No Money for Massacres
Republished from DSA Statements
We demand that no money be spent on massacres.
The Israeli government has openly called for the forced displacement of 1.1 million Palestinians living in Gaza. The defense minister has referred to Palestinians as “animals.” This is the language of genocide.
In the face of the imminent ethnic cleansing of over a million people, the US State Department has actively rejected calls for a ceasefire and an end to the violence. This is more than just complicity. The Biden administration is actively supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As democratic socialists, we demand that no money be given to fuel a massacre.
We call on every member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire and to vote against providing military aid to the Israeli state. Silence is not an option. Elected officials have a choice. You can stand on the right side of history in favor of peace and against apartheid. Or you can cheerlead a massacre.
History will remember which you choose.
Please contact your representatives to support the Ceasefire Now Resolution.
The post No Money for Massacres appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.
Genocide on Holy Lands
Connecticut DSA 2023 Mid-Year Review
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.
Against Genocide in Gaza
A statement from Cleveland DSA’s Steering Committee
The Steering Committee of Cleveland DSA joins Jewish Voice For Peace in calling on all people of conscience to oppose genocide in Gaza. We grieve the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives this past week. At the same time we know that the war on Gaza did not begin last weekend. The only path to safety for all is an end to the occupation and apartheid.
The apartheid state of Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into the world’s largest open-air prison, routinely humiliating, assaulting, and killing Palestinians, on both an individual and mass scale. A blockade such as that Gaza has suffered for 16 years is an act of war under international law. Since Saturday’s attack by Hamas and other factions, the Israeli government has cut off all water, food, and electricity to 2 million people in Gaza, half of them children, while carrying out indiscriminate bombing of homes and medical facilities, including the use of white phosphorus.
Over the last century, countless families have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine. Many of these refugees and their descendants live in Gaza today, others are with us here in Cleveland. Palestinians across the world are mourning families they have in many cases been forbidden from visiting by the Israeli government. Governments are seeking to further criminalize their movements as they have already with the fundamentally nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign of which DSA is a part. DSA is in a unique position to resist these attacks.
We encourage our sister chapters and our elected representatives not to be intimidated by death threats, legal attacks, slander, or misinformation. DSA must not, and will not surrender our principles. We will never stop organizing for Palestinian liberation, and for political and social equality from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
We implore our membership to donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund at our upcoming General Meeting, and lay plans for practical solidarity work with the Palestinian community in the months and years to come. We encourage you to attend rallies, vigils, and fundraisers organized by the Palestinian community in Cleveland. Do not allow hatred and misinformation to dilute your solidarity with the Palestinian people.
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From the River to the Sea!
After the events of October 7th, 2023, the Israeli occupying force wasted little time in launching an indiscriminate bombing campaign against the 2.1 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a collective punishment, targeting ambulances1, apartments, schools, mosques, hospitals, and media outlets, turning the existing blockade into an active and deadly siege. Israel has cut off all water, power, fuel, and food supply to Gaza, a further crime against humanity, and the specter of starvation and genocide looms. Telegraphing further escalation, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip2; only a day earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Palestinian civilians in Gaza to “leave now.”3 Leave to go where exactly?
At the time of this writing, thousands of people have already been killed inside and near the Gaza Strip. International law is clear on the legitimacy of occupied peoples to liberate themselves from “colonial domination, apartheid, and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”4 International law is also clear on the prohibition of punishing a civilian for an offense he or she has not personally committed and the prohibition of reprisals against protected persons and their property.5 But since the beginning of 2023, the Israeli police, military, and armed settlers have killed, on average, one Palestinian a day. Since Israel imposed the blockade on the Gaza Strip, the occupying force has bombed Gaza a total of seven times: 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022, and 2023 — and Palestinians have never been able to leave for safety.
However, Netanyahu’s faux-humanitarian warning to Palestinians, “leave now,” touches the roots of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” In 1948, Zionist paramilitary groups ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine and established the state of Israel, a historic event known as al-Nakba in Palestinian collective memory6. It is the reason why nearly 67% of Palestinians in Gaza are descendants of families that were ethnically cleansed from the villages where Israeli kibbutzim and cities stand today. It is the reason why Israel is a military garrison state that maintains an apartheid system today, where Palestinians are harassed, robbed, and murdered by Israeli soldiers and settlers every day, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.7 It is the reason why, despite Zionist attempts to deny their existence, Palestinians have continued to resist, persevere, and yearn for Return.
Now is not the time for supposedly balanced, measured statements that obfuscate the truth of the conflict. The failure of international bodies and leaders to hold Israel accountable to international law and to apply UN Resolution 194, the right of Palestinians to return to their ancestral homes, has resulted in what we are now bearing witness to. This has been the status quo for Palestinians for 75 years, and it must end.
Israel is able to maintain this barbaric status quo because of the diplomatic, military, and financial support of the United States since 1967. The United States uses this alliance to project its military power into the Middle East, as it seeks to do in all geostrategically important areas of the globe.
As American socialists, we understand the fight for socialism is international, and we understand the unique role the United States plays in administering a global capitalist empire. To assist Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination, our primary role is to pressure the US for a change in its foreign policy. To this end, we unequivocally support the BDS movement and call on American civil society to join the targeted boycott of Israeli goods, companies, and institutions.
The response of the Biden administration to these events still unfolding has been to supply Israel with more money and weapons.8 9The United States must end its policy of arming the apartheid, settler-colonial ethnostate of Israel. We fully condemn the capitalist Republican and Democratic parties, who are largely culpable for the continuation of violence and dispossession perpetrated upon Palestinians. America’s expanding military-industrial complex continues to act as a force of destabilization and oppression throughout the world, and major arms and military technology manufacturers like Raytheon make billions of dollars in profits from exploitation and war.
As socialists living in the heart of a global capitalist empire, we stand in opposition to the imperialism of the American ruling class, and we stand in solidarity with all oppressed people.
Palestine will be free — from the river to the sea.
In solidarity,
Central New Jersey DSA
- https://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-without-borders-hospitals-ambulances-targets-israel-hamas-gaza-2023-10 ↩︎
- https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza ↩︎
- https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/israel-palestine-conflict-more-than-530-killed-after-hamas-launched-unprecedented-attack-on-israel-netanyahu-retaliates-declares-war-1.1696670798153 ↩︎
- https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184195/ ↩︎
- https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-33 ↩︎
- https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine/Ilan-Pappe/9781851685554 ↩︎
- https://jacobin.com/2023/10/west-bank-apartheid-israel-idf-oslo-accords ↩︎
- https://themessenger.com/politics/biden-administration-discussing-military-aid-package-to-israel-after-hamas-attack ↩︎
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67049196 ↩︎
Denver DSA stands with Palestine
Denver DSA unequivocally stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their fight for liberation from the apartheid regime of Israel. Palestinians have endured 75 years of dispossession, colonization, desecration, torture, and confinement at the hands of the Israeli government, enabled financially, politically, and culturally by the United States. The path to liberation must include ceasing all U.S. aid to Israel, lifting the blockade of Gaza, ending Zionist settler-colonialism, and ensuring the right for Palestinians to return to their homeland.
Yesterday, a wealthy and well-funded nuclear power with the financial, political, and cultural support of the United States began forcibly evacuating 1.1 million civilians from Gaza City during an ongoing indiscriminate carpet-bombing campaign which has already killed thousands of civilians, injured tens of thousands, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Israel has cut off food, water, fuel, electricity, and medical care from Gaza’s 2.3 million citizens, half of whom are children. These civilians have been deemed “human animals” by the Israeli Defense Minister overseeing these attacks, who committed to “treat them accordingly” – an open declaration of genocide. Yet even now, the American war machine readies itself to ship more weapons and send more military funding to support Israel’s extermination of the Palestinian people for daring to resist their brutal, unlivable conditions.
Border walls, military checkpoints, crippling sanctions, restricted water and electricity, food scarcity, impoverishment, denial of medical care, and routine bombings are the material conditions that Palestinians have been forced to live under for over 75 years. Backed by the US, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) brutally murder Palestinians with impunity, over 8,000 since 2000 and thousands since October 7. The IOF detains 600 Palestinian children every year and keeps over 5,000 Palestinians imprisoned, a quarter of whom are held without charges or trial. For 16 years, Gaza has been transformed into an open-air prison, wherein the IOF concentrates 2.3 million people in an area smaller than Denver and bombs them in politically-motivated campaigns they sadistically term “mowing the grass.”
Bloodshed is a universal tragedy. But under apartheid and occupation, some lives are deemed more precious than others. The negative blowback of apartheid should come as no shock; people who are oppressed will perpetually seek ways to free themselves from that oppression. The murder of Palestinians has been a systemically invisibilized occurrence for decades. When Palestinians quietly suffer the daily violence inflicted on them, the West calls that “peace”. Denver DSA recognizes that the only true and lasting peace must be predicated on liberation from occupation, and it is towards that goal that we resolve ourselves today.
We call on all DSA members and endorsed DSA electeds to stand unequivocally in support of Palestinian people’s right to resist. We encourage all DSA chapters to stand with the people of Palestine and organize turn-out to local demonstrations.
May Palestine be free, from the river to the sea.
No Money for Massacres
We demand that no money be spent on massacres.
The Israeli government has openly called for the forced displacement of 1.1 million Palestinians living in Gaza. The defense minister has referred to Palestinians as “animals.” This is the language of genocide.
In the face of the imminent ethnic cleansing of over a million people, the US State Department has actively rejected calls for a ceasefire and an end to the violence. This is more than just complicity. The Biden administration is actively supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As democratic socialists, we demand that no money be given to fuel a massacre.
We call on every member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire and to vote against providing military aid to the Israeli state. Silence is not an option. Elected officials have a choice. You can stand on the right side of history in favor of peace and against apartheid. Or you can cheerlead a massacre.
History will remember which you choose.
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Stop Genocide in Gaza
The situation in the Middle East has been deteriorating very rapidly. So many families across the arbitrary border dividing Israel-Palestine have been sobbing and mourning the loss of loved ones. We are witnessing an unprecedented loss of life.
In the wake of terrifying attacks on a music festival in Israel and the bombing of civilian infrastructure and dense residential areas in Gaza -- including apartment blocks and refugee camps -- Gaza is under a complete siege as Israel prepares for what looks like an imminent ground invasion of the enclave, while Palestinians in the West Bank face settler paramilitary forces.
DSA members across the country are mobilizing right now by attending and hosting protests, writing letters and calling members of Congress. In PDSA we are going to be having phonebanking and letter writing calls this weekend from 4 PM - 6:30 PM this Saturday and Sunday, pressuring our elected officials to support immediate deescalation and defunding of Israel’s war on Gaza, filling their inboxes with opposition to this unconscionable war. Sign up for our PDSA phonebank here. We call for peace for all people and stand against reprisals and violence against all innocent civilians. We echo the national statement of DSA on October 8th and encourage all to read it.
Make no mistake, an invasion of Gaza would be catastrophic. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the entire world. Israel has however issued an impossible demand: 1.1 million people in northern Gaza are being told to flee south from Gaza City to the southern end of the Gaza Strip. It's not clear whether they would ever let Gazans return to their homes, and it's even less clear how they could flee to begin with when civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. It seems we are watching the groundwork for a genocide being laid before our eyes. Thousands of people would die if Israel invaded, we need to stop this now.
We will not be demoralized, there are things we can do. Please come to at least one of our emergency phonebanks this weekend. And for things you can do right now, if you can spare a few dollars, please donate to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. This organization is providing crucial on the ground aid immediately after airstrikes in Gaza which are displacing thousands of people -- mostly children. Here's a link to their homepage.
Secondly, please call your representatives and urge them to stop American support for genocide. The US funds Israel with billions in war aid despite it being illegal to do so under US law. 2 million people are trapped in Gaza right now, with electricity, water, and food supplies cut off by Israel which is imposing a complete blockade of the densely populated region. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has a dialer up to help us call our representatives. Please call your representatives. Here's a link to the dialer.
Another tool, from NYC-DSA, No Money for Massacres: Palestine Solidarity, their letter writing tool. Here's a link to it. This will let you send a letter to your representatives. Right now Florida politicians like Marco Rubio are actively calling for genocide of Palestinians. We must stop them. We also need to pressure our elected DSA members in Congress in the Squad to lead and stop these warhawks. Representatives like Rashida Tlaib are under intense pressure and we need to have their backs.
And finally, while we are still as a chapter figuring out what to do, we've put together a participation form to share with our members and even folks outside of DSA to get together to stop atrocities. We are living through extremely difficult times and we think we need to be together in person collaborating together although for now we are meeting on Zoom as mentioned above. If you can help connect us to an in-person location please let us know immediately. If you can join in such efforts, please fill out our participation form – and share it with your friends – and we can text you very soon about more ways to get involved.
Friends, it is so easy to fall into despair and demobilization. But I must tell you: we can stop genocide. Not only that, we must. 2 million Gazans are being persecuted after a generation of grueling oppression and occupation. While it's hard for us in the States to witness this, it's a life and death situation in Gaza. We don't have all the answers right now, but these are just a few things we can do right now to move the needle towards justice. If you have more ideas on what we can do, please submit to the participation form above, and attend one of our phonebanks.
In solidarity,
PDSA Outreach Team
Chicago DSA Condemns City Council Resolution On Israel
We reject a resolution passed today by the City Council which unequivocally supports the actions of the Israeli state without any recognition of the humanity and oppression of the Palestinian people, especially as Israel stands poised to destroy Gaza and indiscriminately kill Gaza residents in an unprecedented ground invasion. There is no justification for violence against civilians, and there is no justification for collective punishment and apartheid.
In this moment, we must be bold in our calls for peace and the deescalation of an already horrific crisis. We thank DSA members Alderman Byron Sigcho Lopez and Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez for their brave floor speeches against the resolution.
In solidarity,
Co-Chairs of Chicago DSA
The post Chicago DSA Condemns City Council Resolution On Israel appeared first on Midwest Socialist.
Statement In Support Of Palestinian Liberation
In the face of over 75 years of settler-colonial violence and genocide, the will and spirit of the Palestinian resistance burns brighter than ever. The state of Israel has ethnically […]
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