In the face of rising fascism and the looming Donald Trump presidency, socialists must continue to build an organized, working-class movement to fight back. On November 16, Metro DC DSA will be meeting to unpack and reflect on the results, discuss the impact the Trump administration will have on the DMV and DSA in general, and learn about specific campaigns to get involved with to build working-class power. Following the election debrief, organizers will be tabling for different campaigns and will be available to talk with anyone interested in getting plugged in. All are welcome, whether you are a member of DSA or just looking for a space to discuss the election and learn more. While the initial election debrief will have hybrid options, the following campaign fair will be in person only. RSVP debrief and fair here.

Metro DC DSA is also preparing for its annual local convention to be held on Saturday December 7 from noon to 6 pm and Sunday December 8 from from 4 to 8 pm, concurrent with our 2025 Steering Committee election. At convention, DSA members will deliberate on priority campaigns for the upcoming year and vote on local resolutions and bylaws amendments. Local members are invited to join the conversation by joining the #2024-local-convention channel in Slack for more information.

As Trump and his neoconservatives return to Washington with anticipated authoritarianism, District residents are brushing up on their history of resistance to state violence.

This Sunday, November 17 at 1pm, Metro DC DSA and allies will be conducting the History of Police Violence walking tour. The tour will be led by local organizers with studied and direct experience with the carceral state: Afeni Evans, Alec Karakatsanis, Derecka Purnell, and Qiana Johnson. Vendedores Unidos, which organizes street vendors in Ward 1, will also be in attendance and providing insight during the tour. Kicking off at Black Lives Matter Plaza, the walking tour will explore how police, prisons, and carceral logic are used to advance an idea of “safety” that in practice only makes life harder for DC residents. The tour will also explore alternative visions for the abolition of police and prisons in order to build the city we deserve — one where we keep ourselves and our neighbors truly safe. Sign up for the walking tour here. The tour will be bilingual in English and Spanish.

Metro DC DSA has received a request for endorsement in the special election to fill an open PG County Council seat. School board member Shayla Adams-Stafford has submitted an endorsement questionnaire to the chapter, and the resolution to endorse Shayla was introduced two weeks ago.

On Tuesday, November 19, there will be a meeting to conduct a Q&A session with the candidate, hold the second read of the endorsement resolution and debate on endorsement. This meeting is for members of Metro DC DSA only. Chapter members can submit Q&A questions here or ask questions live. There will then be a week-long period for members to submit statements for or against endorsement that will appear on the ballot, and then ballots will be emailed to membership.

The Metro DC DSA Book Exchange and Street Team will be tabling at DC Punk Rock Flea Market tomorrow, Saturday, November 16 from 12 to 5pm. Bring a book to swap, take chapter lit, buttons, and coloring sheets, chat about democratic socialism, and learn how to connect everyday issues to chapter campaigns. Books from After the Storm will also be available for purchase. All are welcome to attend this free community event held at St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church (1525 Newton St NW), where a canned food drive will be supporting We Are Family DC, a mutual aid and social support organization for seniors living in DC.

Last summer, the Rockville City Council and mayor voted to end consideration of a rent stabilization policy for the city and instead hold a series of housing policy discussions. The final discussion on Monday, November 18 will focus on “housing stability” but will not include any consideration of rent stabilization. Rockville tenants and allies are decrying the council and mayor’s refusal to act on rent stabilization and plan to attend the hearing to make their disapproval known. RSVP here for the 7pm session.

Do you live or work in Rockville? The Rockville City Council and mayor are currently surveying residents about budget priorities for FY2026 and one argument against rent stabilization has been the cost of hiring employees to enforce the law. Fill out the survey and tell the council and mayor to prioritize funding rent stabilization.

We Power DC and the Stop Project Pipes coalition have been organizing for months to stop Washington Gas’s Project Pipes in its tracks. Local resistance is working: Last spring, almost 200 comments from DC residents and activists helped get the Washington Gas Project Pipes 3 proposal rejected by the Public Service Commission. Now, Washington Gas is back with a “new” plan… but it’s really the same as ever.

Washington Gas is planning to jack up DC resident’s gas bills to fund their $12 billion Project Pipes and lock the District into methane gas with new infrastructure we do not need. Because the utility is trying to improve its image, the company renamed the proposal “District SAFE,” even though the gas in those pipes is anything but. Activists are urging DC locals to take 30 seconds to send a comment to the PSC now to stop Washington Gas’s shady tactics to charge DC gas customers even more. Tell DC regulators to say NO to the misleadingly named “District SAFE” plan.

Are you a member of our Administrative Committee (AdCom) or interested in joining? Then come blow off some steam and have some happy hour drinks with your AdComrades at Dew Drop Inn on Friday, November 22 from 5:30 – 9pm. You can talk to department stewards about the work their teams do to keep our chapter functioning smoothly and meet new people. AdCom helps coordinate things like events, social media posts, website updates, member engagement, security, technical operations, and more. The chapter can always use more people to keep the administrative wheels of our chapter turning, so come out and meet your new AdCom friends.

Saturday, November 23 at 1:30pm, Metro DC DSA’s tenant organizing campaign, Stomp Out Slumlords, will be kicking off their monthly anti-eviction canvass. Every month, canvassing operations roll out to inform tenants facing eviction of their rights in court and legal options, and to solicit interest in organizing their building. The canvass will meet at L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station at the D Street exit at 1:30pm. All levels of experience are invited to attend; newer participants will have a quick training beforehand and be paired with someone more experienced for training. Following the canvass, the crew will meet at Sonny’s Pizza in Park View to debrief and socialize. RSVP here for the anti-eviction canvass. Please note the original November 16 date was rescheduled.

On November 12, Mayor Bowser held a press conference on the incoming Trump presidency. The Mayor, realizing she must thread a fine line, emphasized diplomacy with Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. Republicans have identified sacking home rule — which has provided self-governance to the thousands of residents of DC since 1973 — as a priority. Although this is unlikely (the Senate would need to jettison the filibuster), fears of Trump nationalizing the local police and national guard are very real. The residents of DC, however, have wasted no time in preparing for the worst. Hundreds of residents have formed the Defend DC Coalition, which has been conducting mass meetings and working-group development to organize a popular defense of the city from authoritarian capture. Learn more about DC home rule from local news coop The 51st, which recently published a strong explainer on home rule.

This year’s version of the “get the radicals” impulse, H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act — which would grant Trump and his handpicked treasury secretary the power to effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization — was procedurally stopped for this session earlier this week. The American Civil Liberties Union, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other civil-society organizations had strongly urged the House of Representatives to vote NO on this bill, which would have declared open season on nonprofits — including news outlets, universities, civil society groups, and even our nonprofit educational arm, the DSA Fund — by stripping them of tax-exempt status based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing. The measure failed by 14 votes on a “suspension of the rules” hurry-up gambit requiring a two-thirds supermajority, but would have passed 256-145 on a straight vote, with 52 House Democrats (including MD’s Steny Hoyer) caving and defecting. It is expected to be refiled in the next session beginning in January. JVP has created an online tool that individuals can use to address their members of Congress. Locally, all MD members voted against or NV except Hoyer and Andy Harris (R-Eastern Shore); NoVA’s Beyer and Spanberger were also “nay,” with Wexton and Connolly NV. See a full vote list, with quivering Dem quislings, from the November 12 session.

Within seventy-two hours of their electoral shellacking on November 5, two House Democrats went on the record using transphobic and bigoted language to continue to spread lies about trans athletes and blame the party’s losses on the trans community and a “radical gender ideology.” Along with trans allies, Metro DC DSA Bodily Autonomy working group (BAWG) sprang into action to bring pressure on the Democratic Party, especially elected Democrats in federal offices, to repudiate the harmful attacks perpetrated by Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Seth Moulton (D-MA).

The campaign created a letter and calling campaign, along with a coordinated social media and press release to both local and national media contacts. Shortly after launch of the campaign, a number of prominent Democrats began speaking out against Moulton and Suozzi’s scapegoating statements, including MD Senator Ben Cardin, quoted in an article by Erin Reed of “Erin in the Morning”, quoting Cardin’s statement, “No one should be turned into a scapegoat for the election results… We will need to redouble our efforts to protect the most vulnerable and keep hope alive that our nation and our people will survive this detour.” Cardin’s remarks came days after receiving multiple letters from the BAWG letter action and mirror the model language of our letter and public statements. The chapter’s BAWG working group is keeping the pressure on and making another campaign push to direct public action to demand that elected representatives push back, publicly condemn bigotry and demand that our society accept and support their trans neighbors.

NLRB bans “captive audience” meetings

Learn more about our local MDC DSA chapter — structure, campaigns and working groups, Night School, and reading groups — HERE. And live from our studio, Wednesday, November 20, 7 – 8pm, Why You Should Join DSA/New Member Orientation (with Q&A). Want to fight fascism from the heart of the empire? Join DSA and fight to build socialism!

MDC DSA members: Join our all-member Slack for real-time info on working group and campaign events, convo, and inspiration. Email [email protected] with your most recent DSA dues receipt to get Slack access. Chapter members are also invited to read — and edit — MDC DSA’s internal wiki. Email [email protected] to get set up, or ask in #helpdesk.

MDC DSA Publications is information central for not only MDC DSA but the entire DMV left. #publications (our working group’s Slack channel) is always ready to onboard new socialist communicators. Weekly Updates like this one are scheduled and emailed on Fridays; current and past Updates are on the web here. Not subscribed? DSA member or not, sign up to get the Update here. Submit your Update suggestions or chapter political blog REDBUG tips to our tip line. The Washington Socialist, published since the 1970s, offers articles on a quarterly schedule; the Fall 2024 edition is now live and will be updated on a rolling basis. Next issue’s deadline is December 6. Check our archive to see what we write — and what you can write. Anyone, MDC DSA member or not, interested in contributing to the Washington Socialist can email submissions or questions to [email protected]. Get your socialist self on the record. Donate to our Comradery page if you would like to financially support socialist publishing in the DMV.

Democratic Autopsy, Version n + n
If Harris tacked to the left, would it have truly saved the campaign? The editors at The Drift are sour on this, summarizing that the Democrats failed to confront the national collapse being faced by Americans due to “the fracturing of the media monoculture into a bewildering patchwork of social media platforms, podcasts, streams, and cable news networks; and the decimation, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, of offline social relationships and community institutions. Under such conditions, it is easy to suspect that anyone who insists we’re all in this together is just trying to rip you off — a suspicion that Trump is especially adept at vocalizing.”

“Understanding and truth are our best weapons”
As to our own current descent into the abyss, comrade Kurt S observes, one factor lies in the nature of disinformation. “This is nothing new — from the early 19th century on, when ruling circles have been forced to expand voting rolls, they have increased demagoguery, using cultural and ideological ‘common sense’ as a weapon in the class struggle. He points at an extranational perspective from John Clarke, a socialist writing in the left journal Canadian Dimension, noting that “any viewpoint that challenges capitalism as a system of production holds that system to be inherently exploitative and unjust, and aims to replace the existing system with a more egalitarian and sustainable social order. For capitalists and their ideological enablers, however, no such considerations can be entertained. They must deny or minimize the predatory nature of their system. …Understanding and truth are our best weapons against an exploitative society based on lies.”

Bernie’s response to the election
“The results of the 2024 election have confirmed a reality that is too frequently denied by Democratic Party leaders and strategists: The American working class is angry — and for good reason. They want to know why the very rich are getting much richer, while weekly wages remain stagnant and 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They want to know why corporate profits soar while companies shut down factories in America and move to low-wage countries. [and more] Donald Trump won this election because he tapped into that anger. Did he address any of these serious issues in a thoughtful or meaningful way? Absolutely not. What he did do was divert the festering anger in our country at a greedy and out-of-touch corporate elite into a politics that served his political goals and will end up further enriching his fellow billionaires. Trump’s “genius” is his ability to divide the working class so that tens of millions of Americans will reject solidarity with their fellow workers and pave the way for huge tax breaks for the very rich and large corporations.” More from Sen. Sanders’s op-ed in the Boston Globe

Fletcher: Labor Now Needs to Be an Anti-Fascist Movement
“MAGA forces have begun what they believe to be their final offensive against everything on the Left. One way to fight back is for organized labor to become a conscious anti-fascist movement.” A plan and exhortation from our comrade Bill Fletcher Jr. in In These Times. And Bill F writing with Dave Zirin, a similarly themed article in The Nation. via Portside

The Lesson of This Election: We Must Stop Inflation Before It Starts
The NYT’s headline is a little bland to announce striking dismal-science findings that are no surprise to socialists: the “Shock Doctrine” lives on. When economists “analyzed more than 130,000 earnings calls of publicly listed U.S. companies [they] found that businesses can coordinate price hikes around cost shocks. This enabled companies, by and large, to pass on or amplify the impact of the initial cost increase in response to shocks in [for example] the wake of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. In other words, the sudden news of cost shocks, like the onset of a pandemic and war, grants companies more freedom to coordinate price hikes across sectors because they realize that their rivals are very likely going to do the same.” [our emphasis] So the data show that “price gouging” is not a savage act of an individual capitalist but a coolly calculated, opportunistic and routine practice across sectors. New York Times op-ed

History Rhymes in MSG
Trump’s pre-election rally in Madison Square Garden was infamous for the ugly bigotry that suffused it (though unfortunately it did not dissuade his voters). Our comrade Kurt S offers this archive article from People’s World, “22,000 workers in Madison Square Garden forge united front against fascism” about a 1933 rally in the same venue, providing a reminder that the resistance to fascism begins with building a united front.

Friday, November 15

5 – 10pm | MDC DSA Labor Happy Hour

Saturday, November 16

10:30am – 12:15pm | Prince George’s Branch DSA General Meeting and Candidate Discussion

1 – 3pm | MDC DSA Election Debrief and Campaigns Fair

Sunday, November 17

11am | Rockville Rent Stabilization Canvass

1pm | History of Police Violence Walking Tour

7 – 8pm | Internationalism Working Group monthly meeting

Monday, November 18

6pm | Upcounty MoCo Monthly Organizing Meeting

7pm | Rockville City Council Housing Discussion: No Stability Without Stabilization

Tuesday, November 19

6pm | NoVA Medicare for All Working Group

7pm | Endorsement of Shayla Adams-Stafford Q&A and Debate

Wednesday, November 20

7 – 8pm | Why You Should Join DSA/New Member Orientation

Thursday, November 21

6:30 – 8:30pm | NoVA Branch DSA Social Meetup

Friday, December 22

5:30 – 9pm | AdCom Social/Happy Hour

Saturday, November 23

1:30 – 4:30pm | Stomp Out Slumlords Anti-Eviction Canvass

Monday, November 25

7 – 8pm | MDC DSA DC Abolition Working Group

7pm | Trans/Queer Liberation Group Meeting

Saturday, November 30

5 – 8pm | Metro DC DSA Community Friendsgiving

Wednesday, December 4

6:45 – 8:15pm | Labor Working Group monthly meeting

Thursday, December 5

5pm | Social Housing Organizing Meeting

7pm | NoVA Electoral December Monthly Social

Saturday, December 7

12 – 6pm | December 2024 MDC DSA Local Convention (day one)

Sunday, December 8

4 – 8pm | December 2024 MDC DSA Local Convention (day two)