Contact: info@columbusdsa.org

COLUMBUS – The Columbus chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America released the following statement regarding DSA’s ongoing layoffs:

As part of DSA’s ongoing budget process, the National Political Committee (“NPC”), our political leadership, has sought to lay off seven unionized staff members. Through successful fundraising, non-staff cuts, and seven voluntary resignations, DSA was able to exceed its financial goals for this year before laying off a single staff member. Yet, the NPC insists it will not negotiate with the DSA Union or adjust the number of layoffs to our new circumstances. This is a damaging maximalist posture from our leadership and, simply, an economically unnecessary number of staff to eliminate.

Last year’s successful abortion rights campaign in Ohio depended on DSA’s Electoral Campaigns Organizer and Org Tools Coordinator and could not have happened without the support of these staff members. The NPC’s plan to fire them along with five other union members is immensely short-sighted and would seriously harm our basic organizing capacities. As DSA chapters around the country seize a historic political moment with ambitious organizing projects for reproductive rights, Palestinian liberation, and more, it is a mistake to eliminate the staff who play a key role in getting these efforts off the ground and scaling up our organizing.

During this process the NPC has engaged in bad-faith negotiation, and their insulting offer to the union would see workers sign away their rights and relegate all unionized staff to at-will employment. This and multiple other violations of the DSA staff’s union contract have led the union to file grievances against several NPC members.

We stand in solidarity with all members of the DSA Union and reject any politics that seeks to sacrifice or compromise workers’ rights.

Columbus DSA affirms the statements of the DSA Union and calls on the NPC to move away from its destructive approach by negotiating in good faith to minimize the number of layoffs.

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The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and the International Committee of DSA extends our solidarity to the University professors of ANDES-SN (National Union of University Professors), the administrative workers of Fasubra (Federation of Technical-Administrative Workers Unions in Public Higher Education Institutions of Brazil), and students of UNE (National Union of Students) who are currently on strike to increase the funding for public universities in Brazil. Professors at Brazilian public universities have faced a 40% decrease in their real wages since the Rousseff PT government was couped in 2016. This is on top of the austerity that has been imposed on the universities that has been cutting essential services for students and faculty alike. President Lula was elected, with the support of many professors and students, on the promise that he would support public education and end the funding cuts implemented by the neo-liberal and neo-fascist Bolsonaro administration. We stand with our courageous comrades and ask President Lula to make good on his campaign promises and negotiate with the striking unions in good faith, to ensure that the Brazilian public university system serves the working class.

We are engaged in the same struggle against the austerity our administrations and state governments impose upon our universities and other public services. They will cut and cut and cut, unless someone fights back and it has to be us. We must build a movement of university staff and students marching hand in hand to ensure that our universities and public institutions are able to serve the working class. We hope to emulate what you have built in Brazil and replicate your upcoming victories!

We also want to thank ANDES-SN specifically for their recent statement in support of the ongoing student protests against the Genocide in Gaza and the Zionist Apartheid regime of Israel. It is inspiring to us to know that we have the support of the international working class in our firm stance against our institution’s complicity in the mass atrocities that have been carried out both in this year and over the entirety of the 76 years of the settler colonial project of Israel’s existence. It will be through the mass action of the international working class that we free Palestine and put an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people. We are honored by your support and we will continue to fight for a free Palestine with our comrades here in the states. 

Solidarity Forever!

Solidariedade para Sempre!

The post Solidarity from DSA International Committee and YDSA to Striking Professors, Administrators, and Students in Brazil appeared first on DSA International Committee.

At University at Buffalo’s North Campus last evening, police initiated an unprovoked attack on peaceful Palestinian solidarity protestors. In a clear violation of student’s first amendment rights nearly two dozen protestors were violently arrested without justification.

The Buffalo chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America condemns these arrests and the erosion of Buffalonians’ civil liberties they represent.

This unnecessary escalation was an obvious attempt to stifle free speech, nothing more.

We call for an end to the siege of Gaza and an end to the occupation by the IDF. We demand our educational institutions disclose their ties to the apartheid state of Israel and defense contractors and, where such relationships exist, immediately divest and disassociate.

End the occupation. Stop the genocide. Boycott, divest, and sanction Israel. Drop the charges against protestors. Uphold our First Amendment rights.

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In this episode, we sit with Dr. Tim Conder and Dr. Daniel Rhodes of the Black Mountain School of Theology and Community to discuss a marxist, community-centered mode of theological research, organizing, and education. Visit their website at https://blackmountainschool.org

The Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee (DSA IC) affirms Iran’s right to self-defense in response to the illegal Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. DSA IC reiterates our firm opposition to providing any military or diplomatic assistance to the Zionist project, which is currently engaged in a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians and reckless attacks on neighboring states, posing a serious risk of escalating into a full-blown regional conflict. We oppose any U.S. participation in or support of Israeli strikes against Iran and denounce punitive measures such as sanctions and travel bans enacted by the Biden administration or Congress in response to Iran’s defensive strikes on Israel. 

Despite western attempts to paint Iran as the aggressor, DSA IC recognizes that Iran has long been targeted by the U.S. and its allies for its efforts to establish national self-determination and champion Palestinian liberation. Since the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the US and Israel have wrought war on the Iranian people by murdering millions in the Iran-Iraq war, carrying out regular assassinations of its leaders, scientists, and top-commanders on diplomatic missions, and depriving the Iranian people of necessary medical supplies through sanctions. This is part of the U.S.’s imperial policy: destruction and de-development against any country that exercises sovereignty or opposes U.S. hegemony. 

The Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) April 1st strike against the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, which killed at least 16 people including a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander, represents an extremely serious violation of international laws and norms governing diplomatic relations between states, including the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and 1963 Convention on Consular Relations. The Biden administration’s “iron-clad” support of the Zionist project has allowed Israel to operate with total impunity, resulting in gross violations of international humanitarian law and military provocations against regional allies of Palestinians which threaten to destabilize the whole of West Asia. 

Not only has the Biden administration refused to deescalate the current crisis with a denunciation of  the Israeli strikes on the Iranian consulate, but it also blocked the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from doing so. Likewise, President Biden did not act on the purported Iranian offer to forgo a retaliatory strike on Israel in exchange for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. On April 13th, Iran launched a limited defensive strike against Israel, hitting several Israeli bases including the Netavim Air Base from which the attack on the Damascus consulate was launched. The strike was telegraphed in advance, allowing for ample preparation by Israel and the U.S. The strike’s success highlights the ability of Iran to defend itself against Zionist aggression and restore crucial deterrence against increasingly rogue Israeli actions. Additionally, the Iranian defensive strikes have helped to further undermine the mantle of invincibility which the Zionist project has constructed in order to allow its continual ethnic cleansing and genocide in their colonial occupation of Palestine. 

While it is reported that the Biden administration will not participate in Israeli strikes against Iran, continued statements of “iron-clad” support for Israel leave the door open for runaway escalation. With Israeli Occupation Forces crossing the Lebanese border in recent days, intensifying bombing of southern Lebanon, and their continued genocide in Gaza, Israel is dragging the U.S. into a larger death spiral. DSA IC reiterates our demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to all military aid to Israel and an end to sanctions against the people of Iran. The power to stop this genocide and end this rapidly escalating regional crisis remains in Biden’s hands. The Biden administration bears full responsibility for every death that follows. No war with Iran! Free Palestine!

The post DSA IC Affirms Iran’s Right to Self-Defense appeared first on DSA International Committee.

This commentary by CVDSA member Tanya Vyhovsky originally appeared in VTDigger. A clinical social worker and former school services clinician, Vyhovsky represents the Chittenden-Central District in the Vermont State Senate.

Ordinarily in Vermont, we in the Senate give the governor great deference when it comes to whom he appoints to serve in his cabinet. While we may have policy differences with an appointee, the governor was elected by the people, and he deserves the benefit of the doubt when making appointments.

Not this time.

After years of methodically hinting at his preference for private schools, Gov. Phil Scott made it crystal clear where he stands when it comes to education funding here in Vermont. By choosing a former executive of a for-profit charter school company to be his next education secretary, he is finally saying the quiet part out loud — public education money should be able to flow freely to private and religious schools.

After meeting with the nominee, it is clear to me that she is very smart and accomplished. However, she is not qualified to lead the Vermont public education system past this inflection point and into the future. The nominee’s scant experience in public schools does not give me confidence in her ability to strengthen our public schools in this time of turmoil, and it further shows the governor’s lack of commitment to our public schools. 

Couple that with a State Board of Education that seems willing to at the least be complicit in the governor’s agenda to privatize our schools. This nomination raises alarm bells that should give every one of us who cherishes our local public schools great pause.

I have always been proud that in the state of Vermont, the Constitution guarantees quality public education for all children. That imperative has been carried out over the centuries by dedicated educators, volunteer school boards, administrators, parents, communities and others who believe — rightly — that education for all Vermont children is a valuable asset to all of us.

Indeed, our local public schools — despite assertions to the contrary — deliver the goods year after year, preparing our children with the tools to be happy, healthy and successful in whatever life they choose.

But that egalitarian opportunity is in danger as private and religious schools ramp up their ongoing efforts to co-opt taxpayer dollars for private gain. 

This comes with the tacit approval of the governor and, as of two years ago, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Those justices, in Carson v. Makin, made it clear that states like Vermont that give publicly funded vouchers to private schools must also open the public purse to religious schools as well. 

I am profoundly disappointed that we as a Legislature have failed to address this very real threat to our public schools.

It will further undermine our public education system if the charter school company executive chosen by the governor becomes the next guardian of Vermont public schools. If confirmed by the Senate, she will have a compliant pro-private-school State Board of Education to remake rules that will not only allow those schools to become even more unaccountable to the public, but to expand the amount of public resources flowing in their direction and further undercutting our top-in-the-nation public school system.

I am not alone in my deep concern over this nominee. Many of my colleagues have expressed reservations about this appointee, and I’ve heard from hundreds of Vermonters who say charter schools and the further privatization of public education are just plain wrong. 

The governor and those who work in his cabinet want us to believe that opposition to his appointee is personal, sexist or based on where she came from. But those accusations — taken directly out of the D.C. GOP handbook — are meant to distract from the nominee’s deep experience as an executive for a for-profit charter school company that has siphoned public education dollars from students and into the pockets of shareholders, and her utter lack of experience leading a public school system.

We will, as promised, fully explore the nominee’s record. We will conduct hearings and respect the nomination process. But as we do so, we must ensure that the next education secretary is dedicated to protecting, preserving and supporting our local public schools and the 90% of Vermont kids who rely on them every day.

DSA International Committee congratulates the people of Bahrain on the release of 1,584 prisoners from the government cages. This constitutes the largest release of political prisoners since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain, approximately 0.2% of the entire citizen population. We echo the calls of civil society in Bahrain for the further release of all political prisoners in Bahrain, including all opposition leaders, and a genuine start to the reconciliation process following the aftermath of the Arab Spring. 

We commend the people of Bahrain in their fight for the release of the political prisoners, particularly following the death of Hussain Khalil who suffered from torture by state security and was murdered by medical negligence. The escalating weekly protests in Bahrain in support of Gaza and rejection of the normalization deal played a large role in pressuring Bahrain and its primary sponsor, the US, to offer this concession. The normalization deal, struck during the so-called “Abraham Accords” in 2020, ended a long-standing policy of rejection of the Zionist settler-colonial project by Bahrain, UAE, Morocco, and Sudan under the sustained pressure of the US’s threat to suspend aid and arms sales to all non-compliant Arab countries. In the context of escalating regional geopolitical pressures and the risk of a broader regional war, we call on the US government, which has its Navy’s fifth fleet stationed on the Bahraini islands, to listen to calls from Bahrain’s streets and withdraw its military bases lest it further endangers the people of the region with its dangerous acts of political brinkmanship and its support of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

.#الحق_يؤخذ

#RightsAreTakenNotGiven

The post DSA IC Congratulates the People of Bahrain on Prisoner Release appeared first on DSA International Committee.