Dear Comrades,

There are 13 days left until the Massachusetts Primary.

We are a small chapter and have often come to a consensus in meetings that
electoral politics is not our sole focus. But this election season, we
voted to endorse Senator Ed Markey in his reelection bid and Mayor Alex
Morse for Congress. We are asking everyone to focus all of their energy on
these campaigns now.

Markey carries the Green New Deal torch and Morse, a recent victim of
possible Democratic machine corruption, is a champion of Medicare for All
and doesn’t accept money from PACs -- just to name some of their awesome
policy promises.

Today, we put out a press release announcing our endorsement to re-elect Ed
Markey for US Senate. Read it here
<[link removed]>.
Over the weekend, we co-signed a statement with the Pioneer Valley and
Boston DSA chapters to help clear up rumors that we had voted in favor of
rescinding our endorsement of Morse. As you can read in the statement
<[link removed]>,
the national DSA got some flack because of a statement that the Merrimack
DSA chapter put out immediately following the news reported by The Daily
Collegiate, which called Morse unfit to hold any office.

Thank you to all of our members and followers who responded and called in
last Thursday with their messages of support for Mayor Morse. There were
zero responses from anyone wanting to rescind our endorsement.

To be clear, immediately after the “allegations” were published by The
Daily Collegiate, we felt it seemed to be a political smear but offered no
comment to the press when asked. When we were asked for a second time by
WAMC’s Josh Landes to make a statement on Sunday evening (August 9), we
agreed to state that we were still behind Morse but would offer our members
a chance to weigh in on this decision, as we are a democratic organization.


While other local and statewide politicians, organizations, and another DSA
chapter stated their dismay at Morse, we waited for more information and
the feedback of our members before saying anything further about the
matter. While we understand and hold space for some of the reactions that
we witnessed, we are also pleased with how our chapter handled the
situation, in not jumping to conclusions right away.

While no experience compares to Morse’s as he was dragged through the mud
these last two weeks, I know that many of us are happy to have the worst of
this situation behind us. For now, at least.

Moving on and up, let’s jump into volunteering for Morse and Markey today,
and over these last two weeks.

Check out Alex Morse <[link removed]>and Ed
Markey’s
<[link removed]>
websites for information on how you can volunteer, and we will notify you
of any standouts scheduled going forward via social media.

You can share your thoughts and hear about what else our chapter is up to
on tomorrow’s (August 19) monthly Zoom call at 7PM.

See the attached for dial-in details and our agenda and let me know if you
need anything else by replying to this email.

Solidarity!

Your Executive Committee
Berkshires DSA
berkshiresdsa.org

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