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We’ve finally made it to the end of 2020, and what a year it's been for our country and for our chapter. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic keeping us all isolated from each other our chapter has grown immensely this year and we’re looking forward to the new year ahead. We’ve done some much together so much in 2020. As a member-funded, member-run, and member-powered organization, every thing we do is only possible through our collective power.
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December General Meeting |
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Don't miss the last Pittsburgh DSA General Meeting of 2020! Join us Saturday December 19th at 10:00 AM where we will have an education segment on the climate crisis from Extinction Rebellion's Dave Lampe, breakout sessions to network with comrades, voting on a new Member At Large for the Coordinating Committee, and more!
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We're organizing to defund the police. We believe in fighting for a world, where we use our collective resources to care for each other and keep each other safe. Police do not make us safer.
If you live outside Pittsburgh: About two thirds of the police spending by municipalities in Allegheny County alone that we've been able to identify comes from the other 129 municipalities that aren't Pittsburgh, so we can't defund the police if we only organize in Pittsburgh, so we've been working to gather tools and information to support more organizing in more of places, all around Allegheny County and across Southwest PA.
Click here to sign up to get a copy of our organizing toolkit, and we'll be in touch about more ways to help! Many budgets haven't passed yet, and if it hasn't yet, it's not too late to weigh in and organize around defunding the police in the 2021 budget. If it's already passed, it's not too early to get started organizing to defund the police in the 2022 budget.
In Pittsburgh: Mayor Peduto's budget proposal is a plan for cuts to basically everything but the police, and to respond to a pandemic, unemployement, and eviction crisis and months of sustained protest against police murders, brutality, and funding by giving the police an even greater share of the Pittsburgh budget in 2021.
In today's City Council Meeting many of you helped pack the meeting with 44 speakers calling to defund the police in the biggest city council meeting we've seen yet, and many more who couldn't make it because of the inaccesssible timing and planned instead to call and email their councilmembers. a lot of the turnout of course is also from the work of folks in stop the station and others, but definitely a lot of folks here turned up and made powerful comments.
However, Councilmembers Burgess, Lavelle, and Coghill all decided to wrap up the meeting by claiming the Pittsburgh Police are incredibly and falsely claiming that it's supposedly illegal to cut the police budget.
But the budget isn't passed yet. We can still step up the pressure. Call and email your councilmembers and tell them to defund the police.
Then, mark your calendars for Monday at 10AM for the meeting titled "Tax, budget, and citizen participation on the Mayor’s proposed 2021 Operating and Capital budgets." This meeting will be followed by the votes on whether and how to amend the Mayor's budget proposal at 1:30PM the same day. To signup for public comment in Monday's 10AM Meeting: 📞 Call the City Clerk’s Office at (412)255-2138 by 9 AM THE DAY OF THE HEARING. 📧 Email [email protected] by 9 AM THE DAY OF THE HEARING with you name, neighborhood, address, and that you'd like to speak in the meeting. 📹They'll give you Zoom login info for the meeting. Join in at 10AM, but often they leave us staring at a waiting rooms screen wondering if it's broken til 15 minutes or so after 10AM. Stay on if that happens!
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The Political Education Committee is building a Digital Educational Resource Catalog for socialists and socialist-curious readers. The purpose of the catalog is to provide a repository of electronic resources on socialist thought.
In solidarity, Pittsburgh DSA |
