states would give each state $774.5 million that could be spent on education, infrastructure and environmental projects, as well as home repairs. To recapture that money is our liberation from leaky roofs, drafty windows, and concrete heat islands.
Importing the Israeli government’s ideas about borders creates emotional and relational barriers in addition to physical ones. It divides families, neighbors, and communities. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a complicated system of visas, permits, walls and checkpoints keeps Palestinians separated from families and friends and prevents building community between Palestinians and Israelis. In Dearborn, in the wake of 9/11 an invisible border wall was erected by the Department of Homeland Security separating families into “those who stay in [Middle Eastern Country]” and “those who stay in the U.S.” One of the wall’s many “bricks,” Operation Green Quest, made people sending monetary gifts as small as $50 to family members in Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, or Iraq vulnerable to federal enquiry, detention, and deportation [1].
Meanwhile Michigan’s anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) law also seeks to criminalize those who refuse to allow their money to be exported to support genocide and apartheid. To move freely and support our families, neighbors, and communities financially and emotionally is our intifada.
The Israeli State uses violence and intimidation to suppress Palestinian elections, arresting and detaining candidates, sabotaging election campaign events, and preventing access to polling stations. Here in the U.S. Zionist election interference has become increasingly aggressive as politicians and their constituents have become more uncomfortable about supporting the oppression of the Palestinian people. This is particularly true here in Michigan, where in 2022, AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), a lobbying group with deep ties to the Israeli government, funneled more than $8 million through its Super PAC to try to unseat Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Andy Levin. In Levin’s case their efforts paid off. In the upcoming election cycle AIPAC has offered $20 million to a number of candidates if they will run against Tlaib in 2024. So far all have declined. To shake off AIPAC and Israeli government interference in our elections is our intifada.
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers re-enact the violent removal of Indigenous people that U.S. settlers perpetrated on Indigenous people across North America. In the U.S. dispossession and abuse of Indigenous communities continues, from mining on Oak Flat to the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel project and Mayor Duggan’s planned Solar Farms here in Detroit. To be free from colonial land appropriation projects that extract natural resources and destroy our human, animal, and plant relatives’ homes and habitats is our liberation.
It took the combined energy and engagement of millions of regular people around the world for South Africans, black and white, to shake off the oppression of apartheid. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza thousands of Detroiters have marched, prayed, learned and educated each other, called their elected officials to pass “ceasefire resolutions,” and amplified the voices of Palestinians at cultural events, in public spaces in Detroit, Dearborn, Ferndale and Hamtramck.
It will take all our ongoing collective commitment to support Palestinians and Israelis in rising up against the Zionist forces that devastate their lives and land today. In the 1970s, a group of Aboriginal activists in Australia made a simple statement to define solidarity. They said, “If your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.” Truly our liberation is bound up with Palestinian liberation. Let us work together. Globalize the Intifada!
[1] Howell, Sally, and Andrew Shryock. “Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America’s “War on Terror”.” Anthropological Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2003): 443–62. Accessed September 12, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318184.
The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!
Viewpoint: Globalize the Intifada was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
What We Heard From Michigan
Listen to Michigan was a primary campaign which convinced voters, disillusioned with Biden’s ceaseless support for the genocide of Palestinians, to vote “Uncommitted” in the February 27 Democratic Primary. With only five weeks, a modest war chest, and an effective media strategy at their disposal, Listen to Michigan was able to rewrite the media narrative of the 2024 Democratic Primary. The campaign picked up 2 delegates and more than twice as many votes as candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson combined.
In the last two weeks I have spent a good deal of time with this campaign. I was first introduced to this team in my capacity as a member of the National Electoral Commission’s Endorsements subcommittee. I will confess freely that I didn’t really “get it” at first. The theory of change that the campaign organizers put forward seemed unproven, if not altogether disproven by the results from the New Hampshire primary. I advocated for national endorsement for this campaign because I believed reinvigorating our No Money For Massacres (NMFM) volunteer network to be of critical importance. Once DSA was on board, I helped run a series of phone banks with our NMFM team, a joint effort of DSA’s NEC and Internationalism Committee. It was not until I was on the phone with Michigan voters that the efficacy of this campaign strategy clicked.
Michigan was understood as uniquely suited for a campaign of this form. It is a populous swing state, there is a substantial Arab-American population, and there is a printed “Uncommitted” option on all primary ballots. There is a large swath of voters, necessary to Biden’s electoral success in November, who are furious with Biden’s complicity in the carnage being unleashed upon Gaza by Israel’s government. Listen to Michigan was able to present these voters with a mechanically simple means of putting that anger and frustration into writing. Michigan’s history of community organizing, high union density, and the endorsement of prominent local politicians, as well as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, also bolstered this case.
In the span of about three weeks, Listen to Michigan, with support from Metro Detroit DSA and DSA’s NMFM team, was able to assemble hundreds of volunteers and make over 500,000 phone calls. Through GOTV Weekend, Metro Detroit DSA knocked thousands of doors. In other words, Listen to Michigan was a major undertaking.
The results speak for themselves. Over 100,000 voters, including the majority of voters in Dearborn (home to the greatest concentration of Arab Americans of any city in the country), sent their message to Biden on Tuesday. This story was picked up by The New York Times, BBC, NBC, Politico, NPR, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera. Within hours of the polls closing in Michigan, plans sprung into action to launch similar efforts in Washington, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, efforts born out of a coalition of Arab American advocacy groups, anti-Zionist faith groups like If Not Now and Jewish Voices for Peace, and local DSA chapters. Some of these elections will be happening within a matter of days.
Michigan was understood to be unique. None of the states mentioned check every box that Michigan did. However, Maine checks none of them. The anguish and frustration of the Democratic base towards their own president found a new vocabulary in the Uncommitted vote, which was enthusiastically (if not necessarily supportively) amplified by major media. So long as Palestine supporters continue to vote Uncommitted in large numbers and in an organized fashion, the only story coming out of the Democratic primary will be Joe Biden’s rapidly eroding base of support. A highly publicized poor showing will weaken that narrative.
DSA is a small organization, but we punch far above our weight. To do so, we have to make difficult decisions about where we allocate our limited resources and the time of our volunteers. As a member of Maine DSA, I am proud to be a part of the Maine Coalition for Palestine, and wish to salute the tireless work of Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and the Maine Party for Socialism and Liberation in confronting the brutal realities faced by the inhabitants of Gaza, and further tying this systematized mass violence to the broader political context of American imperialism and hyper-militarization. However, I would caution against taking on abortive write-in campaigns. What is already a complicated task is compounded further by Maine’s ranked-choice voting scheme. “Ceasefire” write-ins will be marked as blank, confused or cautious supporters will rank Biden after their “Ceasefire” write-in, thus voting for him anyway, and the Maine press has not been sufficiently seeded with the notion that a blank ballot is a pro-Palestine ballot. New Hampshire was considered a model state for a mass write-in campaign, and even there the results were deflating. If you want to keep the pressure on Genocide Joe, I would encourage you to sign up for a phonebanking shift for Uncommitted WA or Vote Uncommitted Minnesota. That is where you will find me.
DSA was asked to co-sponsor Listen to Michigan’s campaign debrief last night, and I will close with a quote from Wamiq Chowdhury, DSA’s NEC endorsements co-chair and NMFM organizer:
“[V]oting for an actual uncommitted option consolidates our voices into something measurable, something that can be right up there on the screen alongside Genocide Joe’s name. He’s our target, and a campaign with this kind of strategy forces him and everyone else to pay attention. And we’re seeing that clearly—just look at all the media attention this campaign has garnered. And the other benefit of a smart strategy is that it can be reapplied elsewhere, which is important since we need to keep this momentum rolling. Let’s do everything we can to make sure that Michigan was not just a warning shot, but the start of something even bigger.”
Tzara Kane is a barista from Portland, ME. She serves as chapter co-chair for Maine DSA and on DSA’s National Electoral Commission Steering Committee.
The post What We Heard From Michigan appeared first on Pine & Roses.
From Barboncino to Barbenheimer
Alex Dinndorf is an organizer who moves at the "speed of trust," organizing Barboncino and helping the Nitehawk theater unionize.
The post From Barboncino to Barbenheimer appeared first on EWOC.
Opening Remarks from our Chapter Convention
Last weekend, on February 24, 2024, Cleveland DSA held its second Chapter Convention. Below are the opening remarks from Chapter Secretary Damion A.
The Cleveland Democratic Socialists of America seeks to facilitate the transition to a truly democratic and socialist society, one in which the means and resources of production are democratically and socially controlled.
Our organization represents one of the only democratic and member-run and funded organizations anywhere. We’re building a multi-tendency political identity in Cleveland that is independent of the capitalist parties that dominate all levels of our present government. Our goal is the self emancipation of the organized working class through a democratic mass socialist movement, not pre-packaged liberation that was handed down from on high by party elites.
We want to make Cleveland DSA our members’ political home, through both our internal democracy and our principled external campaigns for the working class. We want to help our members grow into organizers who can help to shift the balance of power to the working class in their workplaces, unions, and communities.
We are here today to decide on our chapter’s priorities for the year and to make adjustments to our guiding document so that its easier for us to practice democracy. We don’t hold our bylaws document as sacred and untouchable. It’s a practical tool. More importantly, it’s an agreement we form with ourselves so that we can confidently work without worrying that we’re overstepping or taking over. Our exact bylaws probably wouldn’t work well for another chapter elsewhere. The details wouldn’t fit but the general spirit is to be found in each one. And in a few years, after we’ve grown in number and gained more victories, today’s bylaws will be a poor fit. If we haven’t changed them sufficiently along the way then we will have another convention. We welcome this inevitability. The bylaws are an artifact of our democracy and enable our democracy.
Democracy has always been the scarcest resource. We can imagine a capitalist owner sitting in his office and watching his balance sheets increase. He standardized his factory equipment and financial practices. Everything can be easily understood in a nicely formatted report. And then Jacob tells his boss he needs time off for a religious holiday. And Stacy keeps saying her manager calls her by a “dead name”. And Katie says that says the women are paid less than men for the same work. And women of color point out that they make even less than everyone. And another guy says the benefits plan excludes his husband. And that plan that he wants so badly doesn’t cover reproductive health and the copay is enormous. And everyone knows that what they do all day doesn’t really matter anyway. These fictitious people are placeholders for you and me. We’ve all been harmed by capitalism. We all fell into the same grinder when we were born.
In the old days, when the early capitalists wanted undifferentiated compliant drones, they’d send violent young men somewhere far away where it was easy to tell apart the bosses from the laborers using their respective physical differences. When the native workforce spoke up, it was easy to tell who to shoot. The situation for capitalists has gotten more complicated since then. They still send kids with guns to take people over, without a doubt. Where that won’t do, they need other ways to standardize their workforce. They bring the colonial attitude home and start splitting up the workforce by what they see as obvious differences.
So, while the capitalists in charge work on a way to make computers behave like docile emotionally inert humans, there are all these random workers with ancient prejudices that hate the very people who are keeping them from turning a bigger profit. If he looks the other way or wrings his hands in sympathy while they persecute his employees then they’ll be too sick and tired to fight me for a better working conditions. If living in fear for your life reduces the company’s HR overhead then the stockholders will be happy, the boss will be pacified, and the executives will get a bonus. Then they can put you in a job that shortens your life and turns your personal time into a recovery period for your next shift. They will use your health to push units and your emotions to improve productivity.
Once while canvassing for DSA I came across a stray dog. He was a big dog and we didn’t know each other but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was lost and alone. I used kind words to comfort him and held out my hand with a treat. These actions together, verbal and material, indicated that I was unlikely to harm him. He came over, I gave him a piece of bagel I had in my pocket from earlier, and returned him home. In our work as socialists we need to speak out and contradict repressive misinformation that comes from a variety of sources. We describe the world honestly and rationally amid the constant clatter of advertising, bias, and myth. But we also need to hold out our hand and offer material support. We do as much as we can in the world to make real improvements in the lives of actual working people.
Our chapter has accomplished a great deal, internally and externally, since a few comrades came together in the 2010s to reform a Cleveland local. Mere months ago we joined the successful fight to get abortion rights in the state constitution. In 2022-23 we fought in solidarity with Starbucks Workers to keep union stores going in the long fight for a contract. In 2021 we held our first chapter convention, drafting our chapter’s bylaws together from scratch. From the early days of COVID-19 until late 2022 we mobilized to support tenants facing eviction and spread the message of tenant power. In 2019 we ran Brake Light Clinics to help reduce Clevelanders interactions with the numerous police gangs of Cleveland, and finished a campaign as the key ground force of CLASH securing a city ordinance on lead paint.
At this convention, we’ll be fiddling with the knobs and levers of our chapter, replacing and cleaning the parts. It may not look exciting to an outside observer but for us it is exhilarating. Democracy doesn’t exist until it happens. It is an activity, not only a state of mind. And here we all are, so different, with so much in common, and we can all speak up and shape the policies that shape our work. And you don’t have to wear a nice suit, or the right clothes for your assigned gender, or wear your hair in a certain way, or speak perfect English. You weren’t appointed to a board by someone who owns a yacht. You didn’t have to muscle your way through a hierarchy for years to force your way into a seat at the table. You didn’t have to prove yourself or flash your credentials to justify being here. We want you here because you are you. We want to know you. The world is a better, more interesting place with you in it and we are lucky that you’ve chosen to spend your time with us. That kind of fellowship is a privilege offered by socialism. One way to consider democracy is that an entire group of people consult with each individual to say “you are important and we won’t go ahead until we hear what you think.” It is the essence of our project. Democracy isn’t about casting votes, specifically. It’s the belief that everyone should be included. Decisions about you should not be made without you. We matter because you matter.
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