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

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.

YDS Response to Father Leahy’s Statement

Father Leahy’s statement in response to the report in The Heights concerning Reverend Dziak is disgraceful. He shows no concern for the victims. In fact, he never even mentions or acknowledges them. He exhibits no empathy or regret. Instead he displays stunning arrogance and completely refuses to take responsibility for failing to take action that could have prevented further abuse.

It’s ironic that the man who founded the Church in the 21st Century in response to the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal is now revealed to be the prototypical church official who received complaints of concerning behavior, ushered the perpetrator on to his next job, and then disclaimed any responsibility for the subsequent abuse that took place somewhere else.

First Leahy confirms receiving complaints about Dziak in the fall of 1997. What Leahy doesn’t explain is what concerning behavior was reported to him, information was evidently so problematic that he claims he reported it to the Jesuits. Did Leahy bar Dzaik from interacting with students that fall? If not why? Did Dziak leave BC voluntarily or was his departure related to the complaints Leahy received? This is a crucial question. What was the timeline and context for his eventual departure from BC and who initiated this exit? In an articles in The Heights at the time Dziak repeatedly expressed regret about leaving BC.

Curiously The Heights reported in April 1998 that Dziak would leave his position in June but take a sabbatical at BC until the end of the year. What were the details of this arrangement? Was this some sort of suspension or attempt to keep Dziak away from BC students?

Leahy claims that Dziak didn’t sexually assault any students at BC. The reason he allegedly raped a student while working somewhere else is because Dziak left, or was forced to leave BC, and Leahy did nothing to ensure he was barred from being around students. By his own admission Dziak’s behavior “conflicted with University standards” and Leahy was so troubled by it he reported it to the Jesuits. But he wasn’t troubled enough to care if Dziak left to work at a high school.

Leahy then writes “Second, I was never Fr. Dziak’s religious superior, and was not consulted by the Province about his assignment to Jamaica or any subsequent assignment.” Dziak was an employee of Boston College. Leahy was his boss. More importantly Leahy claims, as if to excuse himself of technical responsibility, that he was not consulted about Dziak’s assignment in Jamaica. Again Leahy, in vague language that would make a defense attorney proud, says Dziak’s behavior “conflicted with university standards.” Leahy was troubled enough by this though to report it to the Jesuits. Dziak left BC either voluntarily or at the direction of Leahy as a result of his inappropriate behavior. Leahy knew Dziak then went to work at a high school in Jamaica where he would be around even younger and more vulnerable students. Asserting that he wasn’t Dziak’s spiritual advisor or that he wasn’t consulted about the move is a cowardly attempt to absolve himself of responsibility. How could he have no regard for the children at the school in Jamaica? How could he not worry about their safety? Even if he wasn’t consulted, Leahy knew there was a problem and knew Dziak could be a danger to the students. Why wouldn’t he take any steps to do anything? His being consulted about the move is actually irrelevant.

In the summer of 1998 Leahy acknowledged that multiple people raised additional concerns. So by his own admission he received repeated warnings about Dziak’s behavior. And he knew Dziak was moving on to high school, it was reported in The Heights in April of that year, but Leahy didn’t do anything else because it was no longer his problem?

The Heights also reported that Dziak, once in his new job in Jamaica, would “help coordinate various American university-sponsored volunteer trips to the island, including those from BC.” So Leahy knew he would be supervising the very same service trips where Dziak had been abusive towards students at BC, prompting the numerous complaints to him that year.

Leahy also conveniently fails to address the letter that Beth Eilers sent him in March of 1999, again raising concerns about Dziak’s behavior and the fact he was still working with students. If a graduate student was that worried Dziak was still around young people, how could Leahy look at her letter, being fully aware of all the previous complaints, and still do nothing?

Leahy’s most offensive and cowardly assertion comes in his conclusion. “At that time I had no authority or administrative responsibility regarding Fr. Dziak, and that has been true in the 23 years since.” That is stunning – I had no administrative responsibility. The fact is after Dziak left BC Leahy had MORAL responsibility to do something. He had a moral responsibility to every potential future victim, to every student at the high school in Jamaica, to every student who would go on a service trip under Dziak’s supervision. He had by his own admission received numerous complaints from members of the BC community warning of Dziak’s behavior, raising the alarm that he should not be supervising young people. Yet Leahy did nothing while knowing he was at another school and still in a position of authority over young people. And his answer is to say he had no administrative responsibility to do anything?

What an absolute coward.

This response by Leahy is wholly inadequate. Leahy has forfeited all moral authority to lead BC and must resign or be fired by the board of trustees. An independent investigation must be done, and not one that will whitewash BC’s responsibility in service to salvaging the school’s image. It must be a thorough and honest investigation into what happened.

YDS of BC calls for Father Leahy’s removal as President of Boston College. The reports in The Heights and The TImes Picayune demonstrate Leahy has no moral authority to continue as the President of the school. Multiple members of the BC community made complaints to Leahy about Reverend Dziak’s abusive behavior and warned he should not be allowed to supervise students and young adults. Leahy, like so many others in the Catholic Church, failed to ensure this behavior would be stopped, enabling Dziak to prey on countless others in the future. In 2004 Dziak allegedly raped a student from DePaul during a service trip.

During Father Leahy’s tenure Boston College has expanded by almost 150 acres, its endowment has grown to over $2.5 billion, and new athletic facilities and academic buildings dot the campus.

To this we say who cares.

Throughout his career Leahy has shown little interest in the well being of students at his own school. For years he refused to speak out in the face of hate crimes, to confront institutional racism at BC, or to provide adequate support to LGBTQ+ students. If students don’t feel safe or welcome on their own campus, who cares about rankings or or expansion? Does it matter how many new buildings there are, what the average SAT score of the incoming class is, or how much the endowment earned last year, if your actions contribute to the harming of others? It’s all meaningless.

In 2017 he did not attend the Silence is Still Violence march on campus but attended fundraising meetings in Los Angeles. In 2018 in response to another hate crime he did not show up to a community wide meeting instead choosing to attend a fundraiser in New York.

These latest revelations show he failed to protect young people outside of the BC community. The details in these reports should trouble us all. This news confirms our belief that Father Leahy is not fit to lead BC. He must resign or be removed as the President.

Link to petition here.

Three hundred thirty one days since George Floyd was murdered by officer Derek Chauvin. On April 20th, we received a small victory of Derek Chauvin’s arrest and charges on three counts of murder totaling to 40 years in prison. But what would justice look like? A system that serves one guilty verdict to one killer cop is not justice. There are still adults and children dying by the hands of police brutality. Since the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, 184 African Americans have been killed by the hands of police. Of those murders, 55 were in just the 110 days so far in 2021. Since at least 2013, about 1,100 people have been killed each year by law enforcement officers. These numbers are representative of the larger problem in our law enforcement and carceral systems, which have their roots in racism. These numbers do not reflect community safety or servitude. These numbers need to stop. Our country must divest funding from our punitive policing structures and truly invest in meeting the needs of our communities. Justice will officially be served once the system isn’t the oppressor.  

 #JusticeForAll

Much of conventional labor organizing is centered around a shared physical location for workers, like a shop floor or a break room. But what about those who work in cars, on bikes, or in others' homes? Our labor movement stands in solidarity with all workers because an injury to one is an injury to all. On tonight's show, we'll talk to NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for City Council Jaslin Kaur about organizing for justice for taxi workers and why her home district in Eastern Queens is ready for democratic socialism. We also speak to Margaret of the Ain't I A Woman? campaign of home health care workers organizing for control over their time. Finally, we hear an update from our Defund NYPD campaign, which has launched a new pledge for City Council candidates to affirm their commitment to defunding NYPD and investing in social services. 

To learn more and get involved with Jaslin Kaur’s campaign for City Council, please visit jaslinkaur.nyc.

The Ain’t I A Woman? campaign is calling for community support at a picket outside Chinese-American Planning Council in Manhattan Chinatown on April 28th. Learn more and RSVP at tinyurl.com/APR28CPC or visit aintiawoman.org.

To learn more about the Defund NYPD campaign and its pledge for City Council candidates, go to defundnypd.com

This episode of Heart of a Heartless World features Travis Donoho and Jeremy McMahan. Travis is a professional labor union organizer and member of Thich Nhat Hahn's Order of Interbeing Sangha. Jeremy is the producer of this podcast and a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and scholar. They discuss the relationship between socialism and Buddhism, how self care is essential for labor organizing, and why a lot of American Buddhists don't identify as socialists.

In case you haven’t heard, the tuition strike just won a massive victory last week: Columbia announced that they will take action on our demand for increased financial aid, to the amount of $1.4 billion. No matter what Bollinger says, we know this wouldn’t have happened without thousands of students’ collective action.

This additional $1.4 billion represents nearly three times the amount of financial aid allocated at Columbia this past year, exceeding our demand to increase financial aid by at least 10%. However, Columbia’s response to the demands of our tuition strike still remains utterly inadequate.

Considering the university’s refusal to lower tuition costs, even this increased aid will by no means ensure that tuition for all programs across Columbia institutions will become affordable for low-income students. Instead of cutting their own multi-million dollar salaries or pulling funds from their $7 billion in unrestricted assets, the administration resorts to alumni donations in order to address our demand for better financial aid.

Columbia does not need charitable donations in order to make its education affordable; it simply needs to put its financial resources toward its own students rather than gentrifying real estate projects and executives’ wealth. Columbia’s announcement shows us the power that we have when we stand together, but it’s also a reminder of how much work we have left to do.

That’s why we’re asking all supporters of our movement to contribute their thoughts on how we can strengthen the movement into the future by joining us Thursday night at 7 pm ET at our Tuition Strike Debrief / Strategy Session to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our campaign this semester and to strategize about how we can build a stronger campaign next semester. (RSVP here for Zoom info)

Even if you can’t make it tomorrow, please vote in this non-binding poll on the question of whether we should try to organize an even larger tuition strike next semester and to share your feedback on what alternative or additional tactics we should use, as well as to indicate if you can help organize a campaign next semester. (Vote here!)

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Solidarity,

Columbia-Barnard YDSA

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.