Last Friday, July 14, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) launched a strike, representing over 150,000 workers. This is the first time that SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) have been on strike at the same time since 1960. Both of these unions are up against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

The AMPTP is an alliance of major studio capitalists, including the “Big Five” –  Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures (Sony), and Paramount Pictures – which currently dominate over 80% of the media market. The “Big Five” have a significant presence in Atlanta, a city that has seen its film industry rapidly grow into a multi-billion dollar sector in recent years, employing over ten thousand workers.

On Monday, SAG-AFTRA held a kickoff rally at the local IATSE 479 Hall in Atlanta to mark the launch of the nationwide strike. Hundreds of members and supporters gathered to hear from speakers regarding the upcoming fight and the unions’ demands, including increased pay, stable employment, and measures to address the increasing use of AI to replace human labor.

Just as with WGA, the era of streaming and inflation has caused a considerable financial hit for actors, and a significant decrease in compensation. Additionally, workers are asking for more reasonable timelines to avoid long periods of unemployment between filming. Media bosses benefit from keeping employees captive and precarious between shoots, as a way to protect their bottom line and maximizing profits.

Finally, as if in a dystopian science-fiction, some major companies are attempting to claim actors’ “likeness” as property for their own profit. Using advanced AI tools, producers can scan an actor’s image and incorporate it digitally into any media production. Studios can even edit actors’ dialogue or appearance in movies without the actor even showing up for production. SAG-AFTRA is pushing back on these developments, demanding protections for workers, informed consent, and more adequate compensation for the use of their likeness. 

The wealthy investors that the AMPTP represents are a powerful force which shapes public opinion, and political and social movements through its control of media production. But with both WGA and SAG-AFTRA on strike, the absence of new media is bound to expose who’s actually doing the work to create the film and television content which makes these studios so profitable. The recently announced SAG-AFTRA strike not only coincides with the WGA contract fight, but also falls just two weeks before the UPS Teamsters plan to launch the largest private-sector strike the country has seen in decades. With worker militancy on the rise, it’s clear that workers from logistics to the film industry are growing increasingly conscious of their position in society and ability to win transformative change through collective action. 

This historic moment demands not only cross-union solidarity, but backing from the entire working class, and DSA is ready to support workers every step of the way! While most SAG-AFTRA pickets are currently concentrated in LA and New York, keep your eyes peeled for updates on Metro-Atlanta pickets and actions at https://www.sagaftrastrike.org/ and get involved in DSA to join our labor solidarity work.

Photos by Brandon Mishawn

The post Labor Militancy on the Rise: SAG-AFTRA Strikes! appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

UPS Teamsters are fighting for better pay, hours, and treatment on the job! If UPS doesn’t respond to workers’ demands before their contract expires on July 31, over 340,000 UPS workers are prepared to launch the largest strike in decades.

Show your support for UPS workers!

1. Do you know your UPS worker that brings packages to your work or to your home? Display this beautiful poster in your window to show your UPS worker and the community that you support their fight for a fair contract.

2. Join us next Friday, July 28 for our Strike Ready Fundraiser at the Gallatin Labor Temple! It will be an exciting night of live music to raise money for local UPS workers.

Featuring performances by:
STiLGONE
ART & FUNK COLLECTIVE
THREE PENNY RIOT

Suggested Donation $10

Donations will go to the DSA Labor Solidarity Fund, which is a national fund that supports local labor activity. Donations will support striking workers in Bozeman on this or future picket lines.

A wave of rank-and-file reforms is sweeping through the United States; from the United Auto Workers (UAW) to the Teamsters (IBT) to National Nurses United (NNU), the rank-and-file are taking back their unions. But, with union density at only 10.3% nationally, many workers have had no union experience. Union bureaucracy and the internal politics can be both dizzying and deflating for newcomers. Strategic questions have arisen about how we hold even the best leaders accountable, be it local reformers or national icons like Sean O’Brien and Shawn Fain. How do we continue to engage the rank-and-file when they believe their job is done because they’ve elected good people? How do we raise a movement for and by the workers?

Champlain Valley DSA (CVDSA) is attempting to address this issue in collaboration with the Vermont State Labor Council through roundtable discussions we call “Workers’ Circles.” These meetings, held every two weeks, are open to anyone interested in workplace organizing. A typical meeting could include union presidents, staff organizers, rank-and-filers, and workers in active new organizing campaigns. Discussions are open and follow no set agenda. Workers bring issues they face in the workplace or their union, and we share ideas on navigating and organizing around those issues. 

The idea of the Workers’ Circles grew out of Ellen David Friedman’s “Community Union Organizers” project in Ithaca, NY and a convergence in October with the help of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC). Although there is no set discussion topic, each session is guided according to the following organizing principles:

1. Assess power in your workplace. There is an imbalance of power between workers and bosses. The power that bosses and workers have are different. There are key decision-makers for different issues, organic leaders among workers, and key points of production/profit within every workplace.
2. Identify divisions and build unity. Each workplace has not only divisions based on race, gender, etc but also seniority, hours, shifts, departments, titles, tiers, etc. It’s important to be aware of all the differences among workers in your workplace, how they translate to workplace issues, and find a way to build unity. 
3. Take collective action. Workers can win and take power through collective action. This is where our creativity as a movement can really shine: from petitions, signing union cards, marches on the bosses, visibility actions, to going on strike and so much more in between. It’s important to consider how actions can escalate as needed and build toward supermajority support. To take collective action, you need to bring people together around issues that are widely felt, deeply felt, and winnable. 
4. Reflect and repeat. After taking collective action, workers should take the time to reflect on their overall success or lack thereof and any contributing factors. We learn from wins and losses – sometimes more from the latter than the former. However, we can’t learn from them as a movement if we don’t document and discuss.

“Having a place to go and get advice from people who had no vested interest in our campaign beyond general enthusiasm for labor organizing was very helpful,” says Gabriel Meyer-Lee, a member of UVM Graduate Students United (UAW). In the few months that we have been holding these meetings, we have given advice to active organizing campaigns including UVM Graduate Students United, Ben & Jerry’s Scoopers United, and Black Cap Workers United, as well as several campaigns that are not yet public. 

We have also helped union members play more active roles within their own organizations, often becoming stewards or new officers, paving the way for more democratic institutions. Michelle Sagalchik of VTNEA reports, “Workers’ Circle has also helped me process my new role as a steward in my union – I am able to crowdsource helpful tips and get advice from organizers who have been involved in building worker power for much longer than I have.” 

This effort has been a collaboration between Champlain Valley DSA and the Vermont State Labor Council. Since the reform slate United! took control of the Council in 2019, organizing has been prioritized over legislative efforts. The Workers’ Circles offer a unique opportunity for Council officers to hear about workers’ struggles on the ground and support new organizing. The Vermont State Labor Council can then use this information to strengthen its legislative efforts. In addition, these discussions bring together folks from different backgrounds, workplaces, and unions to discuss a shared passion: organized labor. As a result, the space has served as fertile ground for other organizing efforts, such as the VT PRO Act and a Burlington May Day festival. A few have even joined DSA. “As a newer union leader, the community of this group was integral in empowering my decisions and connecting me to broader aspects of organizing in Vermont,” states Rebekah Mendelsohn from Scoopers United.

Best of all, Workers’ Circles require very little to organize and maintain. However, it is helpful to identify a few people with deep connections within the labor movement and experienced organizers to get started. Personal networks greatly assist with outreach, and experienced organizers can offer more in-depth knowledge about organizing and practical insights. Aside from that, all that is needed is a meeting space and outreach, though snacks always help with turnout. Our promotion has mostly been done digitally, through email, social media, and focused text banks, with occasional flyering at bus stops, laundromats, and university bulletin boards. The return on time invested in these events is remarkably high. And with free-format discussion, low turnout is not really an issue–you can have a valuable, productive conversation with just a handful of attendees. We usually have around 20 participants in a circle, which provides a variety of experiences and perspectives and leads to more robust discussions.

The conversation is usually directed by a designated facilitator. Facilitators mentor each other between sessions to share the pedagogy of our peer-to-peer model. This person helps move the conversation along, prevents anyone from dominating the conversation (using an informal version of progressive stack), and has questions prepared if the discussion goes stale, which rarely happens. Prompts and questions usually include the following:

• What is going on in your workplace, and how could you and your coworkers come together to change it?
• What do we mean by democratic unionism, and how do we create democracy in our unions?
• How can we get more people invested in their locals?
• How can we benefit from collaboration among unions (i.e., cross-union solidarity)?

The goals of our discussions are to support each other in our struggles as workers, encourage participation in unions, and democratize authority within unions. Because the experience level in the room regularly ranges from brand-new to lifelong union members, there are always opportunities for growth, regardless of where the conversation leads. We try to stay focused on organic conversation and workplace issues, starting where the workers are, not where we think they should be. “There’s something really beautiful about seeing a group of people band together in the name of putting power back into the people’s hands. I truly believe that spaces like the Workers’ Circle are where real systemic change gets started.” says Kelemua Summa of Black Cap Coffee.

If we, as a labor movement, want the participation of the rank-and-file, we have to create supportive environments that foster learning, debate, and shared decision-making. Union leaders must listen to and respect the voices of the rank-and-file that elected them. Workers’ Circles are a unique, low-maintenance model that other DSA chapters can adapt and use to create an involved, militant rank-and-file that makes its voice heard by the boss and union leadership.

The post Vermont Workers’ Circles: A Space For Worker Power appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Representing around 1.1 million workers in the US and Canada in the fields of retail, grocery, healthcare, cannabis, and more, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)  is a major union with the potential to win big gains for workers. But some of its own members say the union is too top-down, lacks worker engagement and democracy, and isn't investing enough in organizing new workers in a time of increasing economic inequality and pressure on the working class. Tonight we're joined live by Enrique and Iris, two grocery worker-organizers and members of Essential Workers for Democracy, to discuss their efforts to reform their international union and "raise the floor" for workers everywhere.

Learn more about EW4D and get involved here: https://ew4d.org/

During its annual convention on July 8th, the Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) voted to censure LVDSA member and Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom for a bloated police budget as well as enabling routine police violence.

LVDSA is committed to uplifting the struggle of the working-class in social, economic, and political revolution, fighting to win a world organized and governed by and for the vast majority.

We observe Commissioner Segerblom, an elected representative and chapter member, consistently voting in favor of increased police and corrections funding year after year, including a 9.6%, $69M increase FY 2023-2024.

The Commissioner suggests, if not actively coordinates, increased policing in his district, specifically as a solution to the utterly American phenomenon of thousands of people without shelter in the wealthiest county in the history of the planet. The County and Commissioner Segerblom are cruel to deny unhoused people access to the same public spaces other human beings enjoy, in the near absence of any meaningful political will to solve what is a purely political housing crisis.

Officials increased LVMPD’s budget 37% since 2017 despite a 22% increase in use of force during the same period. 43% of LVMPD’s use of force targeted Black residents who are only 12.6% of the county, obviously indicating a consistent, historical pattern of racist policing. The Commissioner’s Ward E includes neighborhoods where there is a high concentration and largely disproportionate rate of imprisonment of Clark County residents.

DSA’s national platform affirms “incarceration, detention and policing are active instruments of class war which guarantee domination and reproduce racial inequalities” as well as poverty and mass violence. Police violence is a public health crisis, the American Public Health Association advocates the abolition of policing and prisons as we know it. The summer of rebellion of 2020 in response to police brutality and the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Tayler–among so many more–was the largest social movement in the history of the United States. Increased police/corrections funding directly contradicts the principles and platform of DSA and LVDSA, undermining a more just and equitable society.

Excessive funding solely allocated to policing perpetuates a system that diverts resources from other services and reduces the quality of life for many. Our chapter, as a grassroots democratic organization, has a responsibility to practice accountability among elected and non-elected members alike, to promote our collective platform and liberation.

LVDSA hereby censures Commissioner Segerblom for routinely voting for increased funding, enabling police violence and undermining our values as a chapter. LVDSA expresses its deep disappointment and disapproval of the failure to zealously defend the well-being of those in his district, specifically the most vulnerable who are unhoused or experiencing debilitating mental health.

LVDSA will inform and invite the community into reparative action, including the Commissioner, through statements, forums, and collaboration with organizations/collectives advocating for decarceration, decriminalization, and community-led public safety alternatives.

LVDSA members, elected or not, should promote the abolition of punitive, carceral public policy, and uphold our commitment to a different society based on mutual reciprocity, where crime is prevented by meeting basic needs, ameliorating misery, and promoting the inherent dignity of caring for one another.

Contact lasvegasdsa@gmail.com for any inquiries.

As DSA Convention season descends on us, a familiar debate from previous conventions has re-emerged. This time it comes in the form of an amendment from the new slate Groundwork to the National Labor Commission’s consensus resolution on DSA’s labor work. Groundwork’s “We Are Workers” amendment would, among other things, strip out language from the consensus resolution that explicitly rejects a strategy of prioritizing relationships with union establishment in favor of a strategy of prioritizing building relationships with the rank and file. The amendment also advocated for deprioritizing working with Labor Notes (which shares DSA’s support for a rank and file orientation to the labor movement). Criticism came quickly, with longtime DSA labor organizers noting that our Rank and File Strategy (RFS) adopted in 2019 has gotten us quite far in our labor work. Supporters of the amendment responded, some criticizing DSA’s labor strategy as preventing them from working with union leadership on legislative projects and others arguing that this amendment leaves the RFS, which they love, intact but lets people do other things as well.

Leave aside for the moment that the amendment’s supporters rely almost entirely on examples of working with union leadership where the leadership and membership are not in dispute (a distinction worthy of its own separate analysis) and that our already-adopted Rank and File Strategy has been no barrier to working with union leadership on issues where membership and leadership are aligned. Also leave aside the question of what the distinction is between a union’s leadership and the union establishment (another separate piece). I want to focus on what it can and does look like to work with union leadership. There’s nothing wrong with building relationships and working with union leadership, as many of the staunchest supporters of the RFS in DSA regularly do in our labor work. But what kind of relationships are we building? What kind of relationships are possible?

We can classify cooperative relationships between DSA and a union into three types: Transactional, Top-Down Relational, and Bottom-up Relational. This, of course, leaves aside more frosty or openly antagonistic relationships (virtually all of which, it’s worth noting, are more a consequence of distrustful staff and officers than membership sentiment). Let’s take each of these three categories of positive relationships with unions in turn.

1. Transactional

This is probably the most common type of relationship with a union that we see in our electoral or legislative campaign work. This is a relationship where a union’s leadership, usually its political director and top officers, see value for themselves and their union in working with DSA on something. It may be that what DSA wants to do benefits them directly, as in legislative campaigns that involve increasing funding for their members’ jobs and departments. Sometimes the transaction is slightly more long term, and the leadership works with us because they’ll want to have a good political relationship down the line for something they want, as is common in our electoral work seeking endorsements.

This kind of relationship can net significant benefits in the immediate term, but they tend to be shallow, with the relationship existing entirely between some representative of DSA and some representative of the union. This means that DSA becomes dependent on individual members holding the relationship with the union (or just its political director), putting a long-term burden on them that can quickly lead to burnout and a loss of that working relationship. While you can try to bring others into those meetings and expand the relationship by ones and twos, that is not sustainable in a mass organization.

Political directors are often the staffers least tied to the mission and membership of their unions, usually jumping between union world and the world of electoral politics. Such a leadership is not going to move the union to do anything they aren’t inclined to do, absent DSA being able to give them something. And fundamentally, this kind of relationship reinforces a top-down, transactional approach within that union in how it relates to the broader political scene. These kinds of relationships cannot possibly transform that union or the labor movement. Instead they reinforce a status quo that has not, will not, move us closer to our goals as socialists.

2. Top Down Relational

This second category goes beyond the transaction of the first category. The union’s leadership are excited or impressed by DSA’s work and want to build with us long term, becoming recurring partners with us on our work. Maybe those union leaders see themselves as socialists. They may even be DSA members. The continued relationship is an end in itself, unlike the transactional relationship. They may send speakers to our events, buy ads and tables at our fundraisers, even endorse our legislative campaigns and candidates. This is often a result of DSA doing strike support work that demonstrates a deep political commitment, rather than a mere transactional commitment, to working with them, as well as shared ideals and goals.

This is a big step up from a transactional relationship, but it is still limited in many ways. As wonderful as a particular leader may be, these kinds of relationships are still simply person to person, rather than membership-to-membership or organization-to-organization, and they run into the same bottlenecks discussed above. 

In addition, there is only so far a leader can take their union themselves. Even a dedicated socialist in a union presidency is going to be limited by conditions in their union and by the institutional forces of being an officer, with legal and fiduciary duties to the union and other conservatizing influences. Officers in such positions will therefore end up feeling even more limited than they may actually be. They’d love to go further in their support for our work, but their position simply won’t let them go that far. 

Further, even if they do push the limits of the bounds of their office, they’re ultimately answerable to their membership. Unlike virtually every other part of US society, unions are all democracies, at least nominally and structurally, and a union leader who strays too far from where the membership is can quite easily be disciplined in the next election. A relationship with the leaders, therefore, can only ever get you so far.

3. Bottom Up Relational

In this final category the relationship between DSA and the union is more ideologically driven than by transaction and rooted not in the whims of a particular leader, but rather by a core of militant rank and filers. In this situation, union members who are leaders on the shop floor, and who are ideally themselves socialists and DSA members, are continually finding ways for their union to work closely with DSA on shared work, such as a contract fight or a legislative campaign. Perhaps they, carrying considerably more weight with union leadership than some non-member from DSA would have, have convinced their leadership that this collaboration makes sense. Perhaps they have not yet gotten leadership on board but are bringing their fellow union members into the shared DSA work in a way that makes it harder and harder for leadership to say no. Ultimately, leadership either stands aside or actively builds a relationship with DSA, based not on quid pro quo nor on their particular political inclinations, but on a firm foundation of a militant base of member-organizers excited to bring their union and the socialist movement closer together.

The most obvious benefit this kind of relationship has over the other sorts is its durability. It is much harder to get rid of a group of shop floor militants than it is to get rid of a staffer or even an officer. In addition, should leadership change hands to someone more hostile to DSA, the shop floor militants can continue their organizing, continue bringing coworkers into DSA work and continue organizing around DSA work in their union, until either the new leadership relents, embraces DSA, or is replaced yet again.

More importantly, though, this kind of relationship leads to more genuine collaboration and cross-membership growth. While it’s great to have a union president decide to join DSA, we’re a mass organization; it is far more powerful to have a crew of shop stewards, dozens of shop floor leaders, hundreds of rank and file members join DSA. That is far more likely to happen if we’re organizing with them, rather than prioritizing leadership and hoping for trickle-down recruitment. A relationship with leadership that comes from their own membership ensures that leadership knows how serious we are, that our organizing prowess is for real, and that we should be treated with the respect of a group that knows how to bring a crowd to a fight.

What are DSA’s Relationships Like Now, and Where Do We Go From Here?

With this framework in place, what do our current relationships with union leadership look like? I think it’s fair to say that in many places, most of our relationships are in the first category, with a hope that continued work will get us to the second. Few of our relationships fit into that third category, but those have been some of the most rewarding. Far and away, the best example of this kind of relationship has been our relationship nationally — and in some places locally — with the Teamsters. There, we have dozens of DSA members who are shop floor militants, many of whom are long-term respected leaders who, when they speak, command the attention of their fellow members and their leadership. Those DSA shop floor leaders have successfully advocated for DSA to be brought in as a leading force in the UPS Contract coalition, buoyed by the excellent work the NLC and DSA chapters across the country have done with rank and filers to organize the broader working class around this fight. In the process, we have brought even more shop floor leaders who had not previously considered themselves socialists into DSA, growing our core of rank and file militants and in so doing increasing the seriousness with which the union’s leadership treats us. 

This should be the model for our relationships with union leadership; treating it not as a priority, not as the focus of our strategy, but as the result of prioritizing relationships with the rank and file, and in so doing have sturdier, more powerful relationships with the labor movement as a whole. This is crucial; the ultimate goal of DSA’s labor work is not to have a socialist movement that works well with the labor movement, but a socialist movement that has merged with the labor movement. We need more union members to become organized socialists, and more organized socialists to become union members, so that we can eventually have the organized base to bring these entities together into a force that can accomplish our goals and create the world we know we need. 

Our greatest weapon in that pursuit is the collective withholding of our labor from capital. We can’t get there through relationships with labor leaders. A union president can do a lot of things that can be useful to us, but they can’t withhold the labor of their members by themselves. The president can say “we’re on strike” until they’re blue in the face, but if the members aren’t onboard, it’s not going to happen. The membership are the beating heart of every union. When that heart doesn’t beat, nothing will happen, no matter how many socialist or socialist-friendly leaders you have. This is why, strategically speaking, if we want to build the labor movement we need to win socialism, a strategy that prioritizes building relationships with union leadership simply will not get us there, and must be rejected.

This is not to say that we should never work with and build relationships with union leadership, as so much of our existing work conducted under the Rank and File Strategy has shown. We do it tactically for a variety of reasons. But strategically, that cannot and should not be the priority. When push comes to shove, we know that the power lies with the rank and file, because while the rank and file can change their leadership, the leadership can’t change their rank and file. Any amendment to our labor strategy that loses sight of that will weaken DSA, harm our labor work, and distract from our goal of building a militant, democratic, socialist labor movement.

The post What Kind of Relationship Do We Want With Union Leadership? appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

DSA +50 Orgs Condemn Biden Administration Siding With Private Prison Company CoreCivic to Keep Immigrant Detention in New Jersey

July 17th 2023

New Jersey, USA – This week, the Biden administration is expected to file an amicus brief joining private prison company CoreCivic in its attempt to keep an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison open in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The Elizabeth Detention Center, a converted warehouse with nearly 30 years of documented abuse, is approaching its contract expiration with ICE on August 31, 2023, and is barred from renewing its contract under a New Jersey state law signed by Governor Murphy almost two years ago. 

This move follows a similar Biden administration strategy in California, where the administration fought to prevent a private prison ban from taking effect.

A united coalition of New Jersey groups, calling on Governor Murphy and local, state, and federal officials to defend their residents, offered the following statement:

“The Biden Administration’s decision to side with CoreCivic, the world’s largest private prison company, is bitterly disappointing but unsurprising. New Jersey is no stranger to the uphill battle it will take to remove ICE’s abusive presence from our communities, nor the megacorporations who seek to profit off of our communities’ misery. We are proud of our history of resistance that ended ICE contracts with local counties across the state. We will continue our pressure to ensure that the Elizabeth Detention Center is closed permanently, that all people are freed, and that the building is never used to warehouse people for any purpose again.

We are in a critical moment. With a little over a month left until the contract expires, the local and state elected officials who once condemned the EDC under previous administrations must step up and condemn it today. We want to remind them of the tremendous suffering and resistance to the Elizabeth Detention Center since it opened nearly 30 years ago. Tens of thousands of people, inside and outside the prison, have protested the inhumane conditions, and at least two people, Boubacar Bah and Victor Ramirez-Reyes, have tragically died due to their detention there. 

We will continue to demand action and honor the lives destroyed by US immigration policy. We urge communities across New Jersey to join our fight to end the unnecessary, inhumane, and abuse-riddled practice of immigration detention.

We urge Governor Murphy and all elected officials to provide a prompt and public response to rebuke the Biden administration’s attempt to undermine New Jersey values.”

The post DSA +50 Orgs Condemn Biden Administration Siding With Private Prison Company CoreCivic to Keep Immigrant Detention in New Jersey first appeared on North NJ DSA.

Hello comrade! If you clicked on this you’re very cool! Here are the RSVP links for the stuff we meant to call you about: