In the past week, the state of Israel has escalated its violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel is expelling Palestinian families in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods to make way for more Jewish settlers. When Palestinians protested these expulsions, Israeli police responded with violent repression, including attacks on Arab worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during prayers nearing the end of the month of Ramadan. In Gaza, an Israeli bombing campaign has so far killed 103 Palestinians, including 27 children, and injured over 500 more. Israeli street mobs chant “death to Arabs.”^[1]

This violence is not new to the Palestinian people. May 15, 2021, marks the 73rd anniversary of Nakba Day, commemorating the Zionist expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. The Nakba began in 1948 when Zionist paramilitary groups launched an ethnic cleansing operation, killing 107 Palestinian Arabs in the Deir Yassin Massacre, including women and children. Zionist forces carried out other atrocities, displaced 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, emptied 400 villages and cities, and left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead.

This is how the Jewish state of Israel was created.

To Palestinians, the Nakba never ended. For decades, Israel has violated international law by creating hundreds of illegal settler colonies in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel has restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank, and with the Gaza blockade, trapped 2 million people in an open air prison. Israel has created a system of apartheid: systematic discrimination and separation on the basis of ethnicity.

We, the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, condemn these continuing acts of ethnic cleansing and violence, and we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We reject the media narrative of calling these atrocities “clashes” and “conflicts”, creating a false equivalence between a U.S.-backed settler colonial state and those they have dispossessed and violently oppressed for decades. We support the right of Palestinians under occupation to defend themselves from Israeli violence. We support the anti-racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 to end Israeli apartheid, and call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

As socialists, we must fight racism and all forms of injustice, both at home and abroad. Removing Palestinians and denying their right of return is an act of deep injustice even in times without violent conflict. We understand the fight for Palestinian rights as part of the human struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of oppression. Palestinian liberation is our liberation too; until all of us are free, none of us is free.

Silicon Valley DSA invites community members to show support for the Palestinian people:

• Saturday, May 15 at 11am. 20th Annual Palestinian Cultural Day. 70 W Hedding, St. San Jose.
• Saturday, May 15 at 2pm. Rally for Palestinian Liberation – Palestine Action Network. Valencia and 16th in the Mission, San Francisco.
• Sunday, May 16 at 6 pm. Join us to Protest for Palestine at San Jose City Hall.

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See also:

• National DSA Statement

Endnotes:

1. Chanting “Death to Arabs,” Israeli Mobs Attack Arab-Owned Businesses and Assault Driver

The post Silicon Valley DSA Stands in Solidarity with Palestinians appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

How would your life change if you no longer had to worry about healthcare? Maybe you would quit that job you hate and start a business, or work part-time so you could spend more time with your kids. Maybe you could finally get that dental work you have been putting off, or use the money you save on insurance premiums to pay off debt.

We say “healthcare is a human right” because it is a moral and practical imperative to ensuring people can live lives of value, and because providing it would eliminate unnecessary suffering in all our communities. Ensuring universally accessible healthcare would literally SAVE LIVES.

Just as importantly, it would break the shackles that our current for-profit healthcare system places on average Americans. In the “freest nation in the world”, many of us are beholden to jobs we hate, working long hours to pay up to a third of our income for insurance (if we are lucky enough to have it), never able to reach the financial or life goals we set for ourselves. A universal, single-payer healthcare system will open up opportunities for the average American. It will give everyone more flexibility in employment, prevent crippling medical debt, and ensure care to marginalized populations.

Right now in Wisconsin we have an opportunity to take a step closer to this goal, by accepting federal Medicaid expansion funding and using it to expand the WI BadgerCare program to cover those making between 0-138% of the poverty line. This would provide affordable healthcare to an additional 91,000 Wisconsinites, while saving our state approximately $630 million in taxes. While Governor Evers has proposed this expansion in his biennial budget, our legislature does not currently support accepting these federal funds.

Coulee DSA is fighting in coalition with other groups across the state to demand the WI legislature include BadgerCare expansion in their next budget. You can help by reaching out to your local legislator to let them know you support this legislation or by helping CDSA spread the word at our upcoming canvassing events in Viroqua.

Coulee DSA’s Health Care Justice working group meets every other Wednesday at 7 PM. Contact us at couleedsa@gmail.com if you are interested in learning more or joining up.

The post Demand BadgerCare Expansion Now! first appeared on Coulee DSA.

Do we live in a secular age? Is capitalism a religion? In this episode, Stephen Crouch asks author and professor Eugene McCarraher about the "misenchanted" qualities of capitalist society. Dr. McCarraher is the author of the 800-page tome entitled, Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2019). During the episode, Dr. McCarraher discusses the shortcomings of Marxism and the Protestant work ethic, and suggests a better path forward through the anti-capitalist Romantic tradition with its "enchanted" view of the world. Dr. Eugene McCarraher is a Professor of Humanities and History at Villanova University and the author of Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought. He has written for Dissent and The Nation and contributes regularly to Commonweal, The Hedgehog Review, and Raritan. His recent work, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, was supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Resources listed include magazines, publishers, podcasts and other project that should to educate you in organizing, theory, and history. Outlets Democratic Left : A Publication of Democratic Socialists of America Viewpoint Magazine : A militant research magazine that “aims to understand the struggles that define our conjuncture, critically reconstruct radical history, and reinvent Marxism for […]

This weekend, OCRA coalition partners and comrades, namely OKC DSA, For The People OK (FTP), Autonomous Brown Berets of Oklahoma (ABB), Student Socialist League OK (SSL), and Scissortail Defense Network (SDN), operated a mutual aid fair at the storefront of Nappy Roots Books in east OKC. FTP provided groceries, Central OK IWW + OK Tenants […]

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.