The Idaho farmer-labor solution
Today there appears to be a great amount of anxiety stemming from the rising cost of living. While most people have been hanging on for the last few years, and I know very well people are hanging on and still finding places to rent at or under 500 dollars a month, this will soon not be the case. From the city to the countryside, there seems to be a general sense that the working class will be gradually emptied out of the area and replaced by upper middle-class individuals that move from out of State.
This environment has produced interesting sentiments in the cities and the countryside. In the cities there are young middle class people who don't see a future here in Idaho and plan to run away to another state. For the working class in the cities, those that cannot afford the mentality of “escape-ism,” the prevailing sentiments have been hopelessness for some, anger for many, and annoyance for all. In more rural areas we see a common distaste for real estate agents. There are a great number of people there who believe, and it is hard to blame them for believing, that real estate agents are going where money/demand is: marketing almost exclusively to wealthy and out of state individuals, and leaving locals behind. In the rural areas one might have heard the whispers of laws restricting commissions of real estate agents in the state, many of these whispers have great distortions within their contents, but the feeling that something is wrong is more than observable.
On top of all of this, trust in the current political institutions and the two political parties are so remarkably low that statisticians are having a field day with “all time” or “ever before” types of headlines. Pew Research has been talking about “historic lows” with their statistics that, according to them, demonstrate that Americans have less trust in the Government today than they did during the Vietnam War. While partisan hostility has grown between Democrats and Republicans, apparently between 3-4/10 Americans do not feel well-represented by either party and see both quite negatively. “63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the candidates who have emerged so far,” and this does seem to line up with the uncommitted votes cast in the Presidential primary and Reuters polls that demonstrate that regardless of race, gender, and age everybody is unhappy. At least on paper, many Idahoans do not affiliate with either Party. According to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office, not only a mere 23.1% of the voting age population actually voting in local elections, as of January 2020, out of 872,794 registered Idaho voters, 308,784 are unaffiliated to any party. According to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office, the largest block of registered voters are Republicans at a little over 400,000, then in second place, unaffiliated voters, and in third place is the Democratic party at 112,000.
This means, to put it frankly, not even half of the population of the City of Boise, considered a liberal bastion within Idaho, are registered Democrats.
Shedding the exhausting baggage of the two Parties is a crucial move in Idaho to reach an ever-growing trend within the United States of dissatisfaction. With dissatisfaction, there also comes exhaustion with both the Left and Right. While working people juggle ever busier schedules, the absurd politics of democrats have been on the decline. At the same time, the insane policies of the right have effectively brought government bureaucracy into our lives in ways never before imaginable. The State Government is now obsessed with questions of the books your children can read, words your children can say, and bathrooms your children can use. What was before The old party of so called “limited Government” has apparently taken most questions out of the hands of parents and school boards and made them all matters of the State. The tiresome politics of a perpetually fragile and guilty left and a perpetually paranoid, frantic, and emotional right has had most people looking to boredom with a sense of longing to be bored again.
What Is To Be Done?
First, any solution must be able to shed the old party politics and the agents of chaos which exist within these two parties. These parties are certainly not popular amongst working people, but an alternative, which can be legally secured with canvassing, has not been offered yet. Labor already has a base of voters that, with their signatures alone can initiate aThird Party. A third party, so long as it appeals to both rural and urban citizens, can effectively attract those who might casually vote Republican in rural Idaho, and those that might casually vote Democratic in urban Idaho. We are not looking for those who are especially energetic about either party, and fortunately there appear to be only a few anyway.
Second, after shedding the two Parties any solution must understand the cynical and heinous nature of the “Culture War” we currently see. The appeal of Farmer-Labor on this front would be in positioning itself as an attempt to bring stability to the lives of the great majority of the exhausted working class through common good politics. The common good politics I describe will confuse those on the Right and those on the Left. It rejects the right-wing obsession with the market and instead takes the concept of Self Government as the North Star. It rejects this strange hatred of the foreigner, the immigrant, and all those “different” as not only entirely irrational and immoral, but also as a criminal attempt to distract working people from their real adversaries. The hatred of those who are born outside of this country, those with a different color skin, culture or those who are not heterosexual is plain to see in so many people today, and this must be combated on the terms that this divides the camp of the working people. The consequences of division is ancient knowledge even described in the bible (Mathews 12:15), that “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”
Farmer-Labor, in the same breath rejects the liberal obsession with the self and all its “individualized” truths. Common good politics does not find an ally in trains of thought which demand the acceptance of all points of view or interpretations as wholly legitimate just because a person has them. This negates more than it affirms. Instead, I see Farmer-Labor championing the concept of toleration even with those whose views on social norms one may privately disagree with. Conversations on social norms and taboos are worth having in a Democratic society, and this requires toleration of views but also the ability to not accept and even disagree with views regarding social matters. To be a mass-movement, a truly mass movement, a common shield is required to protect all people on the basis of toleration. This does not mean that one must advocate nor accept all views another has, only be willing to hold up their end of the shield.
However, there is a line, the outlawing of one way of life is a serious matter which strips democratic and human rights away from a people. Broadly Farmer-Labor, and every decent person, opposes such a thing and offers to protect all sections of the working class from abuse, maltreatment, and persecution. This does not mean that one must advocate nor accept all views of those Farmer-Labor will protect, but a strong democratic culture requires broad unity for the defense of democratic and human rights, a common agreement to hold up the shield. If there is no room for this way of thinking then there is no tolerance, there is no mass movement to begin with.
Third, to put it plainly, the Farmer-Labor solution is an attempt at mass “common good” politics which appeals to the city and countryside with a sense of democratic life. Farmer-Labor values self-government and democratic life in Idaho and identifies threats to self-government in a small elite group of shareholders who profit while the great majority suffers. It is here that the argument for expropriation and nationalization, even a Workers and Farmers Government, are best found. Farmer-Labor identifies the monopoly of industry, credit and communication in the hands of a small group of shareholders as a great contradiction to the concept of self-government. The development of a small elite few has meant that the lives of the rest of the population have been entirely dictated by the needs and interests of a small group’s profit motive. Contrary to the principles of self-government, the real center of political and economic life today is not the demands of the citizenry, but the profitability of a very small group of shareholders. This violates what I see as Common Good politics that starts from the undeniable fact that a stable, democratic political order of self-government must be in the hands of the great majority - that is the working class.
This is only possible of course, through a more democratic government, a Republic worthy of the name Republic - a Workers and Farmers Government.
Those things and people harmful to the tenets of Self-Government, namely those economic players and practices that breed mass dependence, are the chief enemies Farmer-Labor identifies.
What a fresh idea it is, Farmer-Labor will finally actually publicly identify enemies honestly, a practice unheard of in American politics.
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Viewpoint: Globalize the Intifada
by AJ
The following article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Detroit Socialist Editorial and Writers’ Collective or Detroit DSA as a whole.
‘Those governments remain determined to persist in their ignoble and dishonorable role as allies of a truly murderous regime.’ Oliver Tambo was not talking about the U.S. veto of the United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Tambo, president of the African National Congress, was talking about the U.S. government’s boycott of U.N. sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1986. The parallels between the movement to end apartheid in South Africa and the calls to end apartheid in Israel today do not begin or end with Security Council resolution vetoes.
In the 1980s, President Reagan supported South Africa’s apartheid government as an ally in the Cold War “fight against communism,” designated Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress as terrorists, and supplied weapons to the South African army. Meanwhile thousands of Americans were arrested at protests outside the South African Embassy, many thousands more joined the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement, refusing to buy South African goods or support companies that did business with South Africa. Additionally, artists and athletes from all over the world joined cultural and sporting boycott’s, such as Arthur Ashe and Harry Belafonte’s Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid.
Similarly, successive Presidential administrations have viewed Israel as a strategic ally in the Cold War and the “War on Terror,” sending more than $318 billion in weapons to the Israeli Defense Force in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. President Biden continues to place this political ideology over the lives and human rights of the Palestinian people, while the American people take to the streets, blockade ships, trucks and weapons manufacturers, and protest cultural events to make their opposition to the genocide of Palestinians heard across the country.
Looking back at the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa gives hope that this moment, with all its horror and pain, is an opportunity for true global solidarity. To remember that as all our liberation was bound up in the liberation of Nelson Mandela and all Black South Africans, today, all our liberation is bound up in the Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation and genocide. Whether we are Jewish, Muslim, Black, White, Arab, Indigenous, Latinx and/or Christian we face a choice between supporting regimes built on separation, militarization, surveillance, and fear or demanding a new paradigm based on mutual aid, respect, and peace in the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, and indeed here in the land between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The export/import exchange between the U.S. and Israel is not limited to physical weapons. The two governments have a collaborative relationship that extends to ideas about policing, borders, border walls, checkpoints, surveillance tower design and implementation, and cyber, drone and communications surveillance tactics and how the U.S. treats the movement of people inside and outside its “borders.” The Congressional Research Service 2023 report on U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel found that Israel’s defense industry “now ranks as one of the top global arms exporters,” selling nearly 70% of their missile defense systems, spyware, and cyber surveillance systems around the world. In 2019, in addition to sending $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel, the U.S. purchased $1.5 billion in weapons and surveillance products from Israel.
Many of the weapons and tactics that Israel uses to terrorize Palestinian people are deployed by the U.S. along the U.S./Mexico border. On the Tohono O’odham reservation in Arizona, surveillance towers, developed and built by Israel’s Elbit Systems, watch residents as they go about their daily lives. That may seem like a long way from us here in Detroit, but we should beware. As Bobby Brown, senior director of Customs and Border Protection at Elbit Systems of America, told The Intercept’s Will Parrish, “the company’s ultimate goal is to build a ‘layer’ of electronic surveillance equipment across the entire perimeter of the U.S. ‘Over time, we’ll expand not only to the northern border, but to the ports and harbors across the country.’” The Mexicanization of the U.S./Canada border that began after 9/11 continues today, and while border militarization and surveillance systems may not yet be as visible as the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints and Elbit’s towers in Arizona and Texas, we should be under no illusions that they are not there. To resist the proliferation of invasive border surveillance technologies is our intifada.
Is this what we want our tax dollars spent on? Taking just the $5.3 billion in 2019 U.S. military aid and payments for weapons systems to Israel and dividing that equally between all 50 states, Michigan would receive $106 million. That is enough, in one year, for 5,300 Detroiters to receive $20,000 home repair grants. The current ten-year Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, valued at a minimum of $38 billion, divided between the states would give each state $774.5 million that could be spent on education, infrastructure and environmental projects, as well as home repairs. To recapture that money is our liberation from leaky roofs, drafty windows, and concrete heat islands.
Importing the Israeli government’s ideas about borders creates emotional and relational barriers in addition to physical ones. It divides families, neighbors, and communities. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a complicated system of visas, permits, walls and checkpoints keeps Palestinians separated from families and friends and prevents building community between Palestinians and Israelis. In Dearborn, in the wake of 9/11 an invisible border wall was erected by the Department of Homeland Security separating families into “those who stay in [Middle Eastern Country]” and “those who stay in the U.S.” One of the wall’s many “bricks,” Operation Green Quest, made people sending monetary gifts as small as $50 to family members in Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, or Iraq vulnerable to federal enquiry, detention, and deportation [1].
Meanwhile Michigan’s anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) law also seeks to criminalize those who refuse to allow their money to be exported to support genocide and apartheid. To move freely and support our families, neighbors, and communities financially and emotionally is our intifada.
The Israeli State uses violence and intimidation to suppress Palestinian elections, arresting and detaining candidates, sabotaging election campaign events, and preventing access to polling stations. Here in the U.S. Zionist election interference has become increasingly aggressive as politicians and their constituents have become more uncomfortable about supporting the oppression of the Palestinian people. This is particularly true here in Michigan, where in 2022, AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), a lobbying group with deep ties to the Israeli government, funneled more than $8 million through its Super PAC to try to unseat Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Andy Levin. In Levin’s case their efforts paid off. In the upcoming election cycle AIPAC has offered $20 million to a number of candidates if they will run against Tlaib in 2024. So far all have declined. To shake off AIPAC and Israeli government interference in our elections is our intifada.
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers re-enact the violent removal of Indigenous people that U.S. settlers perpetrated on Indigenous people across North America. In the U.S. dispossession and abuse of Indigenous communities continues, from mining on Oak Flat to the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel project and Mayor Duggan’s planned Solar Farms here in Detroit. To be free from colonial land appropriation projects that extract natural resources and destroy our human, animal, and plant relatives’ homes and habitats is our liberation.
It took the combined energy and engagement of millions of regular people around the world for South Africans, black and white, to shake off the oppression of apartheid. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza thousands of Detroiters have marched, prayed, learned and educated each other, called their elected officials to pass “ceasefire resolutions,” and amplified the voices of Palestinians at cultural events, in public spaces in Detroit, Dearborn, Ferndale and Hamtramck.
It will take all our ongoing collective commitment to support Palestinians and Israelis in rising up against the Zionist forces that devastate their lives and land today. In the 1970s, a group of Aboriginal activists in Australia made a simple statement to define solidarity. They said, “If your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.” Truly our liberation is bound up with Palestinian liberation. Let us work together. Globalize the Intifada!
[1] Howell, Sally, and Andrew Shryock. “Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America’s “War on Terror”.” Anthropological Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2003): 443–62. Accessed September 12, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318184.
The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!
Viewpoint: Globalize the Intifada was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
What We Heard From Michigan
Listen to Michigan was a primary campaign which convinced voters, disillusioned with Biden’s ceaseless support for the genocide of Palestinians, to vote “Uncommitted” in the February 27 Democratic Primary. With only five weeks, a modest war chest, and an effective media strategy at their disposal, Listen to Michigan was able to rewrite the media narrative of the 2024 Democratic Primary. The campaign picked up 2 delegates and more than twice as many votes as candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson combined.
In the last two weeks I have spent a good deal of time with this campaign. I was first introduced to this team in my capacity as a member of the National Electoral Commission’s Endorsements subcommittee. I will confess freely that I didn’t really “get it” at first. The theory of change that the campaign organizers put forward seemed unproven, if not altogether disproven by the results from the New Hampshire primary. I advocated for national endorsement for this campaign because I believed reinvigorating our No Money For Massacres (NMFM) volunteer network to be of critical importance. Once DSA was on board, I helped run a series of phone banks with our NMFM team, a joint effort of DSA’s NEC and Internationalism Committee. It was not until I was on the phone with Michigan voters that the efficacy of this campaign strategy clicked.
Michigan was understood as uniquely suited for a campaign of this form. It is a populous swing state, there is a substantial Arab-American population, and there is a printed “Uncommitted” option on all primary ballots. There is a large swath of voters, necessary to Biden’s electoral success in November, who are furious with Biden’s complicity in the carnage being unleashed upon Gaza by Israel’s government. Listen to Michigan was able to present these voters with a mechanically simple means of putting that anger and frustration into writing. Michigan’s history of community organizing, high union density, and the endorsement of prominent local politicians, as well as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, also bolstered this case.
In the span of about three weeks, Listen to Michigan, with support from Metro Detroit DSA and DSA’s NMFM team, was able to assemble hundreds of volunteers and make over 500,000 phone calls. Through GOTV Weekend, Metro Detroit DSA knocked thousands of doors. In other words, Listen to Michigan was a major undertaking.
The results speak for themselves. Over 100,000 voters, including the majority of voters in Dearborn (home to the greatest concentration of Arab Americans of any city in the country), sent their message to Biden on Tuesday. This story was picked up by The New York Times, BBC, NBC, Politico, NPR, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera. Within hours of the polls closing in Michigan, plans sprung into action to launch similar efforts in Washington, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, efforts born out of a coalition of Arab American advocacy groups, anti-Zionist faith groups like If Not Now and Jewish Voices for Peace, and local DSA chapters. Some of these elections will be happening within a matter of days.
Michigan was understood to be unique. None of the states mentioned check every box that Michigan did. However, Maine checks none of them. The anguish and frustration of the Democratic base towards their own president found a new vocabulary in the Uncommitted vote, which was enthusiastically (if not necessarily supportively) amplified by major media. So long as Palestine supporters continue to vote Uncommitted in large numbers and in an organized fashion, the only story coming out of the Democratic primary will be Joe Biden’s rapidly eroding base of support. A highly publicized poor showing will weaken that narrative.
DSA is a small organization, but we punch far above our weight. To do so, we have to make difficult decisions about where we allocate our limited resources and the time of our volunteers. As a member of Maine DSA, I am proud to be a part of the Maine Coalition for Palestine, and wish to salute the tireless work of Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and the Maine Party for Socialism and Liberation in confronting the brutal realities faced by the inhabitants of Gaza, and further tying this systematized mass violence to the broader political context of American imperialism and hyper-militarization. However, I would caution against taking on abortive write-in campaigns. What is already a complicated task is compounded further by Maine’s ranked-choice voting scheme. “Ceasefire” write-ins will be marked as blank, confused or cautious supporters will rank Biden after their “Ceasefire” write-in, thus voting for him anyway, and the Maine press has not been sufficiently seeded with the notion that a blank ballot is a pro-Palestine ballot. New Hampshire was considered a model state for a mass write-in campaign, and even there the results were deflating. If you want to keep the pressure on Genocide Joe, I would encourage you to sign up for a phonebanking shift for Uncommitted WA or Vote Uncommitted Minnesota. That is where you will find me.
DSA was asked to co-sponsor Listen to Michigan’s campaign debrief last night, and I will close with a quote from Wamiq Chowdhury, DSA’s NEC endorsements co-chair and NMFM organizer:
“[V]oting for an actual uncommitted option consolidates our voices into something measurable, something that can be right up there on the screen alongside Genocide Joe’s name. He’s our target, and a campaign with this kind of strategy forces him and everyone else to pay attention. And we’re seeing that clearly—just look at all the media attention this campaign has garnered. And the other benefit of a smart strategy is that it can be reapplied elsewhere, which is important since we need to keep this momentum rolling. Let’s do everything we can to make sure that Michigan was not just a warning shot, but the start of something even bigger.”
Tzara Kane is a barista from Portland, ME. She serves as chapter co-chair for Maine DSA and on DSA’s National Electoral Commission Steering Committee.
The post What We Heard From Michigan appeared first on Pine & Roses.
From Barboncino to Barbenheimer
Alex Dinndorf is an organizer who moves at the "speed of trust," organizing Barboncino and helping the Nitehawk theater unionize.
The post From Barboncino to Barbenheimer appeared first on EWOC.
Opening Remarks from our Chapter Convention
Last weekend, on February 24, 2024, Cleveland DSA held its second Chapter Convention. Below are the opening remarks from Chapter Secretary Damion A.
The Cleveland Democratic Socialists of America seeks to facilitate the transition to a truly democratic and socialist society, one in which the means and resources of production are democratically and socially controlled.
Our organization represents one of the only democratic and member-run and funded organizations anywhere. We’re building a multi-tendency political identity in Cleveland that is independent of the capitalist parties that dominate all levels of our present government. Our goal is the self emancipation of the organized working class through a democratic mass socialist movement, not pre-packaged liberation that was handed down from on high by party elites.
We want to make Cleveland DSA our members’ political home, through both our internal democracy and our principled external campaigns for the working class. We want to help our members grow into organizers who can help to shift the balance of power to the working class in their workplaces, unions, and communities.
We are here today to decide on our chapter’s priorities for the year and to make adjustments to our guiding document so that its easier for us to practice democracy. We don’t hold our bylaws document as sacred and untouchable. It’s a practical tool. More importantly, it’s an agreement we form with ourselves so that we can confidently work without worrying that we’re overstepping or taking over. Our exact bylaws probably wouldn’t work well for another chapter elsewhere. The details wouldn’t fit but the general spirit is to be found in each one. And in a few years, after we’ve grown in number and gained more victories, today’s bylaws will be a poor fit. If we haven’t changed them sufficiently along the way then we will have another convention. We welcome this inevitability. The bylaws are an artifact of our democracy and enable our democracy.
Democracy has always been the scarcest resource. We can imagine a capitalist owner sitting in his office and watching his balance sheets increase. He standardized his factory equipment and financial practices. Everything can be easily understood in a nicely formatted report. And then Jacob tells his boss he needs time off for a religious holiday. And Stacy keeps saying her manager calls her by a “dead name”. And Katie says that says the women are paid less than men for the same work. And women of color point out that they make even less than everyone. And another guy says the benefits plan excludes his husband. And that plan that he wants so badly doesn’t cover reproductive health and the copay is enormous. And everyone knows that what they do all day doesn’t really matter anyway. These fictitious people are placeholders for you and me. We’ve all been harmed by capitalism. We all fell into the same grinder when we were born.
In the old days, when the early capitalists wanted undifferentiated compliant drones, they’d send violent young men somewhere far away where it was easy to tell apart the bosses from the laborers using their respective physical differences. When the native workforce spoke up, it was easy to tell who to shoot. The situation for capitalists has gotten more complicated since then. They still send kids with guns to take people over, without a doubt. Where that won’t do, they need other ways to standardize their workforce. They bring the colonial attitude home and start splitting up the workforce by what they see as obvious differences.
So, while the capitalists in charge work on a way to make computers behave like docile emotionally inert humans, there are all these random workers with ancient prejudices that hate the very people who are keeping them from turning a bigger profit. If he looks the other way or wrings his hands in sympathy while they persecute his employees then they’ll be too sick and tired to fight me for a better working conditions. If living in fear for your life reduces the company’s HR overhead then the stockholders will be happy, the boss will be pacified, and the executives will get a bonus. Then they can put you in a job that shortens your life and turns your personal time into a recovery period for your next shift. They will use your health to push units and your emotions to improve productivity.
Once while canvassing for DSA I came across a stray dog. He was a big dog and we didn’t know each other but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was lost and alone. I used kind words to comfort him and held out my hand with a treat. These actions together, verbal and material, indicated that I was unlikely to harm him. He came over, I gave him a piece of bagel I had in my pocket from earlier, and returned him home. In our work as socialists we need to speak out and contradict repressive misinformation that comes from a variety of sources. We describe the world honestly and rationally amid the constant clatter of advertising, bias, and myth. But we also need to hold out our hand and offer material support. We do as much as we can in the world to make real improvements in the lives of actual working people.
Our chapter has accomplished a great deal, internally and externally, since a few comrades came together in the 2010s to reform a Cleveland local. Mere months ago we joined the successful fight to get abortion rights in the state constitution. In 2022-23 we fought in solidarity with Starbucks Workers to keep union stores going in the long fight for a contract. In 2021 we held our first chapter convention, drafting our chapter’s bylaws together from scratch. From the early days of COVID-19 until late 2022 we mobilized to support tenants facing eviction and spread the message of tenant power. In 2019 we ran Brake Light Clinics to help reduce Clevelanders interactions with the numerous police gangs of Cleveland, and finished a campaign as the key ground force of CLASH securing a city ordinance on lead paint.
At this convention, we’ll be fiddling with the knobs and levers of our chapter, replacing and cleaning the parts. It may not look exciting to an outside observer but for us it is exhilarating. Democracy doesn’t exist until it happens. It is an activity, not only a state of mind. And here we all are, so different, with so much in common, and we can all speak up and shape the policies that shape our work. And you don’t have to wear a nice suit, or the right clothes for your assigned gender, or wear your hair in a certain way, or speak perfect English. You weren’t appointed to a board by someone who owns a yacht. You didn’t have to muscle your way through a hierarchy for years to force your way into a seat at the table. You didn’t have to prove yourself or flash your credentials to justify being here. We want you here because you are you. We want to know you. The world is a better, more interesting place with you in it and we are lucky that you’ve chosen to spend your time with us. That kind of fellowship is a privilege offered by socialism. One way to consider democracy is that an entire group of people consult with each individual to say “you are important and we won’t go ahead until we hear what you think.” It is the essence of our project. Democracy isn’t about casting votes, specifically. It’s the belief that everyone should be included. Decisions about you should not be made without you. We matter because you matter.
The post Opening Remarks from our Chapter Convention appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.
Austin Socialist News BulletinFebruary 2024
by Sara G..
Austin Socialist News Bulletin – February 2024
Austin DSA has been hitting the pavement! Every weekend this month, we’ve had at least two canvasses, either for our endorsed candidates or for our Schools for All Campaign. The primary election on March 5th will decide our District Attorney, but we have more work to do campaigning for Mike Siegel for City Council and to support our public schools. We remain committed to doing everything within our power to stop the genocide and provide aid to Gazans, and continue working in coalition with Palestinian and Jewish activist groups in Austin as part of the Austin for Palestine Coalition.
In the past month…
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The Democratic primary is on Tuesday, March 5th. We’ve had numerous conversations with voters as part of block walks for District Attorney José Garza. The Republican money machine has gone into full force behind José’s competitor, with mud-slinging television ads and mailers. Early voter turnout has been low, and large numbers of Republicans are voting in the open democratic primary to try and defeat José. José’s advantage is people power, so we will continue to canvass and phonebank to reelect him in a landslide.
- At the end of January, the Texas AFL-CIO became the first state labor federation to call for a ceasefire after October 7th. Young Active Labor Leaders (YALL) held a teach-in about Palestine before the vote, and union members did a lot of internal organizing before the vote to activate their fellow members.
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DSA members participated in the Texas United Against Genocide in Palestine statewide rally, with a special march to the capitol for Texas labor, and later in the Hands Off Rafah rally. We have also continued writing op-eds and contacting every city council meeting to demand a city-wide resolution calling for a ceasefire.
- We created a pledge for Austin shoppers to sign saying that they won’t buy goods made in Israel. Once we have enough signatures from consumers, we can begin discussions with grocers to remove those items from their shelves.
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More than 100,000 democratic voters in Michigan cast votes for “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s persistence in funding the Israeli military. DSA supported the campaign through phone banks and is now launching similar campaigns in WA and MN.
- We’ve continued to support Starbucks Workers United with a Valentine’s Day sip-in as a teach-in. On February 28th, the union announced that Starbucks has agreed to start discussing a collective bargaining agreement and returning cash tips and other benefits to union members.
- We joined the line at the Worldwide Flight Attendant day of Action at Austin Bergstrom airport.
The post Austin Socialist News Bulletin
February 2024
first appeared on Red Fault.