The chapter’s next general body meeting is this Sunday, March 24, from 2 to 4pm, hosted online and at American University. RSVP for the Zoom link and additional location details. In addition to updates from across the chapter, the general body will be hearing from YDSA comrades at AU about the recent national YDSA Conference. Members new and old are welcome.

Members will also have the opportunity to debate and discuss the following upcoming chapter resolutions:

• Pleasure Activism or Resolution for a Regular Social Event
• Resolution for MDC DSA to Endorse Uncommitted Vote in the Democratic Primary in Maryland
• Choose Solidarity – Build the Left, Fight the Right

There is less than a month left in the 2024 Maryland legislative session, and Montgomery County DSA is urging renters and allies to contact Senators Will Smith and Jeff Waldstreicher, chair and vice chair of the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, to pass two key renter protection bills out of their Senate committee as soon as possible. The Good Cause Eviction Bill allows county councils to pass legislation preventing landlords from not renewing leases without a justification. The Tenant Safety Act would allow Maryland tenants to jointly pay rent into escrow with their neighbors and allow tenants to pay a reduced rent into escrow if repairs are not made. Metro DC DSA’s Stomp Out Slumlords project has used similar provisions in DC law to organize tenants to go on rent strikes and win concessions from landlords. Learn more about these two bills here via Renters United Maryland, the Maryland statewide renter rights coalition, and send a letter to Sens. Smith and Waldstreicher here.

The Alexandria City Council has voted to adopt the Medicare For All Resolution that the M4A working group has spent the past several years working towards, in coalition with Grassroots Alexandria, Our Revolution Northern Virginia and Tenants and Workers United. With passage of this resolution — the first Medicare For All Resolution to be adopted in Virginia — Alexandria joins the more than 130 localities nationwide to endorse universal healthcare. Please visit the Alexandria Medicare For All Linktree to view the press release, resolution text and more information from the campaign.

The Alexandria resolution campaign may be finished, but the fight for universal healthcare continues in Arlington. The Arlington M4A Resolution Campaign will kick off on April 7 at 2pm with a screening of the documentary Healing US at Arlington Central Library. Tickets are free but limited, so RSVP to reserve your tickets. As part of the campaign, Arlington M4A has also launched a fundraiser for RIP Medical Debt. By helping to meet an ambitious goal of $1,000 raised, tens of thousands of dollars of outstanding medical debt in northern Virginia can be canceled.

The corporate forces undergirding spectacular capitalism have long mastered the art of political propaganda designed to confuse participation in American democracy. As techno-capital encloses social media networks and captures and enshitifies sources of information relied on by the general public, new authentic channels for socializing political reality must form in response.

The REDBUG will be covering local elections and politics in DC weekly, with a focus on injecting discourse and analysis centering the perspective and interests of DC’s working class. The project is being undertaken by the Publications Cooperative, the working group operating within Metro DC DSA that produces this newsletter and the Washington Socialist.

In the two premier articles released this week:

• How to Blow Up a Pipeline Without Even Trying — DC’s Project Pipes is an environmental justice disaster. The City continues to pour money into an environmentally disastrous corporate project. Will stopping the plan become a focus for DC’s voters?
• The candidates running for party primaries in the District — On March 9, the DC Board of Elections confirmed the candidates running for each party’s primary. The full list-out, with preliminary political commentary, can be found within.

Have information or insight you’d like to contribute to the project? Readers are encouraged to submit information, discourse, or articles and can use this form for quick contact. Readers and potential contributors can also send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. New articles will be circulated in this newsletter as the project develops.

Join Metro DC DSA’s Repro Justice Working Group on Thursday, April 4, to fundraise for our reproductive care kits for the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF), starting at 6pm at As You Are bar in DC. The event will host crafts, camaraderie and a raffle.

Supporting local abortion funds is more important than ever, given recent and continuing rollback of reproductive rights across the country. DCAF helps women traveling to the area fund their abortions, and is one of the only abortion funds in the area that has no income restrictions, helping close the gap for funding from national abortion funds, which often only cover 50% of a procedure. DCAF has had a huge surge of applications since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Now more than ever, they need support — RSVP here. People that are unable to attend but would still like to donate to DCAF can do so here.

As Israel’s assault on the Gazan people continues, working masses have been calling on the American government — at all levels — to push for an end to the genocide. In Alexandria, a local alliance including NoVA Branch DSA has been pleading for the city government to assent to residents’ demands to end their complicity in genocide. On Tuesday, March 19, Alexandria’s Human Rights Commission voted to recommend the City Council pass a resolution urging a ceasefire in Gaza. During their comments they thanked the room for educating them and apologized that this took them so long. While the Alexandria City Council has not yet budged on its positioning, the significant base of Arab, Muslim and internationally minded voters in Northern Virginia is turning the issue into a matter of deeper political focus.

This Sunday, comrades and allies from Montgomery and Prince George’s County DSA will be flyering at the Takoma Park Farmers Market to spread the word about the Uncommitted vote in Maryland’s Presidential Primary, taking place on May 14 (early voting is May 2 – 9). DSA members and allies will be meeting at the Gazebo next to Takoma Urban Park to flyer from 10am until 2pm. The coalition will be talking to market goers and educating our neighbors about the importance of voting Uncommitted as a way to send a message that we do not approve of the US’s arming and funding of the genocide against the Palestinian people. Here are some additional resources on the Uncommitted vote — and if you live in Maryland, you can sign a pledge to vote Uncommitted.

The March monthly meeting for Metro DC DSA’s Internationalism working group is this Saturday at 1pm. This meeting follows up on the restart of the working group in February, and will define group priorities, updates and solidarity work in the DMV. RSVP here.

Montgomery County DSA to host game night on Sunday, March 24th at 5pm

Join Montgomery County comrades for a MoCo DSA game night this Sunday, March 24 at 5pm. Drinks and food can be purchased at the venue. Games will be provided, but feel free to bring a favorite game of your own. Look for folks with DSA shirts to find our group; details can be found in the RSVP link.

March Elrich is loved by the Washington Post — but only when they think he won’t be in office. Pete Tucker, writing in Counterpunch, comments on how, after consistently attacking Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich during last year’s campaign, the WaPo began to praise him when they thought his wealthy opponent won. When they realized Elrich was back in office, the attacks began. According to Tucker, we see the same game now: Elrich announced his plans to run for a third term and the WaPo’s knives are out again.

Working-class people rarely have a seat ‘at the legislative table’ in state capitals

The dearth of working-class legislators raises concerns that economic challenges such as wage stagnation and the rising cost of living will get short shrift in state capitals. Stateline/Route Fifty

Maryland Public Service Commission is target of extraordinary lobbying by corporate power companies

Maryland PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) has released a study of how intensively – and expensively – corporate power companies lobby the state Public Service Commission, which is known to roll over for those it is charged with regulating. See the report here.

Millennials’ Obama-era hangover pounding metaphorical heads everywhere in full force

Every publication seems to be dipping into a fast-cohering narrative about a broader cultural decay. A broader 2010s hangover caused by the cutoff of post-recession liquidity and quantitative easing. Ambitious (and gilded) new corporate projects and work-life modes have eroded, and all manner of life – which has come to rely or pine for these new system – now faces the slow encapsulation of value by tech giants and VC firms hungry for high returns. Some…lighter reading on the subject: In Defector, musings on the gilded menace of Vice media, that once inescapable source of digital news for snarky stoners and alt-millennials; in The New Republic — The Age of Cultural Stagnation reckons with a deeper collapse of original production and creative freedom; and soo everyone wants to be a creative? from The Trend Report, on collapse of the “creative job.”

Honduras Ratchets Up Battle With Crypto-Libertarian Investors, Rejects World Bank Court

“The fight presents an almost-impossible-to-believe scenario: A group of libertarian investors teamed up with a former Honduran government — which was tied at the hip with narco-traffickers and came to power after a US-backed military coup — in order to implement the world’s most radical libertarian policy, which turned over significant portions of the country to those investors through so-called special economic zones. The Honduran public, in a backlash, ousted the narco-backed regime, and the new government repealed the libertarian legislation. The crypto investors are now using the World Bank to force Honduras to honor the narco-government’s policies.” From The Intercept.

A Revolution in American Foreign Policy

…is no less than what we must have, Bernie writes in Foreign Affairs. ‘...some of the most important issues facing the United States and the world are rarely debated in a serious manner. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of foreign policy. For many decades, there has been a “bipartisan consensus” on foreign affairs. Tragically, that consensus has almost always been wrong.’ via Portside

Saturday, March 23

1 – 2pm | Internationalism Working Group Monthly Meeting
1:30 – 4:30pm | Stomp Out Slumlords Anti-Eviction Canvass

Sunday, March 24

2 – 4pm | MDC DSA General Body Meeting (hybrid)
5pm | MoCo DSA Game Night
7 – 9pm | NoVA Electoral Research Meeting Kickoff

Wednesday, March 27

7pm | MDC DSA Reproductive Justice WG Weekly Meeting
7 – 8pm | Why You Should Join DSA/New Member Orientation
8:45pm | Labor Filmfest – “Hollywood Shuffle”

Thursday, March 28

5:30pm | MDC DSA Socialist Feminist Section Happy Hour

Monday, April 1

6:15 – 7:30pm | Labor Working Group Meeting

Tuesday, April 2

6 – 7pm | NoVA Medicare for All Working Group Meeting
7 – 8pm | Abolition Working Group Biweekly Meeting

Wednesday, April 3

6:30pm | NoVA DSA Social Gathering hosted by NoVA DSA Electoral WG

Thursday, April 4th

6pm | Repro Justice Fundraiser for Care Kits for DCAF

Friday, April 5

5:30 – 8pm | First Fridays with MDC DSA (monthly chapter wide happy hour)

6:30pm | NoVA DSA Gamenite

Sunday, April 7

2 – 4pm | MoCo Branch Monthly Meeting

7 – 8pm| NoVA Electoral Working Group meeting

Thursday, April 11

6:30 – 7:45pm | NoVA DSA Monthly Organizing Meeting