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

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The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) is Federal legislation that would remove the many barriers that have driven down union membership.  This bill has already passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and President Biden says he supports it.  Now we must pressure the Senate to pass it.

With the power of the working class organized we can demand a Green New Deal and a just transition to a clean economy that works for all.

https://www.dsausa.org/proact/

On Sunday, April 11th, the members of Charlotte Metro DSA voted to endorse the National DSA Pass the PRO Act Campaign. The full text of the resolution is available below.

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As a top national priority, DSA is embarking on a national campaign to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act). This transformative legislation gives power to unions to organize workers and overturns many anti-labor rulings handed down by the Supreme Court. Most importantly, it roots out racist and unjust labor practices, like right-to-work laws, and guarantees that immigrant workers have the same rights afforded to their fellow workers. DSA is joining a national coalition led by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), a union that is majority people of color, who has been leading the push. DSA’s National Political Committee is preparing to support DSA chapters in every state as we fight side by side with workers everywhere from now until May Day (Biden's 100th day in office) to force the president and federal elected officials to make this legislation a reality.

President Biden has made climate one of his key priorities in office. In his first week in office, he’s already re-entered the Paris Agreement and cancelled the Keystone pipeline. These steps re-establish the status quo of Obama’s presidency. But more importantly, the new administration's emphasis on climate, along with more socialists in Congress, creates openings for DSA to push for key legislative priorities. There is also a common desire among both labor and the left to not repeat 2008, when Obama was allowed to back down on his promises, leading to the Republican wave in 2010. 

We can only win transformative reforms like the Green New Deal with a much stronger, radicalized, and organized working class. To that end, DSA’s national Green New Deal (GND) campaign and Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) are convening a central push for the First 100 Days of the new administration to pass the PRO Act (Protect the Right to Organize), which would strengthen unions and the power of the working class to organize on the job, helping to build labor power as strong as it needs to be in the months and years ahead to win a just transition to a green economy for all workers, especially in building power toward GND demands like a federal jobs guarantee that can function as socialist “non-reformist reforms.” The original New Deal was won through militant labor organizing — rebuilding this capacity is crucial to the theory of power DSA’s national GND campaign has developed for a radical Green New Deal.

Towards that end, Charlotte Metro DSA proposes to work within our chapter to mobilize members around the PRO Act, which would begin with emphasizing that passing this legislation is a first key demand within a larger campaign strategy to win a Green New Deal. We will coordinate our chapter with the broader DSA national initiative, laying the groundwork for future efforts strengthening connections between labor and climate justice. 

Goals:

• Align DSA members around a labor-oriented strategy for climate organizing;

• Advance a pro-labor narrative for DSA’s climate organizing, internally and externally;

• Connect with and activate DSA union members to participate in a strategic and federally-targeted DSA campaign;

• Activate non-union worker members within DSA around the demand of the PRO Act;

• Increase DSA members’ capacity/skills to carry out strategic organizing work with  federal targets in a strategic nationwide campaigns;

• Work with Labor WG to ID union members and non-union members in key sectors that would be affected by PRO for mobilization, laying the groundwork for possible future GND-related organizing with local labor unions;

• Support chapter targeting of local unions who could be brought into coalition around the PRO Act and facilitate longer-term relationship building with labor. 

To this end, we are proposing these chapter efforts for the first 100 days of the Biden administration:

• Plan public-facing political education events around the role of organized labor and the PRO Act in winning a Green New Deal;

• Mobilize members for national webinars around PRO Act and the role of organized labor in a just transition;

• Participate in DSA national phone banks with auto-dialer campaign to pressure key Reps in Congress, especially in strategic states and districts with Reps and Senators to be moved in key states like Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, and Arizona;

• The National GND campaign is developing a congressional tracking sheet with IUPAT to identify priority targets. We will work across our chapter to determine interest and capacity to organize against any priority targets in our jurisdiction;

• Adapt national social media campaign materials for targets in our region;

• Plan public action(s) locally around PRO Act, along with the national campaign and local labor allies (including a possible May Day action). These can include rallies, sit-ins, escalating nonviolent direct action, etc. based on capacity and risk factors for participating members and allies.

Interested members can sign up for the national campaign in this form! 

http://bit.ly/dsaproact 

To get involved with the campaign for Public Power: http://ecosocialists.nyc/  and https://www.nypublicpower.com/

To get involved with the Internet for All campaign: internetforall.nyc/join

 

Based on the results of our recent vote, we are not continuing the tuition strike past April 5. Although you are free to continue withholding tuition if you choose, there is no longer any guarantee that you will be joined by 1,000 other students. We understand that many people have to pay tuition in order to maintain their visa status, register for Fall classes, and graduate. We will start disbursing money from the strike fund for anyone whose late fees are not waived by Columbia—you can request funds here if you need them or get in touch with Townes (townesend@gmail.com).

We want to emphasize that the end of the tuition strike for this semester does NOT mean the end of our campaign! We always knew that it would take a long struggle to win our demands and the tuition strike was only one (particularly powerful) tactic within that struggle. 

For that reason, we are currently strategizing about how we can best carry our campaign forward into future semesters—and we need your feedback!

As a first step, we are asking all our supporters (regardless of whether you could participate in the tuition strike or not) to participate in a non-binding  vote on whether to organize another tuition strike in the Fall semester in support of our demands. We are also asking everyone to share their ideas on additional or alternative tactics and any other feedback you have about how to make the campaign even stronger next semester. Please fill out this form to vote and share your feedback. 

We are also asking everyone to join us at our Tuition Strike Debrief / Strategy Session for Next Semester, next Thursday, 4/15, 7 pm ET, in order to discuss the strengths of our movement and what we need to improve going forward, as well as to discuss the question of whether we should organize another, larger tuition strike in the Fall, or whether we should try an alternative tactic.

There are many reasons why a campaign next semester could be successful in winning even more of our demands. We started out last semester with an almost unprecedented tactic and no pre-existing organization, and in the course of just a few months we organized a movement involving 4,700 students, including over a thousand students who withheld their tuition payments in support of our demands, many of them continuing on almost to the end of the semester. Through this struggle, we won fossil fuel divestment, increased financial aid for summer classes, and emergency grants for students.

This was despite the fact that students were spread out across the country and there was almost no possibility of in-person organizing or actions. In future semesters, we will be able to host more disruptive in-person actions like pickets and to organize a much larger number of students. We are also looking into the possibility of developing a longer-term organization with greater resources that we could draw on to organize future campaigns. Most importantly, we now have a more organized student body that is ready and able to take collective action on issues that affect us. And finally, we will be part of a nationwide movement—students at fifteen other universities have already confirmed that they are interested in or committed to organizing a tuition strike at their campus next semester.

That being said, if we are going to have any chance of success, we are going to need your help! This current vote on whether or not to organize a tuition strike for the Fall semester is non-binding partly because we want to involve a greater number of people in our strategic discussions before committing to any approach going forward, and also because we will need a lot more people who can commit to organizing a future campaign. That’s why we’re asking everyone to fill out on this form if you can commit to helping us organize!

We have accomplished something truly unprecedented this semester, but we have a lot of work left to do. We hope that you’ll join us in that continued struggle.

Solidarity,

Columbia YDSA

With a surge in anti-AAPI violence making news and the Derek Chauvin murder trial ripping open wounds, it's time to keep up the pressure and defund NYPD. On tonight’s show, we’re joined live by Cheryl Rivera, an organizer with NYC-DSA’s Defund NYPD and Abolition Action campaigns. We’ll discuss common myths and misconceptions about defunding the police and organizing for community safety in a non-carceral framework. We also hear from Lizzy of Queens DSA and our Immigrant Justice Working Group and Yves from the grassroots collective Red Canary Song on violence against Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities and why increased policing is not the answer. To learn more about the Defund NYPD campaign, please visit www.defundnypd.com. To learn more about Red Canary Song and its work with Asian and migrant sex workers, visit https://www.redcanarysong.net/. To donate or request funds from the NYC-DSA Mutual Aid fund, visit bit.ly/covid19aid.