A mid-year review of the projects and organizing of Connecticut DSA in the first six months of the 2023-2024 Steering Committee.

PREAMBLE

Six months into 2023, Connecticut DSA has passed several major milestones: officially becoming one statewide chapter, electing a new Steering Committee, starting our second statewide legislative campaign, and more. At 700 members strong across the entire state, we have continued our path toward organizing a mass working-class base in Connecticut. This mid-year review will cover our work in Housing, Labor, Reproductive Justice, Ecosocialism, Electoral, Political Education, Socialists of Color, and International Affairs.

STEERING COMMITTEE

The following comrades were elected to the corresponding positions on our steering committee:

• Co-Chairs: Jacey L and Jason R
• Secretary: Sahand D
• Treasurer: Vittoria C
• Membership Coordinator: Bryan C
• Hartford Branch Representatives: Sarah W and Joe H
• New Haven Branch Representatives: Francesca M and Stephen P
• Middletown Branch Representative: Cait D
• Western CT Branch Representative: David H
• Quiet Corner Branch Representative: Sky T
• At-Large Members: Henri A, Chris L, Alexandra W

HOUSING

Having started the Cap the Rent campaign in 2022, and as a result of weeks of statewide canvassing, a turnout of more than 300 people was expected at the  Legislative Office Building (LOB). As a result of technical/ network difficulties, the hearings started with a five-hour delay, continuing until 5 am. Despite this, over 250 people testified in support of the bill in front of the Housing Committee.

Despite the Cap the Rent campaign not concluding with our desired results, the steam and momentum that the Housing Justice Project gained across the state has led to some major leaps:

The Connecticut Tenants Union (CTTU), originally born out of CT DSA’s Housing Justice Project, has grown greatly into an independent organization with its own constitution and officer structure.

Cargill Tenants Union in Putnam has been on rent strike since January 2023.  In December 2022, residents of Cargill Falls Mill Complex received a letter from the Northeast District Department of Health notifying them of a severe case of lead toxicity found in one of the toddlers living in that building. This letter was the spark that led to tenants organizing their building. Cargill Tenants Union has organized multiple rallies that many DSA members have turned out to.

Windham Mills Tenants Union in Willimantic is organizing strong and growing. Earlier in the year, inspections took place on 451 of 480 apartments. Currently, Windham Mills Tenants Union is working with the Town Council of Windham as they explore the possible creation of a Fair Rent Commission.  Unfortunately, Willimantic/Windham doesn’t meet the 25K population threshold for a mandatory FRC, but the Town Council is proactively exploring the benefits in order to make the town a more inviting and stable community.

Hartford DSA Branch has multiple active tenant union projects, including the citywide Hartford tenants’ union, two tenant unions in Bloomfield, and an active canvassing effort to conduct social investigation and agitation at new buildings. Hartford Tenants’ Union runs monthly meetings centered around political education on housing topics, skill sharing to learn how to better fight landlords, and building a shared municipal housing strategy. Pressure from tenants recently led the city to set aside $1 million for tenants to put towards security deposits and moving costs.

In addition to the above organizing activities, DSA is running a series of screenings of housing-related movies. Hartford screened Owned: A Tale of Two Americas, and additional screenings are taking place throughout the state during the fall.  The screenings bring focus to various aspects of class struggle seen through the lens of housing. After watching the movie together, comrades get the chance to discuss. The next screening was of Owned on September 26th, in Middletown, in an event co-sponsored with the Wesleyan Union of Student Employees, OPEIU Local 153, the labor union of Wesleyan University resident advisors that YDSA members were instrumental in organizing last year.

LABOR

While CT DSA’s Labor Working Group was inactive for the latter half of 2022, it came roaring back this year in conjunction with DSA’s national Strike Ready campaign in solidarity with the UPS Teamsters, who are renegotiating this year the largest union contract in all of North America under new reform leadership. After passing a chapter resolution to endorse the campaign, the Labor WG began meeting again with an ambitious agenda of solidarity work, supporting new organizing, political education, and legislative organizing. 

Immediately after we started meeting again, SEIU 1199NE – the healthcare workers union – went on strike to demand higher wages and in conjunction with the Recovery For All campaign to tax the rich and fund public services. We supported picket lines in Bridgeport and Hartford during the weeks-long strike. As CT DSA’s first attempt at strike solidarity, we turned out about a dozen members throughout, building capacity and awareness among our members about strike work. 

With more trained solidarity muscles, we turned out nearly 30 members for the sip-in of Starbucks Workers United in Danbury, a week after they announced their union drive, also marking the largest Western branch action in the last couple of years. After recruiting Danbury Starbucks union members into DSA, we coordinated directly with the union to support their March On The Boss two weeks later. These actions built us towards the Strike With Pride weeks of action by national Starbucks Workers United in response to Starbucks management’s taking down of Pride decorations in stores across the country and their continued refusal to come to the bargaining table. Corbin’s Corner Starbucks Workers United in West Hartford participated in this strike, coordinating directly with our chapter so we could arrange legal observers, food and material support, and members to support throughout the entire picket. DSA members were the first to arrive at 6 a.m. and the last to leave at 11 a.m. A couple of months later, the Danbury Starbucks workers organized a walk-out after an Unfair Labor Practice while managers were on the shop floor. Workers continued to keep their momentum by organizing a strike during Labor Day weekend. Both actions were successful, with many DSA members showing up to support.

Most recently, we turned out to support the Teamsters in back-to-back weeks. Firstly, when Amazon Teamsters traveled from California to Connecticut in a nationwide informational picket, bringing them to North Haven for an afternoon picket outside the BDL3 warehouse. Secondly, when UNFI warehouse workers in Dayville rallied a week before their union election to join Teamsters, marking the first time CT DSA Labor mobilized the Quiet Corner branch. For both actions, we were joined by comrades from other chapters, such as Worcester DSA and Mid Hudson Valley DSA.

As we enthusiastically supported militant worker action across the state, we also began charting a path to supporting new worker organizing in DSA. Over months of working group meetings, a workers’ circle proposal was developed and adopted; we also started recruiting DSA members to salt in strategic industries in accordance with the Rank and File Strategy adopted by the national DSA. CT DSA members also volunteered as trainers with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), national DSA’s labor organizing 101 program, and recruited more members to take the training and become ready to organize their own workplaces.

Looking forward, the Labor Working Group is excited to develop in-person workers’ circles and worker organizing trainings, fundraise for national DSA Labor’s solidarity fund, and build out a cohort of DSA members organizing new unions and engaging in rank and file organizing in their existing unions.

REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

In 2023, the Reproductive Justice Working Group of Connecticut DSA prioritized fighting crisis pregnancy centers: fake clinics that work to dissuade pregnant people from getting abortion care. Our main focus has been organizing to get Connecticut 211, a social services hotline and website that receives funding from the state of Connecticut and is administered by United Way, to stop advertising crisis pregnancy centers to vulnerable pregnant people as a source of pregnancy counseling and health care. We have had several digital days of action where members have submitted takedown notices to Connecticut 211 and social media and traditional media campaigns.

In addition, we have also spread the word about the harmful role of crisis pregnancy centers in New Haven, tabling outside of St. Gianna’s Center and distributing leaflets and posters in the neighborhood sharing accurate information about where to get full-service reproductive health care.

In the future, we have ambitions to continue our work to get 211 to delist crisis pregnancy centers and to do more tabling and canvases in neighborhoods where crisis pregnancy centers operate.

ECOSOCIALISM

CT DSA’s Ecosocialism Working Group organizes with a local community formation, Justice For Our Streets — members have explored the Bruce Brook and created a map with photos of pollution and dumping. Bridgeport DSA branch member Andreina has been communicating with Stratford town officials to get some transparency about their plans to address the issue. The Working Group did a picnic/park clean up near the brook for August 12th.

Stop Cop City coalition held a week of action in February that mobilized a lot of people to turn out to rallies at AXA XL in Stamford and Atlas Technical in East Hartford. Then, a few DSA members & coalition partners traveled to Atlanta for the beginning of the week of action in March. In April we hosted a fundraiser for the bail/solidarity fund, which raised about $1,000.

We endorsed the environmental rights amendment for the next legislative session.

We are building a statewide fare-free bus coalition with Radical Advocates for Cross-Cultural Education in Waterbury. They have collected 300 survey responses from bus riders so far and will be preparing for a campaign launch.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

In 2022, CT DSA’s International Affairs Working Group (IAWG) organized vigorously in solidarity with the anti-imperialist and decolonial struggles of Cuban and Palestinian liberation. Galvanized by the decision of DSA’s National Political Committee to revoke the charter of the national BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group (BDS WG), which included CT DSA members, IAWG led an effort to successfully pass a chapter resolution dissenting against the decision. This resolution increased members’ awareness of the urgency around Palestinian solidarity work in DSA, and the IAWG recruited activated members for local organizing.

With this energy to recommit towards Palestine solidarity, the IAWG led the organizing of a Nakba Day coalitional rally and did a Connecticut launch of No Appetite for Apartheid, a boycott campaign launched by the National BDS WG, in commemoration of the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948 (the ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land by Israel). For the campaign, the IAWG canvassed local stores and asked them to become Apartheid-Free Stores by taking off the shelves products by companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine. From this organizing, four stores have pledged to be Apartheid-Free, and a few more have expressed tentative interest. The IAWG mobilized members to visit these shops and continue conversations with owners and workers about the BDS movement. 

IAWG members also mobilized a CT DSA delegation to meet Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, the Cuban Ambassador to the UN, when he was invited by State Representative and lifetime DSA member Edwin Vargas to visit multiple cities and towns in Connecticut. As a result of this visit, IAWG members were invited by the Cuban delegation to stand in solidarity with them at the United Nations Headquarters and watch the 30th vote against the US embargo of Cuba. These instances are benchmarks in a relationship that the IAWG is actively cultivating with Cubans and the broader movement of Cuban solidarity in Connecticut, with important implications for future organizing opportunities – from passing municipal and eventually state resolutions demanding an end to the embargo to organizing with future delegations to Cuba.

Also of note were efforts to oppose the war in Ukraine. The IAWG participated in several anti-war mobilizations in coalition with other organizations. The IAWG also endorsed a coalitional letter pressuring Connecticut’s federal elected officials in calling for a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine and to cease the sales and shipments of weapons. The vote to pass a chapter-wide resolution to endorse failed by a small margin,  although members engaged in generative discussion on our position and its relationship to our organizing.

ELECTORAL

Since our merger, we have struggled to redefine and reorient our electoral program and relationships with our socialist elected officials in Hamden. Despite this challenge, we were proud to re-endorse councilor Abdul Osmanu and endorse councilor Laurie Sweet for the first time in their reelection campaign this year, both of whom advance to the general election alongside Rhonda Caldwell, a DSA member seeking to replace retiring councilman Justin Farmer, CT DSA’s first victorious endorsed candidate for office from back in 2017. We endorsed Rhonda for the general election, and celebrated the victory of the new Hamden Socialist Slate in November.

Although we are sad to see Justin move on, we know that his work in building a movement of tenants and the broader working class does not end here. We now look forward to reconstructing our Electoral Working Group around supporting our elected officials and building the capacity to win more seats across Connecticut. 

SOCIALISTS OF COLOR

Having identified a spatial vacuum within CT DSA for socialists of color to organize and for organizers of color to become more familiar with concepts of socialism, members of CT DSA were surveyed on interest in establishing a Socialists of Color (SOC) caucus. Given the interest and positive feedback, the space has been developed. In its initial phase, the SOC will provide space for individuals to: discuss their experiences, learn from each other’s experiences, hold reading groups and discussions, view films, and introduce friends to plug into socialist organizing.

POLITICAL EDUCATION

CT DSA’s Political Education Working Group started earlier this year, and now meets monthly to learn together, develop a shared socialist analysis of the state, and to organize educational programming at the branch level. New Haven is running an ongoing series of educational discussions through the Socialist Literacy Corps. The goal of the program is to bring socialists into a collaborative, educational discussion that builds a materialist understanding of community problems and how we might organize to fix them.

The Hartford and New Haven branches both ran 6-week Socialist Night School programs during the late spring through the summer, covering Socialism 101 topics such as what is capitalism, the history of actually existing socialism, the history of DSA, and more. Western CT branch is also actively running a version of the course in coalition with other local groups like the Harambee Center for Youth and CT Students for A Dream. The goal of these programs is to teach the fundamentals of socialist analysis to new members and empower them to leverage this analysis in organizing for working class power in CT DSA.

IN CONCLUSION

In 2023, CT DSA – along with the broader left, both nationally and here in Connecticut – has marched out of the shadow of the pandemic, taking steps to explore new terrains of struggle that puts socialists in a proactive, rather than reactive, position. As our different organizing cores have continued to develop, we are training new layers of organizers who are learning to politicize the work of organizing toward a socialist horizon as much as we are focused on building durable projects.  While we are still far off from the organization of organizers and the socialist world we seek to build, the steps we take today create a strong foundation for both the struggle for and the birth of a better world.