Did you know that Coulee DSA has a book club? It started shortly before Covid hit, and currently meets online every Tuesday night at 7 PM. The group discusses books, articles, and essays, as well as podcasts and documentaries. Next Tuesday, 5/11, is a great time to join as the group is starting a new book, Before The Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine by Remi Kanazi.

The group doesn’t require regular attendance, so feel free to stop by or drop in and out as you have time. Reading is strongly encouraged but not required. The discussion often goes off on tangents and covers a broad array of topics, and we would love you add your voice to the discussion! Reply to this email if you are interested in joining, and we will connect you to the group.

The post DSA Book Club’s Next Read – Before The Next Bomb Drops first appeared on Coulee DSA.

It’s our second annual post-May Day labor movement extravaganza! From coast to coast, workers are organizing to win, making gains, and reckoning with disappointments and challenges. On today’s show, we’re joined live by journalist and organizer Chris Brooks and by our radio comrades Jacob and David, hosts of Valley Labor Report -- Alabama’s only union talk radio show! From workers at the heart of New York’s cultural and media worlds to mine workers on strike in Alabama, it’s all on the table for tonight’s show. 

Valley Labor Report broadcasts Saturday mornings from 9:30am-11:00am on 92.5FM/770AM WVNN. Watch from anywhere on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheValleyLaborReport and follow the show on Twitter @LaborReporters. 

If you’re ready to organize your workplace or just get more active in the labor movement, a great place to start is the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (https://workerorganizing.org/) a joint effort between DSA National and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

Hey, CDSA members, supporters, and awesome community members! Coulee Democratic Socialists of America is revamping our communications stream.

Going forward, our newsletter will be broken up into regular blog posts. We have carried your subscription over from the newsletter to our blog here on the Coulee DSA website.

Posts will include info on our working groups, the DSA as a whole, local campaigns and projects, and more. We are aiming for an email a week or so–and we promise not to spam you with pointless posts.

If you are looking for more info, check out our website, or email us back.

The post CDSA Blog Kickoff first appeared on Coulee DSA.

Athens Area DSA will be partnering with other DSA chapters in Georgia to host a Pass the PRO Act phonebank on Saturday, May 8th from 3:00 – 5:30pm. Join us and comrades from all across the state to demand that Senators Warner, Kelly, and Sinema fight for workers and support the PRO Act! Register for the phonebank here

This May Day, Coulee DSA came out in numbers to volunteer at the community garden on the south side of the Hogan administration center in La Crosse. In a simple illustration of the power of workers uniting, many hand made the load light, and we got all the weeding, tilling, and planting done in about an hour for the entire garden plot.

Community based projects like these are a wonderful way to bring people together and use the power of labor to benefit the community as a whole. We are looking forward to the harvest this Fall!

Thank you to Our Wisconsin Revolution La Crosse Chapter, Weigent Hogan Neighborhood Association, and all the individual volunteers who showed up to lend a hand.

The post DSA planting on May Day first appeared on Coulee DSA.

Lets meet in socially-distanced and masked person-space! Saturday May 1st Athens Area DSA will be at Bishop Park with games and snacks for a family friendly gathering. Come chat, learn about what we are doing, see where you can plug in! Later we will move to a casual hang out at Little Kings (adults only) starting at 7pm. Come to either or come to both! We are excited to see and speak to your faces!

RSVP for the event here: https://fb.me/e/KR0njmt2

Let there be no confusion, Gov. Ron DeSantis and those in the Florida legislature claim that the HB1 “Anti-riot bill” (aka the DeSantis Oppression and anti-protest law) was enacted to combat the sort of violence seen at the Capitol on January 6^th. But those aren’t the rioters the governor is afraid of; rather, the Trumpist republican crowd that stormed the Capitol are the very people DeSantis has spent his political career cozying up to (along with wealthy mega-donors). We all know those aren’t the people this legislation will be used against. Rather, the people DeSantis truly fears are those engaged in the worldwide movement to fight for racial justice and end police killing of unarmed black bodies. This legislation was drafted in September 2020, long before the Capitol riot, specifically in response to the massive showing of solidarity in the wake of police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. DeSantis fears people in the streets organizing for a more just world because he, rightfully, sees us as a direct threat to the systems of oppression that brought him to power. The passage of this bill shows that ALL of the republican rhetoric around “protecting free speech”, “limited government”, and “promoting law and order” are simple ploys which they have no problem actively abandoning at the first opportunity to seize more power for themselves.

They will tell you that this law is to protect free speech and the right to peacefully protest while preventing violent riots and property destruction. The quiet part they won’t mention is that it gives the police discretion to distinguish a protest from a riot. Proud Boys assembling in public spaces with open carry weapons to intimidate voters—”peaceful protest”. Thousands of decent working class people came together to demand a reimagining of public safety and an end to police executions—”violent riot”. Because to those in power, actions that challenge their authority and push back against their oppression, are indeed acts of violence (in their minds). Whereas, true violence, like mowing over a protestor with a vehicle, is actually protected from any civil liabilities in this legislation, completely peaceful members of a protest can be arrested, held without bail, and charged with a felony simply for being present at a “riot” (that is, a protest where police-deemed “violence” or “property destruction” magically transformed it into a “riot”). This law does more to protect the sanctity and well-being of statues of confederate officers than to promote the safety and well-being of Floridians exercising their first amendment rights. To DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, their story of “American exceptionalism” and thinly veiled white supremacy must be defended with every tool in their arsenal against the lived reality of millions of human beings (those “exceptional” Americans) who see the cages and extrajudicial executions for what they are. We know that the vast majority of protests in the Summer of 2020 were entirely peaceful. And that was the problem. DeSantis couldn’t criminalize the millions of people peacefully assembling to undo the systematic marginalization and silencing of the black community. With HB1, that criminalization is now possible, as ANYONE at a protest where at least one person is accused of acting violently or destroying property can be charged with an “aggravated riot” 2^nd degree felony. They are scared of the power we displayed  last Summer, and knowing that the numbers are not on their side, have sought to tip the scales using the threat of violence and intimidation. Our response must be to continue to organize and show them what true power looks like.

They will tell you that the republicans are the party of “limited government”. Yet the very same people saying they hate “Big Government” have now enacted laws to further centralize control over municipal law enforcement budgets. With this legislation, the governor’s office, by special panel, has the power to amend municipal budgets that seek to reduce policing and incarceration apportionment. So if Miami or Tampa or Pensacola decide they want to balance their budget (according to their rhetoric, a republican dream), and recognize that policing takes by far the largest portion of the municipal pie, the same government bureaucrats in Tallahassee preaching “limited government” and “fiscal responsibility” are going to FORCE cities to continue wasting more money year after year on a system which only serves to devastate and traumatize our communities. If a city decides to finally listen to the science and evidence about how to actually reduce crime (i.e., promote a decent and equitable standard of living, provide opportunities for work and skill development, offer addiction treatment, etc.), they will be told that the governor and his cronies know better than the sociologists, healthcare professionals, and criminologists.

They claim this legislation is meant to show the state’s commitment to “law and order”, a dog-whistle phrase that harkens back to Nixon’s southern strategy and introduction of the war on drugs. Yet acts of violence, actual rioting, and property destruction were already against the law in ways that could be enforced in Florida. This is a grab for more power, plain and simple. DeSantis couldn’t disrupt those organizing against him without expanding the definition of “violence”, because the vast majority of those engaged in protests were assembling peacefully. Now he has the means to go after everyone who disagrees with him. This is not about “law and order”, this is about repression and silencing the voices of the many to promote the power of the few, veiled under the cover of legality. Too often, what is legal and what is moral run in direct contradiction to each other (see: slavery, Jim Crowe, mass incarceration, drug war, COINTELPRO, etc.), and this law is one more in a long line of transgressions against the people of this nation and the black community in particular.

The demagogues who claim to love America for its “freedom”, which they never define, are all too happy to step on the rights of others as long as their freedom to oppress is upheld. “You are FREE! You are Free… to do as we tell you! You are free to DO AS WE TELL YOU!!”

Well, we say that TRUE freedom is a decent life, a decent education, and communities which are made safe not through the threat of police violence, but through the availability of the resources needed to promote prosperity. DeSantis thinks that criminalizing peaceful assembly will stop this movement, but our vision of freedom is far greater than any repression law, and our movement is only gaining steam. If you believe in a truly FREE and JUST world that does not give power to authoritarians like DeSantis, then join our movement. Get organized, show up, and keep pushing until this vision becomes a reality.

In Solidarity,

Morgan G.
Internal Coordinator, Miami DSA

We believe in a fair society that works for everyone. The spread of COVID-19, and the public narrative around it, is highlighting the ways that our system doesn’t work this way – that it is broken. Even here in Ithaca, where many live comfortable, fulfilled lives, the reality is that we have the same problems as everywhere else – all of which are highlighted and made worse by the crisis at hand.

Here, as anywhere else, we have workers and poor people who cannot lose the scant economic security accessible to them. Isolation is impossible when your life depends on your wages.

We need to:

• Protect the poor from evictions or utility shutoffs and mandate a living wage in Tompkins County.

• Protect the homeless from infection and immediately work to provide equitable and comfortable housing for all.

• Cover the costs of testing and treatment for all affected, and work decisively to enact the NY Health Act.

• Require businesses to provide paid sick leave and penalize those who have used the crisis to deprive wages.

• Provide care for those who are at risk due to incarceration, and develop definite plans to implement alternatives to prisons.

The limited steps that the government has taken to address the economic and social effects of the outbreak show that real change is not impossible. Their shortcomings are the direct result of interference by the wealthiest people in the country. We won’t stand by while others suffer. We demand permanent relief from poverty and injustice.

Ithaca DSA Executive Team

As socialists, we know that healthcare goes beyond direct contact between providers and patients and into issues of budgets, community safety, and long-standing social forces like racism and misogyny. How can we organize for real public health? On tonight's show we're joined by DSA-endorsed Assemblymember, nurse, and organizer Phara Souffrant Forrest of District 57 in Brooklyn to discuss vaccine disparities, Cuomo's austerity baby, and the goals of our movement in Albany. We also hear from NYC-DSA's Healthcare Working Group on our campaign to pass the New York Health Act and the critical importance of universal healthcare to the overall socialist project. 

Follow Phara Souffrant Forrest, Assemblymember for District 57 at @phara4assembly. Follow along with NYC-DSA’s Healthcare Working Group at @NYCDSA_Health or email healthcare@socialists.nyc.