Today, the Atlanta City Council showed its true colors, choosing to ignore vocal opposition by thousands of working-class residents in favor of Atlanta’s corporate elite on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Despite over 16 hours of public comment with 70% of resident callers against the proposal, and despite a survey showing that 98% of Atlanta residents oppose building Cop City, the following Council-members have voted to put profits over people, clear-cut Atlanta’s historic forest, and build an 85 acre, $90 million Cop City: Joyce Sheperd, Andre Dickens, Cleta Winslow, Dustin Hillis, Matt Westmoreland, Michael Julian Bond, Andrea L. Boone, Howard Shook, Marci Overstreet, J.P. Matzigkeit.

Over the last three months, Atlanta DSA has organized weekly canvasses in neighborhoods most directly impacted by the proposed facility, speaking with residents in Atlanta City Council’s 5th and 12th districts and in Dekalb County’s Gresham Park. Despite attempts by City Council, APF, and the corporate media to manufacture consent for the proposal, our outreach affirmed that the community overwhelmingly opposes the development, with over 1,000 residents signing our petition to Stop Cop City. While City Council actively obstructed all meaningful opportunities for public input, we organized a truly democratic People’s Town Hall attended by over 100 residents who came to express their stance against Cop City. The message from working-class Atlanta is loud and clear: Stop Cop City.

Yet despite the clear public opposition from Atlanta’s working class, despite the rallying cries from the public over the last year to defund the police state, despite the human and environmental harms that will result from deforestation as we face the threat of climate change, this City Council once again sided with corporate Atlanta over their own constituents.

If anything, this vote has reinforced that as long as we live under capitalism, and corporate “philanthropists” maintain their grip over City policy and priorities, the same neoliberal villains that brought us Cop City will continue to bring us dystopian proposals until the working class stands together and organizes for real change. 

Despite the disappointing vote, the Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America will continue to organize working class people in the struggle against the billionaire elite. We will continue to organize to abolish policing and mass incarceration. We will continue organizing towards universal housing, healthcare, food for all, and a Green New Deal. The campaign to Stop Cop City has only strengthened and emboldened the working class as a serious political force in Atlanta. If anything, this campaign has confirmed that we can build mass movements to take back power from the corporate elite. We can build a society that invests in communities over the carceral state. It’s more clear now than ever that when ordinary working people come together, we can wield our collective power through organization. 

We invite you all to join us in these future struggles towards liberation. To learn more about this campaign and our future work, tune in next Wednesday, September 15th at 7pm, for an online debrief call as we review all we’ve learned and accomplished over these last months, and analyze the final vote and what it means for November’s elections. As always, we invite those committed to joining our future fights to organize in solidarity with us and join DSA.

Coulee DSA cares about creating a connection amongst our members, where we can form bonds that uplift one another, and our greater community. And there is no better way to build connections than spending time with one another!

Come join Coulee DSA for a late afternoon potluck at Chad Erickson Park, Sunday July 25th at 4 PM! (Facebook event here) It’s been a long year, and we hope that relaxed time together outside and with a good meal will help us connect!

CDSA will be providing the main course (vegetarian options also available) and we’d love for members and friends to bring sides, sweet treats, and drinks to share, as they are able.

If you have questions about the event, or upcoming socials and service activities through Coulee DSA, e-mail couleedsa@gmail.com

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Are you suffering from chronic anxiety as our planet burns around us while our politicians act without any sense of urgency? Coulee DSA book club has the book for you!

The reading group is starting a new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book focuses on the climate crisis and how much damage has already been done, as well as the cutting edge of technology and geoengineering that will be necessary if human civilization as we know it will survive.

The group is now meeting on Thursday nights at 7 PM online. Next Thursday, July 8th will be the first night with reading from the new book.

If you are interested in hearing more, email us at couleeDSA@gmail.com. We are looking for feedback on possible barriers to participation. If you don’t like our book selections, or don’t feel invited to participate for any other reason, please reach out to us. We will keep your information confidential.

The post CouleeDSA’s Next Reading: Under A White Sky first appeared on Coulee DSA.

India Walton will be the 63rd Mayor of the City of Buffalo. She won by inspiring and organizing people through a plain-spoken, class-conscious message. She will be one of the most significant executives in the country to be a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the first woman to hold this office. 

The Buffalo chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, a socialist organization driven by member dues and decisions, backed India Walton in February with a unanimous vote. We recognize Walton as of and for the working class. We admire her intentional organizing on healthcare as a proud nurse. We value her focus on labor agitation, police and justice reform, community housing, the rights of tenants over landlords, and leadership development.

“All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours. We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.” – India Walton

Buffalo will be the largest American city to have a socialist mayor since Milwaukee in 1960. In 1917, the Socialist Party mayoral candidate won over 30% of the vote on an anti-war platform in Buffalo. Over 100 years later, we are proud to support the mayor-elect’s platform that rejects austerity and places the class interests of workers and tenants over the extractive private interests that have run our government.

India Walton’s organizing approach was rooted in the working class. She united left groups and volunteers in canvassing and phonebanking to discuss values like the demilitarization of police, removal of predatory fines, and prioritization of community infrastructure and public education. This campaign overturned Byron Brown, a corrupt stooge, after 16 years. The ruling class all over the country flooded his campaign with more than $100,000 in the week before the election, hoping for the charter school lobby and billionaires to advance their interests in our city government. But as India shouted with her supporters Tuesday evening, “when we organize, we win.”

We applaud the efforts of all involved in this campaign, and thank the Buffalo DSA Electoral members who maintained an independent strategy and support system to petition, canvas, phonebank, and get out the vote for mayor-elect India Walton. We invite all Buffalonians who want to continue member-directed organizing at the point of class conflict, such as in labor, healthcare, and housing, who want to receive and grow socialist political education, and who want to participate in developing our electoral strategy, to join DSA and be part of the life of this organization.

Buffalo DSA is looking forward to proudly working alongside the executive of our city in our collective fight against capital, and we extend our most heartfelt thanks and congratulations.

The city and county of La Crosse are each receiving over $20 million in stimulus funding. The broad left community must act together to ensure that public oversight and input are the driving force in spending this funding. This level of funding is a once in generation opportunity to pay for projects that can save lives and uplift our community as a whole. Please get involved in the decision making process.

Coulee Tenants United, CouleeDSA’s tenant organizing working group, is participating in 2 nights programming at the La Crosse Public Library on Housing and Homelessness this month. CTU is a working group dedicated to educating, organizing, and empowering renters in the Coulee region.

Part 1 on June 21st at 6:30 PM is focused on homelessness, while part 2 on June 28th at 6:30 PM covers housing, development, market and non-market solutions, and tenancy struggles. Follow the links to get registered. Program recordings will be available for those who can’t make it in person.

Long-term, systemic solutions to the housing crisis require large up front investment. Demanding that this historic stimulus bill is leveraged to better our community through permanent projects should be a priority. Reach out to us at CouleeDSA@gmail.com or at our Facebook page if you want to get involved.

The post Housing and Homelessness programming with CTU: Systemic problems and Solutions first appeared on Coulee DSA.

June 1st marked the start of a newly elected SC, contact buffalodsa@gmail.com to get involved and subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date >>>>>

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Seven Catholic plowshares activists entered Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on April 4th, 2018. They went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who devoted his life to addressing what he called the “triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism.” Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction. They hoped to call attention to the ways in which nuclear weapons kill every day, by their mere existence and maintenance. One of those seven, Mark Colville (pictured back right), talks with Colleen Shaddox about his resistance to the weapons economy and his life at Amistad Catholic Worker House in New Haven, Connecticut. Mark talks about how he and his comrades argued that their Catholic faith compelled them to act against Trident - a defense that the jury was never allowed to hear. Now he looks forward to serving his sentence for the action. As he says, much of the Bible was written inside a prison - what better place to read it?

“The Coulee DSA books club will begin reading Michael Parenti’s “Blackshirts and Reds” beginning Tuesday, May 25th at 7 PM. Parenti’s 1997 text is considered a classic among many on the left. Among many themes, the book explores how corporate power has embraced fascism throughout history, how historical revolutions freed populations from the forces of exploitation, the enduring power of Marxism, and the importance of class analysis in understanding and comprehending the political realities of our time. 

The Coulee DSA Book Club meets every Tuesday night at 7 PM, It doesn’t require regular attendance, so feel free to stop by or drop in and out as you have time. Reading is strongly encouraged but not required. The discussion often goes off on tangents and covers a broad array of topics, and we would love you to add your voice to the discussion! Reply to this email if you are interested in joining and we will connect you to the group. “

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