Workers at America’s only major unionized publishing house, HarperCollins, went on strike in early November of last year after their contract expired in April. As their strike approaches day 50 with little response from management, workers are standing strong on the picket line and fighting for higher wages, real racial equity on the job, and a union security agreement or “agency shop”. Tonight, we hear from bargaining committee member Carly Katz on how workers are standing up to a company owned by right-wing media conglomerate NewsCorp and how their union is sustaining the longest strike in their shop’s history.

In other New York labor news, Senate Judiciary Committee hearings started Wednesday January 18 for Governor Hochul’s nominee for the next chief judge of the state’s top court. In the weeks since Hochul announced her nomination of Hector LaSalle to the Court of Appeals, labor unions have joined with the abortion rights movement, socialists in office, and Senate progressives to oppose a judge with an alarming record on labor and abortion rights. Last week, TWU International president John Samuelsen broke with NY Labor and refused to denounce LaSalle. We’ll hear from transit worker John Ferretti on why he won’t be following his union leadership and what the LaSalle story can tell us about the power of organized labor in our city.

Find ways to support and follow HarperCollins Union here: https://linktr.ee/hcpunion

“No Justice, No Peace”: Kamala Harris visits Ann Arbor, Highlighting Hypocrisy in Federal Climate Agenda

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

Vice President Kamala Harris visited Rackham Auditorium at the University of Michigan Thursday afternoon for a conversation on “the Administration’s commitment to tackle our climate crisis”. This was the message conveyed to the several hundred event invitees across the university via individual email correspondence just a few days prior. Interestingly, communication regarding her arrival as well as event specifics remained largely ambiguous during the hours leading up to her visit. The exact time and location of the event were not confirmed until the day before nor did local news outlets and media providers make the public privy to the day’s happenings.

Despite this strange and oddly convenient bout of secrecy, coverage of the event following its conclusion was unabashedly celebratory, veering away from direct praise only to discuss adjacent news such as the COVID diagnosis of university president Santa Ono. The Michigan Daily focused heavily on hopeful messaging, noting references to on-campus sustainability, automotive industry innovation, and intersectionality made by the event’s speaker panel. MLive described a relationship of reverence and appreciation between Ann Arbor and Harris’ message, claiming that the city “embraced…Harris’ call for urgent climate action”.

However, these interpretations refused to acknowledge a fundamental quality of Harris’ visit: hypocrisy. The US government cannot engage in genuine and good-faith conversations on climate until it actively grapples with its oppressive and genocidal relationship to Israel, a contradiction best highlighted by the protest held just outside of Rackham Auditorium that same afternoon.

Following the news of Harris’ visit to campus, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) got to work, strategically organizing a demonstration that would speak to the blatant hypocrisies of a government taking part in climate talks while simultaneously funding and supporting an apartheid regime that habitually commits acts of environmental devastation. SAFE is a student organization for Palestinian solidarity that serves as the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at the university. The organization represents a diverse range of perspectives united in the collective struggle towards Palestinian liberation. As such, the presence of a political figure as important and consequential as Harris provided low hanging fruit to a group actively seeking forms of effective communication and protest. After all, Israel’s exploits are reprehensible both socio-politically and environmentally.

In 2022, Israel committed a host of war crimes including dropping bombs on Palestinian apartment buildings, invading Palestinian neighborhoods, preventing paramedics from accessing in-need Palestinians, and attacking individuals at Palestinian funerals. It was also the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians in almost 20 years. Even in the first two weeks of 2023, the atrocities abounded. During the year’s first three days, three Palestinians were killed — including 2 children. Israel’s new extremist government also acted on its explicitly Zionist declarations by bombing the homes of two murdered Palestinians, destroying multiple homes as well as a water tank in Masafer Yatta, and breaking into Al Aqsa Mosque, a sacred Muslim holy site. Moreover, a formal ban of the Palestinian flag in public spaces has now become an official part of Israeli policy.

Environmentally, the same pattern of genocidal violence and ruthless destruction rings true. Israel not only has one of the biggest per capita ecological and carbon footprints in the word — top 10% and 20% respectively — but it routinely engages in massive tree uprooting and harmful pesticide use. It also regularly pollutes Palestinian resources, targets Palestinian farmland, and denies Palestinians access to renewable energy. While doing so, it perpetuates an environmentalist image that claims to espouse “green” ideals. In reality, this “greenwashing” is simply a calculated attempt to cover up acts of criminal war, environmental degradation, and apartheid.

The chants and speeches featured in the SAFE protest spoke to these brutal realities with coherence and poignancy. Cries for “Intifada revolution”, the smashing of “the settler Zionist state”, and the abolition of administrative “greenwashing” could be heard among dozens of waving Palestinian flags and exclamatory posters. University Junior and SAFE Education Director Noor Sami powerfully condemned the 3.8 billion dollars invested into Israel’s military defense budget by the US, claiming that the “Biden-Harris Administration, much like its predecessors…is 100% complacent in the attempted erasure of the Palestinian people from their homeland.” University Sophomore and SAFE Activism Chair Joseph Fisher movingly emphasized the catastrophic proportions of Israel’s environmental policy, describing how the Zionist entity “water[s] their invasive species with Palestinian blood and completely obliterate[s] the dead sea.” He would later go on to denounce the harmful dumping of waste and destruction of freshwater reserves in Israeli settlements.

Above all, though, SAFE’s protest made one thing crystal clear to Harris, the university, Ann Arbor, and everyone and everything in between: so long as Israeli apartheid continues, so long as genocidal brutality persists, and so long as Palestine remains unfree, no substantive conversations about climate — or any other issue for that matter — can take place. Even more pressingly, there will continue to be unrest, grievance, and demonstration that demands unconditional liberation and freedom as well as a permanent maintenance of justice for Palestinian generations to come.

“No Justice, No Peace”: Kamala Harris visits Ann Arbor, Highlighting Hypocrisy in Federal Climate… was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The new year brings new opportunities for workers to build power across the South. In Georgia specifically, one such significant opportunity lies in fighting for collective bargaining rights for public sector workers throughout the state. But what exactly does that mean and why is it so important?

Before we dive into that, we must first answer the question of what constitutes public sector work in Georgia. Public sector jobs are tax-payer-funded and service-driven. The most common examples are public school teachers and staff, firefighters, and healthcare workers, but public sector work is also in child care, social services, transportation, public utilities, sanitation, parks and recreation, environmental protection, libraries, museums, historical sites, and much more. Looking at that list, it’s clear that public sector work plays a crucial role in making local communities function and thrive, and it’s imperative that we empower these workers to have a democratic say in how their own workplaces operate. 

Collective bargaining allows workers to negotiate their wages, hours, health benefits, and other workplace conditions. In other words, collective bargaining gives workers a seat at the table, so of course, it is vital to our goal as Socialists to win power back to working people. However, in Georgia, public sector workers are banned from bargaining a contract. Most private-sector worker unionization in the United States is overseen by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRB), but the legal scope of collective bargaining for state and local public sector workers falls to states and local authorities. Our state does permit public sector workers to form and join unions, but Georgia law prohibits those unions from bargaining on behalf of their members. That means that the state has total control over these workers’ wages, health benefits, retirement funding, sick leave, and workplace health and safety. 

Additionally, Georgia is a right-to-work state, which means workers cannot be required to join or pay union dues if their workplace is unionized. Without collective bargaining rights, unions have less power and therefore there is less of an incentive for workers to join, which only further diminishes unions’ potential reach and strength. That’s part of the reason why Georgia has the ninth-lowest percentage of unionized workers in the country, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As Atlanta Civic Center recently put it, “About one in 10 U.S. workers is in a union. In Georgia, the rate is less than one in 20.”

To fully legalize collective bargaining rights in Georgia, we need pro-labor state legislators to introduce and pass a bill that repeals and amends the sections of Georgia law denying public sector workers collective bargaining powers, like HB 1576 which was introduced last year but not passed. Even better would be a bill granting public sector workers the right to strike. Right now, under Georgia law, public employees cannot promote, encourage, or participate in any strike and will in fact be terminated if they do. But the right to strike is hugely important because as workers, our power comes from our labor. Therefore, withholding that labor is one of our strongest and most effective methods of control over our employment conditions.

While all workers deserve a seat at the table, Georgia’s 680,000 public service workers have significant need for the power that would come with collective bargaining rights and the right to strike. The public sector in particular is largely made up of workers from historically marginalized and disadvantaged populations. According to a Georgia State University report, women have consistently made up a larger percentage of Georgia’s state and local government employees over the last four decades, and there are more women working in the public sector in Georgia than in the private sector. Recent data from Morehouse College shows that more than 6 out of ten public sector employees in Georgia are women. Black workers are also more likely to be employed in the public sector both in our state and across the U.S. As the Economic Policy Institute reports, “Public-sector jobs are rungs to the middle class for Black workers, who often face labor market discrimination, especially in the private sector where employers may be less likely to follow standardized hiring and promotion practices.”

Many public sector workers around the country are also underpaid. Nationally, 32.7% of state and local government employees are paid less than $20 an hour and 15.6% of the sector is paid less than $15 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In Georgia, that share is higher. Over 20% of Georgia’s state and local government employees make less than $15 an hour. The right to collective bargaining is a recourse for change in this area and many others. 

Collective bargaining provides an important fair wage premium for public sector workers. It ensures they earn as much as 20 percentage points higher than public workers in states where public collective bargaining is banned, per the Morehouse College report. And research published in the American Journal of Public Health has shown that workers represented by a collective bargaining agreement have higher living standards, and the benefits that workers reap from collective bargaining rights have been shown to spill over into their communities, improving public health and boosting civic engagement. For public sector work, which is based entirely in serving the public, those community benefits that come with collective bargaining rights are even more directly seen and widely felt. For example, One example of this is that higher wages for teachers can mean better school staffing, smaller classrooms, and thus better education for students. Similarly, better paid health care workers means quicker and improved care for patients and healthier communities. , which is, of course,  In summary, Georgians have a lot to gain from standing with workers fighting for workplace democracy and in turn stronger public services for all! s a whole better for the community as a whole. All Georgians have a lot to gain from passing public sector collective bargaining in our state.

Currently, 26 states across the country allow public sector collective bargaining, and we can play a role in getting Georgia to join them. In the coming weeks, Atlanta DSA will be working closely with the United Campus Workers (UCW) of Georgia to push Georgia State House members to sign onto a bill to legalize public sector bargaining rights during 2023’s fast-approaching legislative session, and we need your help! 

Sign our petition in support of public sector bargaining and the right to strike for public sector employees, and reach out to your State Representatives to let them know this is an urgent issue! Sign up to join phone banking, text banking, and outreach events to promote awareness throughout our community and build support for the issue. Be sure to also share the petition with friends and family members, especially if they happen to be public sector workers. Finally, if you are a public sector worker, reach out to Atlanta DSA about organizing your workplace or getting involved with a union. 

Note: Since the publishing of this article, SB 166 has officially been introduced to the Georgia State Senate! Write you legislators here and ask them to sponsor the bill.

The post Georgia’s Public Sector Workers Need Bargaining Rights Now appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

The first thing I want to say about our December 10 defense of the Fall River Pride Committee’s drag story time is that we succeeded.

I wanted to start out that way because between all the various mediocre news stories and online commentaries, you might not realize it. But we succeeded. When neo-Nazi group NSC tried to rush the door, it was our team of volunteers from an ad hoc coalition of local organizations including Boston DSA, that kept them out. We, the team that I coordinated, did keep them out, and we were able to keep attendees safe. And through friendliness and creativity – singing, bells, colorful masks – our volunteers at the side door were able to provide an atmosphere of fun and normalcy for the children as they entered the event, even with NSC outside the front door and Proud Boys across the street. Volunteers were able to escort families to their cars as they left. We did all this not by being some kind of elite strike force, but by showing up, working together well, using our varied skills (tactical situational awareness, first aid, cheery child-friendly charisma, and more), and by keeping our cool.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for me, and I suspect there are other people on the team who feel similarly. It’s frightening to be rushed by neo-Nazis who have a lot more muscle mass than you and who outnumber you (because they arrived quite early, only some of our team was there at the time of the rush). I was hit multiple times in the solar plexus, slammed against the doors. I would rather not have been injured, and would rather none of my comrades had been injured either. I heard a whole lot of slurs that morning. I’ve been frustrated at attempts to credit the police for keeping people safe when the cops were not present during the rush on the doors, and who later claimed to not be able to tell the difference between us, in our varied clothing, and neo-Nazis in group merch and quasi-uniform dress). But none of that changes the first sentence in this essay. We succeeded in defending drag story time.

This Saturday, January 14, is the next drag story time in Fall River, and this time it will be a little different – with a community support rally outside to provide fun and safety for all, to celebrate queerness and perseverance and courage. If it isn’t obvious, I’m writing this not simply to share my own experiences or perspective, but to encourage you to attend in support.

I have never been, to use a good friend’s phrase, a “woofing tough.” I have disabilities that impact my ability to build strength or coordinate my own movements. I have chronic pain issues. I avoid militant rhetoric and aesthetic in this kind of work because I don’t believe in raising stakes for nothing, and I don’t believe in making implied promises that I can’t back up. Every time fascists yell in my general direction about how they’d win in a fight, I shrug internally, because I’ve never thought otherwise. And yet over the last few years I’ve worked more action frontlines than I care to recall. A lot of people have been beside me on those lines who didn’t think of themselves before as the kind of people who could do this work. No matter how much groups like NSC want it to be so, we antifascists aren’t their mirror image and we don’t operate on the same terms with only the politics changed. If I have stood for anything in my time organizing against the far right, it is that this work does not belong only to the strong and the powerful.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want good people to participate in supporting our communities and opposing the intimidation and the organizing of the far right. I don’t want people to think they can’t or shouldn’t do it, or that their contributions aren’t real, because in some way they aren’t the “right” type of person.

So come one, come all, to Fall River this Saturday – whether you’re an old hand or this would be your first action, whether you’re a ninja or regularly trip over your own feet. Dress for the weather (wearing comfortable shoes, wearing hats and masks, minimizing the amount of cotton against your body). Keep your cool, act collectively, and follow the lead of organizers (because this all has a goal and it’s not individualized catharsis). Be aware of what’s happening around you, make sure you have safe ways to enter and exit, and enjoy the performances! Numbers will make us all safer, make it more possible for people who are afraid or uncomfortable or unsure to participate. The numbers we turn out could mean the difference in whether a family feels safe enough to attend the drag story time.

Together we can preserve this queer space, and send a much-needed message to any queer kids (or adults) who may be watching: tomorrow need not be as bleak as neo-Nazis and bro-fascists want them to believe.

New York State Assembly Members and Senators headed back to Albany last week for the start of the 2023 legislative session. We caught up with Queens Assembly Member and socialist Zohran Mamdani the night before the session began to learn how he’s feeling about this year's prospects to pass legislation that will help the working class and the addition of two new socialist legislators. We also talked to him about why his office joined as an intervening party to stop Con Edison from raising gas and electric bills and his platform of legislation to fix the MTA. We’re also joined live tonight by Lizzy Oh and Brandon West to talk about one of New York City DSA’s priority campaigns this year - taxing the rich.  

To submit a public comment against ConEd's proposed rate hike visit: bit.ly/NoConEdRateHike

For more information on the Fix the MTA platform, visit: www.fixthemta.org

For more information on the Tax the Rich campaign, visit: www.taxtherichny.com

By Jamie Partridge, secretary PDX DSA Labor

For years now, the Portland DSA Labor group has sponsored Socialist Job Fairs, about every six months. Up to fifty socialists, half DSA members and half we are just meeting for the first time, show up to connect with about fifteen workplace organizers, looking for the right job. A job organizing with other socialists: to form a union or energize an existing union.

We manage to place about ten participants each time. At organized companies like UPS, Hyatt Hotel, City of Portland, Maletus Beverage, US Postal Service, Burgerville. etc. At unionizing companies like Starbucks and Amazon. And of those ten, some don’t stick around.

Now we are launching a Socialist Workers Support Group, to provide regular mentoring, group support and workplace organizer training and political education about socialists in unions.

In previous eras socialists were often respected workplace leaders. These radicals helped organize workers into a collective force that went beyond workplace fights and into the political arena. That is much less common today. The left often finds itself on the outside looking in when workplace struggle erupts. Socialists are more likely to be organizing strike support than leading strikes.

This divide has weakened both workers’ movements and the left. The socialist movement is stronger when tied to workers’ movements, and vice versa. Rebuilding the link between them is key to revitalizing both, and to keeping our movement grounded in the reality of workers’ lives.

Socialists should root themselves in the labor union movement. Not as supporters from afar or paid staff, but as rank-and-file workers. Not as saviors with all the answers, but as organizers for what Marx called the “self-emancipation of the working class.”

Consider the advantages of a union job that matches your talents, and of choosing one together with fellow DSAers. The pay is decent, and the work itself may be fulfilling, too. All our political work isn’t shunted off to nights and weekends; you can be talking with your co-workers every day. There’s no mismatch between your political life and what you do to keep body and soul together.

Find us at https://tinyurl.com/pdxdsalabor

On Tuesday, December 13th, 2022, several members of Colorado Springs DSA and the Chinook Center delivered the following public comments during the Colorado Springs City Council 2023 budget meeting. The full text of our statement is below.

Part one: Introduction and Budget Summary

My organization operates out of the Chinook Center, a local community center that provides a safe haven for progressive community organizations. They also offer a free grocery service every Sunday out of their office in southeast Colorado Springs, which is an area that is historically low-income and historically underserved by city resources. The shopping center where they are based is also home to two other food banks by other community organizations. Yet even with three food banks, our community still struggles to meet the demand for food and basic necessities like clothing and personal care items. Our community lacks access to public transportation to get around the city for work and the necessary errands that keep life flowing. In the southeast, we see poverty and homelessness every day, while only a few miles away, people in wealthier, better-funded sides of town enjoy easy access to grocery stores and parks, recreational activities, and well-funded schools. 

I’m here today to advocate for real change in the community, change that benefits the working class in Colorado Springs — not change that caters to the wealthy real estate corporations, nor change that criminalizes poverty. The change we’re looking for is investment in communities, rather than a bloated budget for CSPD. 

Out of the City’s overall 2023 budget of $420,306,552, CSPD is proposed to receive a total of $132,216,218. This gigantic proposed 2023 budget makes up 31% of the total city budget and represents an increase of almost $7 million dollars from 2022.

When salaries are compared across the departments in the proposed budget, CSPD is receiving 43% of the salaries, compared to 9% going to Public Works, 4% to Parks and Recreation, and a meager 3% to Planning and Community Development.

This lopsided budget reflects the upside-down priorities of this city council. For our communities to flourish, the communities themselves must receive the necessary funding for strong social safety nets. There are no excuses for the hunger and poverty that exist in this city, especially in Southeast Colorado Springs. When working class families and individuals have their basic needs met, they’re able to live the dignified lives that all Colorado Springs residents deserve.

Part Two: Addressing Homelessness

The covid-19 pandemic not only had a detrimental impact on our economy, but on our collective mental health. This has led to more bad outcomes for those suffering with mental illness and substance use disorder. Colorado currently has some of the lowest funding for mental health in the nation. These issues factor heavily into the rates of homelessness in our state and locally.

From 2007-2021, homelessness rose 266% in Colorado, more than any other state in the country.

Nationwide, we rank 5th for the number of sheltered, chronically homeless individuals, and 11th for the number of people who are unhoused. Statewide, officials estimate that over 9,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness.

In El Paso County, the most recent point-in-time survey found that more than 1,400 people are unhoused, with over a quarter of those being teenagers and young adults aged 15-24.

The city wants to give CSPD 31% of the city budget. Politicians say that crime is on the rise here due to police reforms. While crime is on the rise nationally, crime in Colorado Springs has overwhelmingly decreased from 2019-2021 according to a recent study that was reported on in CPR in March of this year. We also have seen nothing in the way of true police reforms, so it is difficult to understand why politicians are crediting something that never happened for statistics that don’t exist. We must put people above inflammatory politics to give our people the lives of safety and dignity that they deserve, but our city continues to push homelessness farther and farther out of the city with the Pedestrian Access Act, to criminalize our most vulnerable, and to put money into police and business interests. 

Meanwhile, our crisis of homelessness is deepening as inflation rises. Fentanyl deaths are also on the rise. Contrary to how conservative state and city leaders prefer to frame the issues of homelessness, substance use disorder, and mental illness, these are not problems that can be solved with sweeps, jobs, and more willpower from the people affected. These are public health emergencies that desperately need funding to provide people with homes and care. 

Recently, a U.S. News & World Report ranked Colorado Springs as one of the best places in the country to live, but this is not true for those who struggle to make ends meet as housing prices continue to skyrocket. In 2021, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported that people working full time would need to earn $22 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs, yet our state minimum wage will only go up to $13.65 per hour next year. We have people experiencing homelessness when they are fully employed. This is not a crisis of laziness, it is a crisis of low wages and exorbitant corporate greed. We should not be enabling predatory housing practices in our city. 

And when it comes to those who are unhoused due to severe mental illness, disability, and substance use disorder, these issues are public health issues and we must care for our most vulnerable. It is a shameful and cowardly act for those who occupy positions of power to punch down at those with no power. Our people deserve better, and we expect better of you. 

Housing first with supportive wraparound services is the only policy proven to end homelessness and effectively treat the substance use and mental illness of the people that suffer from them, in addition to being proven as the more economical choice. In other words, we must fund compassion and meet people where they are, NOT fund measures that contribute to a culture of victim-blaming people for their own illnesses. Housing and healthcare are human rights. We don’t want excuses. We want housing for all, and we want you, our City Council, to give this issue the funding it deserves. 

Part Three: Mass Incarceration and the Criminal Injustice System

In theory, police are here to stop crime, but they do nothing to address crime at its roots, because police only respond once a crime has taken place. In fact, our policies of mass incarceration are directly linked to rises in crime. When you punish people who are victims of poverty and trauma with the traumatic experience of incarceration, where they are subject to strip searches and the loss of all their basic rights, you do not set these people up to be rehabilitated members of society upon their release. 

According to The Compassion Prison Project, 64% of the U.S. population has experienced at least one adverse childhood experience of violence, abuse, or trauma. In comparison, 98% of the U.S. prison population has experienced an adverse childhood experience. The more adverse childhood experiences that people have, the more likely they are to end up incarcerated. It is estimated that 20-25% of people in jails and prisons have mental illness, meaning that they are overrepresented in carceral detention compared to the rest of the population. Another study has found that formerly incarcerated people are 62% more likely to die by suicide. Prisons and jails are not mental health treatment facilities, yet we use them to imprison those amongst us who need the most help. While prisons fall under the state domain and the jail is in the jurisdiction of the county, CSPD, as the point of arrest, serves as the gateway to the mass incarceration of our community members that don’t need to be in jail or prison, but need to be treated by medical and behavioral specialists. 

It is well-known that the root causes of both non-violent and violent crime are often found in economic stressors such as housing insecurity, food insecurity, lack of access to medical and mental healthcare, and lack of access to childcare. Yet the city and the nation as a whole refuse to put money towards helping people with these issues and instead put money into militarized police, jails and prisons, and for-profit halfway homes. 

It is also well-evidenced that the entire criminal injustice system economically burdens those who enter it, from court and attorney fees to fees for drug testing and court-mandated classes, to halfway house and sober living fees, and more. All together, the criminal injustice system punishes those who are most vulnerable and works to make it more likely that people will return to jail and prison, rather than supporting them to lead better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities in the future. 

Colorado Springs is one of the top three cities alongside Denver and Aurora that send people to state prisons, with most of the Colorado Springs prison population coming from Southeast Colorado Springs, the community that the Chinook Center and its member organizations serve. Our incarcerated are disproportionately people of color, especially Black and Latinx people. This is also the area of town where people are most likely to be low-income, to live in food deserts and experience food insecurity, to lack health insurance and access to medical and mental healthcare, to lack adequate transportation, and to be overlooked by city resources. 

We must also call attention to the recent deaths in El Paso County CJC. At least nine people have died in CJC custody in 2022 alone, with the most recent one passing away just this past Sunday. Again, CSPD serves as one of the main points of arrest in our city and a gateway to CJC. We should be putting our city dollars towards helping people and giving them the resources they need to live healthy, safe, and dignified lives, not signing them up for a death sentence at the hands of the carceral state before they are even found to be guilty of a crime. 

When we put our city, state, and federal dollars into supporting people, it builds a healthier, friendlier, and safer place for all to live. The failures of our local police and criminal injustice policies only serve to make us less safe, and our community deserves better.

Part Four: Club Q

Less than a month ago, an armed gunman put Colorado Springs in the national eye with a mass shooting in one of the few safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community in a city that has historically marginalized them. There are no words for the depth of the pain and trauma that this has inflicted on members of our city, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community, and especially our youth that are still trying to understand themselves and their place in a world that tolerates hatred and violent rhetoric towards people on the basis of who they love and how they identify.

The anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric comes from all corners of Colorado and Colorado Springs. Our House Representative Doug Lamborn wrote a statement on December 5th, 2017 defending the rights of business owners to discriminate against potential customers on the basis of their sexual orientation. That statement remains on his website to this day. Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert has also regularly posted anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric on her social media, characterizing members of the LGBTQ+ community as groomers seeking to harm our children. For a long time, Colorado Springs has been known as the home of Focus on the Family and other anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical churches that regularly encourage their members to condemn queerness as a sin. The problem is also growing in local Colorado Springs school districts, where parent groups like Advocates for D20 Kids, FEC United, Moms for Liberty, the deceitfully named FAIR organization, and others have lobbied for the dissolving of the equity and inclusion department at D-11, for segregation of LGBTQ+ students onto a separate campus in D-20, and for the squashing of the Social and Emotional Learning program at D-49, which school board member Ivy Liu, who openly posts Hitler quotes on her social media, has characterized as “indoctrination.” All of these organizations and politicians have the blood of our community and LGBTQ+ people throughout the nation on their hands. We ourselves came terrifyingly close to losing people that we love and value deeply, and we have mourned the losses of those who were taken from us with our friends that knew the victims. This tragedy was extremely personal, and we will never stop fighting for the agenda of queer liberation as members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs District Attorney Michael Allen and the court he works for want us to believe that they could not do more to prevent the bloodshed. They want us to believe that because they could not subpoena the shooter’s families, that they could not prosecute a terrorist who had a three-hour armed standoff with a SWAT team while the terrorist live-streamed the encounter on Facebook and threatened to blow the place up. They expect us to believe that they could not prosecute someone who had over 100 pounds of explosive material, guns, and ammunition in a basement. They expect us to believe that with all the police witnesses who faced the danger posed by this individual, that they could not bring a strong prosecution against a terrorist that even the FBI knew about. We do not accept this excuse, and we cannot make sense of the fact that an armed terrorist was allowed to walk free while so many of those who are suffering from poverty, substance use disorder, and severe mental illness are prosecuted and incarcerated by the very courts that botched the opportunity to prevent an act of terror and hatred. 

Colorado ranks among the worst states for mental health funding. We need money to go to mental health services for the community that has been so deeply traumatized by this catastrophe. We need funding for LGBTQ+ specific resources and more safe spaces, pro-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric from all corners of our city, violence prevention and equity and inclusion programs to teach acceptance and love to our youth. City officials should condemn anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from churches, parent groups, school boards, and local and state politicians. You all should be advocating for the IRS to amend the tax-exempt status of churches and organizations that are engaging in dangerous hate speech that amplifies and accelerates violence. We should have a Pride flag hanging from city hall and all city buildings year-round, not just when the eye of the nation is on our city. City Council must make sure LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities are prioritized to receive the services we need to keep us safe. We need justice, not excuses. We will not stop until the legacy of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred in Colorado Springs is ancient history, and neither should you. 

Part Five: Police Brutality by CSPD

CSPD has shown repeatedly that they have a culture which produces violent language and actions. This manifests in unjustifiable harm to members of our community.

Just this past October, CSPD pulled over a 29-year-old black veteran who was living out of his car for failing to produce a license plate. Officers claimed to smell marijuana and proceeded to pull the man from his car while repeatedly punching and kicking him in the head and back. This attack caused eye injuries and a ruptured eardrum. The DUI charge, which was the stated reason for arrest, was later dropped. As far as I’m aware, CSPD has yet to even comment on this incident.

Let us not forget that in 2019, CSPD officers murdered Devon Bailey after they claimed he “matched the description” of an assault suspect. They shot him 3 times in the back as he fled. The officers involved received 3 days paid administrative leave and were returned to active duty.

In 2020, police were called to the scene where a 17-year-old girl was having a panic attack. The girl in question was also a survivor of sexual assault. As she was sitting on the curb crying, how did CSPD respond to this situation? They threw her to the ground, cuffed her, and put her in the back of a cop car. Surely when the supervising Sergeant Gregory Wilhelmi arrived on scene, he was able to de-escalate the situation, right? Wrong. He thought the best course of action would be to pepper spray this teenage girl twice in the face then close the door on her, effectively sealing her in with the pepper spray. But hey, at least they cracked the window after several minutes of agonizing pain. Currently, zero consequences have been given to the officers responsible.

In the summer of 2020 as nationwide uprisings were fighting for the defense of black lives, officer Keith Wrede watched a Facebook live of a local protest. In the comments, Keith decided to comment “KILL THEM ALL.” What was his punishment? Suspended. With pay. Must be nice to get paid vacation after calling for the murders of peaceful protestors.

On July 31st, 2021, the Colorado Springs Housing 4 All Coalition held a march to advocate for affordable housing within the city. CSPD decided to disrupt this peaceful protest by attacking and arresting demonstrators who were occupying one lane of Tejon due to the narrow sidewalks near Dorchester Park. Prior to these violent arrests, CSPD officers were recorded on their bodycams speaking freely about the violence they wish to unleash on protestors who, to be clear, just wanted rents in the city to be lower. One officer expressed wanting to encourage onlookers to “stone them to death.” Another officer said that they should launch “stingers,” a nickname for flash grenades, at demonstrators. Furthermore, officers can be seen in this bodycam footage looking over a piece of paper which had names and photographs of central organizers of the march. 

For nearly a full year leading up to the housing march, CSPD embedded an undercover operative in multiple leftist community organizations. These included the Chinook Center who organizes a food bank with delivery, Colorado Springs Tenants Union who advocates on behalf of renters, Colorado Springs Democratic Socialists of America who seek to advocate for working class interests, and the Colorado Springs Mutual Aid and Solidarity Union who distribute food and supplies weekly to our unhoused neighbors. This undercover officer attempted to entrap activists into illegally purchasing firearms, and yet after over a year of investigation, no illegal activity was found by any of the organizations. 

A month after the Club Q shooter had a 3-hour standoff with the SWAT team, CSPD thought a more important priority would be to surveil community organizers who were advocating for affordable housing. These actions of infiltration, surveillance, and outright violence have traumatized members of the community and caused them to feel unsafe going about their daily lives. How can we possibly stand to give CSPD 44% of salaries in the city budget while they routinely demonstrate a pattern of violent behavior, targeting people for their political beliefs?

It is beyond time for the City of Colorado Springs to prioritize the well-being of our communities and the necessary services to support them. CSPD’s overinflated budget needs to be redistributed to focus on fixing the systemic issues that prevent our neighbors from living dignified lives. Housing first. Mental health. Drug addiction treatment. Infrastructure. Funding these, not CSPD and the criminalization of poverty, is how our communities will thrive.

Members of Colorado Springs City Council, you have a unique opportunity with the 2023 city budget to make a historic impact in our city by funding the resources we actually need, resources that make us safer, healthier, and happier. Fund communities and services, not corporations and the police. We’ve had two politically-motivated mass shootings in our city in less than a decade — first the Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015 and then the Club Q shooting last month. We need real solutions, not inaction and excuses. The whole country is looking at us right now, and what we do matters. Stop funding the problem and start funding real solutions. Our lives depend on it. 

by Whit S

Sure, we can read The Sopranos as an epic tale of capitalism in North Jersey, and recent regionally-shot films like Halle Berry’s Bruised or even Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story as parables of class, among other things. But there’s a deeper history of explicitly class-struggle cinema in North Jersey— this is just the tip of the iceberg, but here’s a quick survey of some films that are all available free online:

The Passaic Textile Strike (1926): The 1926-27 textile workers’ strike in Passaic, Garfield, and Clifton was, as historian Jacob Zumoff notes, “the first mass workers’ struggle in which the Communist Party played a lead role.” Part of that effort included this silent film, used for both propaganda and fundraising. Opening with a fictional prologue, it’s mostly documentary, and invaluable as a record of North Jersey labor radicalism. Read Zumoff’s recent book The Red Thread for a deep dive on why the strike, although ultimately unsuccessful, carries ongoing historical significance (https://youtu.be/b0gr8H-VHyQ).

Troublemakers (1966): In 1964, the leading organization of the New Left, Students for a Democratic Society, moved from college campuses into economically depressed urban areas in an attempt to forge “an interracial movement of the poor.” This portrait of the Newark branch details the challenges of building participatory democracy, when campaigns for basic housing rights or even stop signs become insurmountable struggles, and it’s also unflinching about the challenges of solidarity when middle-class college-aged white people try to organize in the poor and Black community of Clinton Hill. I won’t spoil where it all ends up, but suffice it to say, its release in 1966 coincided with a rising sense that the New Left needed to further radicalize (https://vimeo.com/244908853).

With No One to Help Us (1967): What people remember about Newark in 1967 are riots/rebellion. This short documentary offers an alternate take: Black women in Clinton Hill forming a buyers club to counter exploitative merchants with collective power. Showing heart-wrenching debates and the constant precarity of group cohesion, it offers an exemplary case study of what mutual aid can look like with a focused campaign that avoids pre-figurative floundering. An important corrective to the broader marginalization of Black women in the cinematic history of the US left, too (https://vimeo.com/241205041).

The Case of the Legless Veteran (1981): James Kutcher isn’t a household name, but as a disabled World War II vet who was fired in 1948 from his job at the Newark Veterans Administration office for belonging to the Socialist Workers Party, he endured a harrowing eight- year legal battle—which he eventu- ally won, meaning that a socialist in Newark played a key role in defeating the repressive red scare that swept the nation in the 1950s. Stylistically, this is a meat-and-potatoes documentary that approaches the case through a national lens, so you won’t get rich New Jersey footage (you get a bit more from Kutcher’s 1953 autobiography of the same title, though Robert Justin Goldstein’s book about the case, Discrediting the Red Scare, has more to say about the SWP)—but as a bonus, you do get the pioneering leftist journalist I.F. Stone as a talking head (https://youtu.be/9sbdlIdt9HY).

Street Echoes (1983): In 1975, documentarian Robert Newman made the short Paterson, whose captivating visuals are derailed by excessive centering of bootlicking, pro-police judges and politicians. It’s on the Internet Archive and worth watching (https://archive.org/details/Paterson), but more interesting is Hector Alers’ Street Echoes, shot on Super-8mm and sponsored by the city Department of Recreation. It’s also a bit ideologically muddled, and you’ve got to be patient with low-fidelity audiovisual quality, but its unvarnished DIY depiction of proletarian youth delivers a striking portrait of North Jersey life in the early 1980s (https://archive.org/details/StreetEchoes_518)

Bonus film: Lianna (1983) isn’t streaming for free, and it’s a movie about a woman coming out as a lesbian written and directed by a straight man—but John Sayles has always been one of our most class-conscious filmmakers, from his novel Union Dues (1977) to the strike film Matewan (1987), and Lianna shows the literal costs of coming out in the early 1980s, in terms of downward mobility, while also showing Hoboken in all its glory. So, honorary mention for this list.

The post Class-Struggle Cinema of North Jersey first appeared on North NJ DSA.

Photo credit: Ian Castro

The historic strike of 48,000 academic workers across the ten campuses of the University of California and the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory came to a close on December 23, when the two remaining bargaining units of the United Auto Workers – UAW Local 2865 and SRU-UAW – voted to ratify new contracts. That ratification vote ended one chapter in the long struggle of academic workers for union recognition, fair working conditions and a public education system that elevates the public good over private profit. 

Striking workers and their supporters utilized a range of tactics during the six-week work stoppage, from pickets, rallies and marches to building occupations and actions against individual Chancellors and Regents. Among the tactics that, many believe, put the greatest pressure on the University were pickets at loading docks. Strong contingents of strikers at several campuses picketed deliveries. At UC Berkeley these pickets, organized by rank-and-file strikers, became known as “gas pickets” due to their focus on stopping the delivery of gasses and other essential research supplies on which labs commonly depend. The result was to spread the work stoppage by slowing the progress of labs that attempted to function during the strike. 

These loading-dock pickets operated not by blockade, but by the power of solidarity. Picketers informed drivers of the nature of the strike, and requested that they honor the picket line. Many drivers – including both UPS Teamsters and non-union delivery drivers – complied. 

As academic workers reflect on their experiences, they are not only concluding that they came out of this strike stronger than they went in, but are also envisioning the next chapter in their struggle – and its connection with the broader struggles of the multiracial working class. Here, we present the reflections of one group of strikers on the lessons that emerged from the gas pickets. – The Editors

We want to take a moment to reflect on the last several weeks and on the path forward. We are fighting for contracts that make academic work accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic background, access-needs, residential status, or status as parents or caretakers. Though the gains in our newly ratified contracts are not insignificant, we have not yet achieved this goal. Regardless of whether we could have achieved more in our recent negotiations, overhauling a system that was not built to include many of our workers will take long-term and resolute persistence in the face of formidable challenges. 

We believe that the power of our strike was not discrete nor pre-determined but rather a dynamic function of our sustained individual and collective actions. No single one of us had the power to make the University concede to the demands of our union but each of us made our strike more powerful when we came together. We believe that the leverage our bargaining teams had at their disposal was primarily determined not by the size of the picket lines, but by the collective stoppage of our work and the immense amount of organizing that went into supporting members of our union in continuing to do so, through infrastructure set up by both union leadership and by rank-and-file members. Even when the University feigned normality and SRU-UAW and UAW 2865 leadership told us that our power was waning, so many of us responded not by declaring defeat, but by continuing to organize even harder to grow the power of our strike. This alone is an act of courage, an empowered recognition of our value to the University and affirmation that we can fight for what we deserve. 

Our gas and delivery pickets were organized not through a directive, but through the desire to put pressure on the University of California even beyond the stoppage of our own work. These efforts emerged organically from our involvement in similar efforts to shut down construction work and garbage pickup which were fruitful but ultimately limited by legal technicalities and by severe no-strike clauses to which the University binds its workers. As we are researchers who work in many of the buildings we picketed, we know all too well what slows research operations; in non-strike times, we are the ones eagerly awaiting packages and calling gas and cryogen companies to accelerate the deliveries and the speed of our research, the research that the University of California proudly publicizes and profits from. 

While at present we do not have the opportunity to continue to grow our strike to win more of the demands that our workers acutely need, we are very proud of the momentum that we have all built together through stopping our research and teaching and through our disruptive picket lines. Although thorough quantification of our impacts remains an effort in progress, in addition to countless anecdotes of significant threats of and actualized disruption to research and university operations, we have several concrete indications: 

• Thanks to the solidarity of the Teamsters Joint Councils 7 & 42 issuing a sanction so that members could honor our picket lines, few UPS deliveries occurred over the course of our six week strike. According to a UPS driver we spoke to, local UPS warehouses accumulated 35,000 packages that they have been unable to deliver to our campus. 
• On 12/21 UC Berkeley described their efforts to surmount our picket lines, and the impact of Teamsters not coming to campus at all, as triaging deliveries. 
• In terms of general research stoppage, a UC Berkeley HazMat employee recently told us that hazardous waste production was reduced by half during the strike.
• Tens of thousands of grades were withheld across the UC system, and at UCSD quantified to 23% of fall quarter grades 

Beyond direct impacts on the university, our picket lines were a place where we built solidarity and community. Workers from distant departments across campus stood together for hours, sometimes in the dark, cold, and rain to fight for our shared goals. We discussed bargaining and newly pertinent legal concepts, learned about the ways proposals would affect other workers in our union, creatively crafted chants, and respectfully challenged each other’s ideas. We benefited immensely from the solidarity of workers in other unions who expressed support and in many cases made monetary sacrifices or risked discipline or dismissal to refuse to cross our picket lines. We got a unique view of day-to-day University operations and the essential work that AFSCME 3299 members do on our campus every single day. We appreciate the unwavering support of DSA members, undergraduate students, and other community members who joined us on the line, shared wisdom, picked up slack when our members needed a break, and made sure we never went hungry or without caffeine. Our pickets at the loading dock became a praxis of our solidarity, bringing us together with all who share our struggles. 

So where do we go from here? What do we do with our grassroots energy and new reflexive reactions to seeing trucks on the horizon? It may take some time to get over the latter, so let each truck be a reminder of the solidarity we cultivated and received and of the fights we, as workers, have left to win. Contract ratification does not mean the end of our fight, only that it will look a little different now. Returning to our individual work does not preclude the longevity of our collective action. 

Just as we were supported by so many workers, we too can support workers in other trades in their own struggles to fight the boss, whether physically on local picket lines or from a distance. Workers in our own community are on strike or will be on strike in the near future; nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center are on strike until January 2, 2023. The teachers union, Oakland Education Association, is in the midst of contract negotiations and the United Teachers of Richmond voted to authorize a strike just last week. The Teamsters, our staunchest supporters, have a national contract with UPS that expires on August 1. These are opportunities to pay back the solidarity that our community has shown us, and to prove to them that our union fights for all workers, and not just for our own self interests. Furthermore, each and every one of us has lived experience that is extremely valuable for other academic workers going on strike. We are in the process of compiling the resources that we have developed over the last six weeks and documenting them so other academic workers can hit the ground running with disruptive pickets from the very first day of their strike. In addition to these more procedural documents, we would like to collect advice for future academic workers on strike from anyone willing to contribute. 

Lastly, though very importantly, we hope that all of you who spent the last six weeks fighting for a contract that would be transformative for all of our workers, and are in a position to do so, keep fighting both within and alongside the existing local UAW organization. We recognize that our union has failed to negotiate contracts that allow all of us to persist as graduate workers at all and to continue this fight. For those of us with more privilege, it may be tempting to give up and return to our siloed ivory tower labs and offices where we can better control our individual progress. But this is OUR union and OUR university and we must instead look forward to forging a more democratic union that fights for all of our workers, including those most precarious and those that cannot yet afford to work within this system at all. To achieve this, we need the active members of our union to be people as dedicated as all of you, who are willing to make sacrifices for each other, who read and listen to all — with critical eyes and ears and through the lens of strong principles. 

Through our grassroots efforts and those of other rank-and-file members, we have seen firsthand the power that each of us has to make things happen without waiting for directions or approval from a higher authority. The bold vision for our fight– to bring all of our workers out of the rent burden and make academia more equitable and just– was shaped by rank-and-file members. It was the principled fortitude of the rank and file that pushed our bargaining team to not settle for UC’s 12/2 offer and continue bargaining for a contract that brings us closer to what we deserve. The strength of any union, and especially our union, lies in the breadth and depth of engagement of its members. This strike and contract ratification vote represents an unprecedented volume of participation by the members of our union. Let us not take for granted that seven thousand of our colleagues believed in our collective power to keep fighting for a contract that serves all of us. 

It is difficult to find words to describe all that was our gas picket, but in this moment of history, we get to share these spots of time. We feel so grateful to have stood alongside you all over the last several weeks and want you to know that we continue to stand with you, even if not physically. We hope everyone takes time to rest and care for themselves and each other. 

Wishing you a restful holiday and an empowered new year. 

In solidarity, 

UC Berkeley ‘gas picket’ organizers

Wheareas,

1. The labor movement has long been recognized as the most important engine for socialist change in society due to its power to halt the flow of goods and services the capitalist class depends on.
2. Socialists recognize that the right to strike or threat thereof is the primary and most powerful instrument of the labor movement and should never be surrendered under any circumstances.
3. Railroad workers have been working under inhumane Dickensian conditions where their employers will not grant them even a single sick day during a pandemic in order to disgustingly benefit themselves by extracting larger profits from their labor.
4. A central demand of the rail worker’s unions has been to be granted a reasonable period of sick leave.
5. Rail workers died at more than twice the rate of other workers from Jan. 2020 to May 2022 and more than three times other workers in 2021 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s MMWR.
6. The United States shifted to a service economy model, which reduced reliance on domestic production for the stuff of everyday life. This reduced the power of domestic factory workers, but wildly enhanced the potential power of logistics workers in airline, shipping, trucking, and rail industries that are situated between a global production system and a domestic consumption system.
7. Threatened by this potential halt to critical infrastructure, the capitalist government is attempting to declare the strike illegal via the passage of legislation. This in effect would make railroad workers involuntary labor, banned under the 13th amendment (except for its racist loophole for people convicted of a crime). Presumably, such a law will be eventually backed with force of arms if workers disobey.
8. DSA National put out a statement calling for a NO vote on H.J. 100 at 10:41am, about two hours before roll call at 1:02pm. While not ideal, this is sufficient time for DSA federal representatives to be made aware of it.
9. Three DSA elected officials, Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes (AOC), Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush voted for a bill that would make the railroad strike illegal. We applaud the fact that Rep. Rashida Tlaib did vote no.
10. AOC tweeted that the union asked her to vote this way to protect a sick days amendment that would obviously die in the Senate (and did).
11. The DSA has long had issues with our federal elected officials deviating from our political platform.
12. We must call our representatives to explain themselves to the DSA National Political Committee. While we are encouraged by DSA National releasing a statement that denounces the vote to break the strike and which calls for a town hall to discuss this, this statement does not meet all of our demands, which include a meeting with the wayward electeds to demand an explanation.
13. It is critical that DSA state in the clearest terms that we did not endorse H.J. 100 and do endorse workers’ right to strike. To do otherwise will perhaps irreparably damage our ability to support striking workers. Why would they trust an organization whose representatives actively attacked them from the heights of federal power?

Therefore be it resolved,

1. Central Jersey DSA endorses the “Railroad Workers United Open Letter to Congress and the President”.
2. Central Jersey DSA endorses the letter authored by Seattle DSA Local Council “3 DSA Members in Congress Vote to Ban Railroad Strike — They Don’t Speak For Us”.
3. If a railroad strike actually develops, Central Jersey DSA will do its part to support the strike.
4. Central Jersey DSA will publish this resolution on social media to educate our constituency and the broader public on our position.

The post Endorsing & Enforcing Railroad Workers’ Right to Strike appeared first on Central NJ DSA.