WED Aug 14 Book Talk: Tim Faust discusses
Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next 7 PM at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave DC 2008. Faust “lays out five clear, feasible steps we can take to achieve this goal.” Free, RSVP at link. See a
review of Faust’s book in
Democratic Left.
THURS August 15 The Many Exciting Ways to Wage Peace: A Training In Tools 6-8 PM Institute for Policy Studies, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 6th Floor Washington, DC 20036
+ Google Map A unique interactive session on how movements for justice have successfully applied media other than speech successfully in actions against racism, xenophobia, fascism and sexism.
Find out more »
THU Aug 15, 2019 Monthly Legal Clinics for Restaurant Workers! 1 – 5 PM 1100 Florida Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009. Hosted by Restaurant Opportunities Center of Washington DC (ROC-DC):
RSVP HERE:
calendly.com/roc-dc/legal-clinic. Do you have questions regarding your legal rights in the workplace?
SAT Aug 17 Deep Canvass with SURJ 11 AM-5 PM Hosted by SURJ NoVa
RSVP Deep canvassing is a long-term, research-based strategy that SURJ is using to invite our neighbors to re-think their support for systemic white supremacy. Info at link or
[email protected].
SAT August 17 M4A comes to Prince George’s with a Medicare For All Town Hall -- 2 PM – 4 PM
Mt. Ennon Baptist Church 9832 Piscataway Rd., Clinton, MD (Prince George’s, south county) An Open Invitation For
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to discuss the healthcare of his constituents within House Dist. 5, as well as the rest of us (no response from Steny, yet…)
Progressive Maryland in coalition with the Maryland Progressive Health Care Coalition are sponsor/hosts.
SAT Aug 17 Support Our Sisters and Siblings! NJNP House Party 9 PM – 1 AM TBA, Columbia Heights -- Hosted by Showing Up for Racial Justice - SURJ - DC and No Justice No Pride:
SUN August 18 When They See Us: Screening & Discussion 6:30 – 8:30 PM UUCF-Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax 2709 Hunter Mill Rd, Oakton, Virginia 22124 Hosted by SURJ Northern Virginia:
https://www.facebook.com/events/408945519713246/ Documentary about the Central Park Five. More information coming soon! Mark your calendars!
THURS, August 22 ONE DC Fundraiser and Open Mic At Dew Drop 7:30 – 10:30 PM The Dew Drop Inn DC 2801 8th St NE, Washington, DC 20017 Come out for an evening of open mic performances to support ONE DC (Organizing Neighborhood Equity) and the vital work they are doing in DC! Info
https://www.onedconline.org/
MON Aug 26 ROC DC Monthly Meeting 1-3 PM Restaurant Opportunity Center DC, Second Floor, 1100 Florida Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009, USA
Come together and meet other restaurant and tipped workers in DC who want to build worker power in order to improve wages and working conditions in the DC restaurant industry! Dinner will be provided and children are welcome!
SAT Aug 31 Black August Street Law 101: Know Your Rights Training 1-2:30 PM Dorothy I. Height/Benning Library 3935 Benning Rd NE, Washington, DC 20019 Hosted by Black Lives Matter DC and Keep DC 4 Me -- This Black August, we continue to hold MPD accountable for illegal stop and frisks, jumpouts, brutality, and murder.
SAT September 7 When They See Us: Organizing Conversation -- 1:00 PM, ATU 689, 2701 Whitney Pl, District Heights, MD 20747 -- Join Progresive Maryland's Justice Task Force, Former NAACP President Ben Jealous, and other special guests for a discussion about our criminal legal system and learn about our plan for action to end mass incarceration here in Maryland.
Compiled by David E with the edit team
GOOD READS:
REPORTING ON THE 2019 DSA CONVENTION IN ATLANTA
The NYT account of our convention, published Tuesday (Aug. 6)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialists-america.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
More MSM reporting on the convention, from CNN – reporting on this convention seems to be rather more about power and action and less about ideology and side issues that might fall under the category of obsessive disputation and “politically correct posturing,” which might have been more common in MSM reporting after the 2017 gathering:
https://www.nbc-2.com/story/40879008/the-democratic-socialist-revolution-comes-to-a-crossroads
And
The Guardian, not quite MSM
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/06/democratic-socialists-us-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR02xRHfVqO8HEw-1s9CqJBAT4uzQqQ11G5uSWTOYoQ1hTFs8NcJedgFp4A
Here's a static Google doc with one of the early report-backs – it’s from the Boston delegation scribe -- very useful roundup about what got passed.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CyMrdYj4IscDQG8-94yserV5JbT3WOahrf1z0TO5VMI/edit
Our comrade Brandon H passes along Collective Power Network's write up of their successes and failures of Convention
https://dsaorganizer.org/2019/08/06/cpn-report-from-the-2019-dsa-convention/
Here is Nathan Robinson of
Current Affairs’s quite
long and discursive piece that gives a sense of place and there-ness once you get accommodated to the unreliable-narrator stance. Maybe because it is not MSM, he engages in a Homeric catalogue of quirks and oddities, but his take on Sara Nelson’s blockbuster address and the news conference of our elected officials are pretty deeply affecting. It’s also loaded with links, such as this
Current Affairs colleague’s
deep dive into several of the prominent caucuses contesting at the event.
Delegate Eric Blanc wrote this account for
The Nation, probably not the last discussion of the convention that will appear there, but a first (and hopeful) quick take:
https://www.thenation.com/article/dsa-convention-sanders-atlanta-socialism/
Our MDC DSA comrade Allison G reports on specific housing issues and how they played out in Atlanta:
https://medium.com/@allisongeroi/democracy-beyond-the-debate-floor-81ab3c9380e2
And… our MDC DSA comrade Kaiser F has kept a spreadsheet of convention issues and proposals with details about support and about the outcomes of the votes. Check it out here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fWofHwOsd4m3PcCab5w0lfIpEPFBKGqfuTi9KR--Zpo/edit?usp=sharing
Just in case you thought everybody saw DSA as cuddly, comes now KeyWiki Man, with a data dump of staggering proportions and a lavish awarding of credit to us and our predecessors for infiltrating just everything.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/32907-democratic-socialists-of-america-communism-for-the-new-millennium
AND ANOTHER THING
Where are the angry voices? Academic examinations collected by the Nieman Lab at Harvard show that there are pissed-off lefties, too – but there are nuances.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/08/wheres-the-anger-on-facebook-these-days-a-lot-of-it-is-on-far-left-sites/
Interesting in its detail,
an account of the, er, “greening” of the Fed. Actually mentions the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, one of the last genuinely left pieces of legislation in our recent history, and its mandate to the Fed that full employment and economic growth must be kept mutual constants.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/business/economy/fed-rate-cut-workers.html
The virtues of a
“single transferable vote,” which swayed DSA convention delegates in one of the most grueling debates of last weekend’s get-together, are
touted by author John Moser as a way to keep Maryland’s multimember legislative districts but end what our Maryland comrade Rich Elliott described as
the incumbent protection system in our most recent
Washington Socialist. Interestingly, author Moser also runs a website called
Nordic Model USA in which he explicitly states “Whereas
Social Democracy USA and the
Democratic Socialists of America specifically seek a transition to a Socialist future, Nordic Model USA believes in Social Democracy as an end goal.” Check it out.
A video of our
comrade David Schwartzman’s presentation “
From the Capitalocene to the Solarcommunicene” at the conference on “The Future of Global Systems Thinking: Celebrating James Lovelock’s Centenary”, 29–31 July 2019 at the University of Exeter – his presentation is 6 minutes and change in length, followed by questions, and starts at 3:16:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=xRHpCpFDNXg
