Do you know what it means to be a Marxist? Do you want to learn a new way to analyze the world around you? Can you explain class relations to a non-socialist?

In this course we will explore the answers to those questions and more by delving into two major concepts in the philosophy of Karl Marx, and that is dialectical and historical materialism and the economic concepts of commodification and class relations. Gaining a better understanding of the world around us makes us better organizers, so let’s get started!

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January 22 at 12pm – Part 1: Dialectical and Historical Materialism (2 hours)

January 29 at 12pm – Part 2: Class Struggle (2 hours)

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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. 

Dick Spotswood has lowered the bar for local journalism with his December 17th, 2022 opinion piece in the Marin IJ covering Fairfax’s new rent stabilization and just cause eviction ordinances. The column is rife with sensationalist claims, arrogant remarks, and arguments made either in bad faith or ignorance, all while attempting to revive a kind of red scare McCarthyism in Marin. County residents should demand far more from its local paper of record than poorly-researched fear-mongering dressed up as reasonable journalism. 

The article begins: “​​Just when local candidates promoted by the right-leaning anti-vaccine promoting Marin Freedom Rising were crushed at the ballot box, along came the Marin chapter of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America.”

Implying a false equivalency between a conspiratorial, anti-vax, and anti-LGBTQ organization and one that is fighting to keep working people in their homes is morally reprehensible and deeply misleading. One can’t help but remember the corporate media pieces that compared democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who campaigned on healthcare for all, living wages, and a Green New Deal with Donald Trump, who campaigned on building a border wall, creating a Muslim registry, and shredding environmental regulations. The idea was that because Sanders and Trump were both challenging the political establishment with populist appeals, they somehow had a great deal in common. Comparing Marin DSA to Marin Freedom Rising is equally absurd and offensive.

The next paragraph reads: “The latter [Marin DSA] is pushing a draconian version of rent control across Marin. DSA scored its first victory when Fairfax by unanimous council vote adopted their suggested rent control ordinance and, with only Councilmember Barbara Coler dissenting, a punishing (to landlords) “just cause” eviction law.”

Characterizing Fairfax’s rent control and just cause eviction ordinances as “draconian” and “punishing” is ridiculous and quickly reveals the class sympathies of the author. In reality, Fairfax’s ordinances were modeled after provisions that already exist across the state, many of which have been in effect for decades. These ordinances bring Fairfax up to speed with the dozens of other cities and towns across California that have seen their housing costs skyrocket and have taken action to keep ordinary people in their homes, rather than getting forced out.

Let’s briefly review what these ordinances actually do:

1. They place an annual cap on how much landlords can raise the rent, pegged to 60% of the change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or 5%, whichever is lower.
2. They prevent arbitrary evictions by requiring landlords to have a just cause in order to evict or displace their tenant.
3. They provide support and protections for tenants who face eviction due to no fault of their own, with additional protections granted to teachers, students, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and people who are terminally-ill. 

The idea that requiring such basic tenant protections amounts to punishing landlords reveals an enormous bias in favor of landlords being able to do whatever they’d like with their rental units, regardless of the suffering, stress, and insecurity that may be endured by tenants as a consequence of their actions. If critics like Spotswood want to argue that landlords’ ability to maximize profits and maintain total control over their units is more important that granting the one-third of Fairfax residents who are renters the safety and security of knowing they won’t get thrown out of their homes at a moment’s notice, they should go ahead and say so. Hiding behind sensationalist terms like, “draconian” simply avoids the moral stakes and obscures the divergent class interests at play. 

Skipping ahead, Spotswoods, referencing the radical idea that housing is a first and foremost a human right and not an investment vehicle, knowingly proclaims: “This isn’t the social democracy as practiced in Scandinavian nations. The last time I was in Norway, I asked a museum lecturer about capitalism versus socialism in his land. His reply, “Norway is a capitalist country. That’s how we pay for our (social) benefits.” Social democracy is a combination of relatively high taxes, and a broad social safety net based on private enterprise and capitalism.”

While we’re glad Spotswood took the time to ask a single Norwegian museum employee about his country’s political economy, citing this conversation as an authoritative summary of why capitalism is good and necessary for social democracy is patently absurd. The robust social benefits enjoyed in western Europe and Scandinavia were the result of decades of class struggle between organized labor and associated labor/left political parties on the one hand and economic and political elites on the other. Wealthy capitalists did not voluntarily sign up to pay high taxes for universal high-quality healthcare, education, childcare, etc. They were forced to make these concessions by a powerful labor movement and a robust political left that included both socialists and social democrats. Social democracy was the compromise hammered out between capital and labor, not an enlightened feature of capitalism itself.

It’s also important to note that the vast majority of western European countries have some form of national rent control, with countries like France, Germany, Ireland and Sweden not only limiting how much rents can be raised over time, but also limiting how much can be charged in the first place. State law prohibits those kinds of limitations in California, meaning landlords are able to charge as much as they’d like at the beginning of each new tenancy. Thus, suggesting that Fairfax’s rent control law—or any California rent control law—is somehow radical or extreme by European or international standards is simply nonsensical.

Spotswood continues, “Fairfax’s version of rent control and “just eviction” ordinances was a step too far. Why would anyone create so much as a second unit if their investment violated the nonexistent “right” of a tenant to live there indefinitely at a rent less than the cost of providing the space.”

First of all, the policy is called “just cause eviction,” not “just eviction.” Second, the hypothetical question posed here is not a relevant one. In California, landlords are guaranteed a reasonable return on their investment. Fairfax’s rent stabilization ordinance provides a mechanism for this by enabling landlords to petition for a higher annual rent increase in order to ensure that they receive a reasonable return. The claim that rent control will force landlords to rent their units at a financial loss makes no sense, as they are permitted to raise rents enough to ensure that this doesn’t happen, provided that they can document and demonstrate that they actually qualify for this provision. 

Third, the rejection of housing as a human right is truly baffling and grotesque. The United Nations codified the right to adequate housing in 1948 as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. But it shouldn’t take a UN declaration to prove what common sense already makes obvious: that housing is a basic human necessity. It provides us with shelter from the elements and a safe and secure place to rest, prepare meals, raise our families, and simply live our lives. Our housing also embeds us in our community, which we all need as inherently social creatures. In other words, we all require housing to lead decent and dignified lives. 

Do critics like Spotswood who say the right to housing is “nonexistent” actually believe otherwise? What do they believe? That the abstract demands of a mythical free market are more important than satisfying basic human needs? That profits are more important than people? We hope not, but if so, we reject this kind of reasoning utterly and entirely. As democratic socialists, we believe that our economy should work to deliver a decent standard of living for all people and that includes, fundamentally, the right to decent housing. 

Fairfax, like all of Marin County, has some of the highest housing costs in the entire country. Single-family homes routinely sell for over a million dollars (often far more) and modest one- or two-bedroom apartments can easily cost two-three thousand dollars per month. Ordinary working people and seniors on fixed incomes cannot afford a house and their wages and social security benefits are not even close to keeping up with the dramatic rent increases.

The struggle to stabilize rents and prevent displacement in Fairfax and throughout Marin is not a hypothetical one. In Fairfax, a third of renters pay more than half of their income on rent. And nearly half of all renters spend at least a third of their income paying the landlord. Working families are struggling simply to keep a roof over their heads and stay in our communities. 

Critics like Spotswood will inevitably continue to spread hysteria as Fairfax’s ordinances are fully implemented and as other cities and towns across Marin follow their lead and adopt their own laws to stabilize rents and prevent arbitrary evictions. We will not let their smears keep us from winning real housing security for Marin’s working-class renters.

The 2022 Marin DSA Coordinating Committee
– Maegan Mattock, Fairfax 
– Christopher Perrando, Fairfax
– Kyle Amsler, San Anselmo
– Curt Ries, San Anselmo
– Sonia Parecadan, San Rafael

By Dylan W.

On a hot summer Labor Day weekend, thousands of leftists congregated at the Socialism Conference
of 2022 in downtown Chicago. The conference was host to various panels and presentations including abolition, identity politics, abortion rights, and more. Socialists from different backgrounds and philosophies had come to socialize, share stories, and network. Organizations at the event ranged from big tent ones like DSA to more focused groups like Science for the People.

One of the speakers I most enjoyed was Liat Ben-Moshe. Ben-Moshe highlighted the concept of “disability/madness liberation” and how it is linked with the abolition of carceral systems. In addition to prisons, she argues institutions meant to “protect” patients in psychiatric hospitals and residential living spaces also contribute to the dehumanization of poor, marginalized individuals. It was empowering to hear someone advocate for the needs of those abandoned by capitalism. As someone who has faced abuse inside a mental health facility, I realized my challenges do not make me lesser than others even if capitalist institutions say that I am.

Other panels called into question what is meant by “the left.” This question culminated in the live recording of “The Dig,” where authors Robin DG Kelly, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argued that there are multiple “lefts” that collaborate and/or clash. They also emphasized that movements that often aren’t seen as “left” by leftist circles actually are, including protests against apartheid in South Africa and against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US military. One highlight was Ms. Gilmore saying it’s okay if people don’t want to talk about ideas like racial capitalism, but they need to “shut the fuck up” about it if they don’t. It was a frank statement from one of the sharpest critics of racism and capitalism on the contemporary left.

I did not expect a panel to move me so much that I would cry but one of the best speakers at the conference did. In her talk Becoming Kin, Patty Krawec weaved her personal and ancestral history as an indigenous woman to show how differences between people are not divisions, a collective identity does not mean we need to erase our individual identities, and that the environment isn’t a resource, but a living being just like us. Despite all the harm that has been done through systemic abuse, human beings can choose differently.

In the final sendoff of the conference, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson gave a powerful speech. Her main point was that performing leftist political work should be based on love and compassion. She indicated that doing the work, however small, has value. What I took away from her speech was that work is being done despite claims of demobilization on the broader left, especially in the south where voting, abortion, and LGBT rights are heavily under attack. These were points that were echoed earlier in the conference by Derenda Hancock who described the closing of the last abortion clinic in Mississippi after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Despite bleak circumstances, work continues in unlikely corners of the south and elsewhere.

Every aspect of life is connected. Being your authentic self and, as many speakers said, “trying to do shit” for others is a radical political act itself in a system that isolates and disempowers people. This process should be celebrated and emphasized as much as the outcome. The journey can be difficult, but dedication to what’s right and taking that first step is vital.

So yes, at the Socialism Conference, I danced. I hung out with science nerds, had a sick root beer float, finally met one of my best friends, touched a typewriter for the first time, and I made new memories with someone I cherish. In a reality full of hardships, participating in a large gathering of socialists was a joyful act of rebellion.

The post Socialism Conference Reflection first appeared on North NJ DSA.

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.

by Walter K.

A member from another DSA chapter once complained to me, “It’s hard to debate organizing tactics without everyone agreeing on the same principles first.” If only everyone shared his perspective, we would all agree about what DSA should do. It was like he thought DSA was a printer, while others saw it as a sewing machine. From his perspective, DSA was something to use, not to be part of.

Being member-led means DSA can be a radically democratic group, a place where, unlike jobs, non-profits, or existing political parties, the average member actually has power. The problem is that anything DSA does depends on you. You can’t use DSA because you are DSA. This is an insight from labor organizer Jane McAlevey, who tells union organizers to never “third-party” the union.

For her, it’s not “the union” that goes on strike. If you’re a member of “the union,” you go on strike in solidarity with the other members. This is more than semantics. When members see “the union” as a third party, they stop participating. Their personal connections and the sense of shared purpose fade away. Then, when collective action problems like layoffs arise, members call for “the union” to act. Unfortunately, they can’t simply hit the “strike” button. It becomes clear that the “union” is just a collection of individuals and their social bonds. Union members then have to build trust, shared purpose, and solidarity from scratch.

Similarly, I think NNJ DSA’s potential hinges on building more trust, purpose, and solidarity. In our context, we “third party” ourselves when we argue with the words “DSA should…” Instead of an organization you’re a part of. When you think this way you do a disservice to yourself and to your comrades. It’s like pretending DSA is a football team and yelling your play calls at the TV. You become just a spectator. Meanwhile, you leave all the work to others.

Imagine a contentious argument like “DSA should merge with the Demo- cratic party.” This is not an organiz- ing proposal, it’s a political strategy. The member wishes that the current organization was a simple tool for this particular strategy. The implication is that you should desire the same thing. What starts out as a debate over pol- itics morphs into one over your heart. It’s no wonder that political discussions frequently leads to hurtful conflict. Beyond weakening the bonds between members, “DSA should…” creates a trap of endless debate in which “disagreements over what is to be done never cease, taking time and energy away from doing anything.”

By design, DSA is a big tent full of competing tendencies. How can we ever agree when we have differences in principle? I think we have to ground our competing ideologies into concrete organizing proposals instead. For example: “NNJ DSA delegates will introduce a proposal for DSA to merge with Democratic party at DSA’s 2023 National Convention.” Of course, one’s ideology still shapes this idea, but it’s a proposal for action instead of just a theoretical proposal. Members can debate a concrete plan rather than a hypothetical scenario. We all have the power to agree to enact this, modify or to reject it entirely.

So, here’s my concrete proposal for helping us create a fulfilling and democratic chapter: try to notice if you’re about to argue what “DSA should” do. Use that as a starting place to help you determine what you want to achieve with your comrades. Then, determine how you could do it. Float your idea with comrades, ask for suggestions, and try to build support. See if you can convince skeptical members to agree. Finally, find the time for making these decisions and propose your idea. Rather than lamenting what DSA should but doesn’t do, it is much more empowering and productive to use your power to propose what we could do together.

The post Don’t Spectate, Organize! first appeared on North NJ DSA.