BRIEFS

Stand up for DC’s hotel, restaurant, and entertainment workers!

The D.C. Council is considering a bill that would make it easier for workers laid off during the pandemic to get their old jobs back. However, corporate interests are trying to weaken the bill to exclude some workers. Sign on to this letter to tell the council: Don’t water down this bill!

You can also check out background info from the Labor Working Group below:

Right to Return to Work
On December 1st, the DC Council unanimously voted to move forward B23-0965, which gives workers in hotels, restaurants, retail, entertainment venues, and contracting jobs the right to return to any jobs they lost as a result of COVID-19. Now, the Bill is advancing to its second and final vote on December 15th. During the vote, some Councilmembers voiced concerns about including restaurant and retail workers in the Bill. Now, we need to make sure the Council holds the line and keep the bill from being watered down! Sign a letter to the DC Council today!

If you need extra motivation, the Baltimore Council just overturned a Mayoral veto on similar legislation.

MDC DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

NATIONAL DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Saturday, Dec. 12 and Sunday, Dec. 13 -- 4th Maryland Legislative Coalition Summit
Virtual conference with participation from many state activist organizations on Legislative Priorities For the 2021 General Assembly Session, with themed sessions Saturday 10:30am on Social Justice, Immigration, Police Reform; 2pm Consumer Rights, Elections and Sunday 10:30am Economic Justice and 2pm Education and Health. Read more here, including participating organizations.

Tuesday December 15| 3pm ET
HOUSING IS THE CURE - National Briefing on COVID & The Eviction Crisis
Join the Right to the City Alliance and Human Impact Partners for a conversation on the deepening housing and public health crises as the CDC Eviction Moratorium is set to expire on December 31st. This National Briefing will offer concrete solutionsas well as strategies pressuring the incoming administration to act.

Wednesday, Dec. 16 | 10am
Maryland Center for Economic Policy, part of the Fair Funding Coalition, is hosting a briefing for media and advocates to help people better understand the state revenue situation and how the fair share tax plan would help. Sign up here

INFO ACCESS

Publications Schedule –In December we will email Updates on Fridays, December 18 and, yes, the 25th (might be short on events, tho), and the New Year’s 2021 issue of the Washington Socialist will appear on Friday, January 1, 2021. The December 16 Update may include articles about the local convention, which will have just taken place. Stay tuned on that.

You know who you are — you signed the DSA 100K pledge to approach three folks you know about joining DSA, but ummm… the first move is the hardest, But hey, this is the perfect icebreaker. Just send them this link, with “hey, I know you wanted to know more about DSA. Well, there’s this: Why You Should Join DSA | 8-9pm on Wednesdays” (for example, Dec. 9) … where your friends will learn about who we are and what we do. We’ll outline our chapter’s structure and our campaigns, branches, and caucuses and the breadth of our DMV action. Give them the full picture about the amazing upside of DSA and democratic socialism.

Are you an MDC DSA member who wonders how to get on our chapter Slack? Just email [email protected] and identify yourself as a member. Put “request for #Slack” in the subject line. Use the email address by which national DSA knows you. If you are a new member, forward the email receipt that national DSA sent you acknowledging your status. Please be patient; our admin committee is loaded with chores and shorthanded to boot. Our Slack platform, with numerous channels for all our caucuses, branches, campaigns and working groups, is a great place to get connected with the kind of socialist work YOU want to do in DSA.

GOOD READS

A solid and detailed Politico article on the troubling numbers of ex-military brass populating the Biden transition teams and now, with the top defense pick, emerging into actual cabinet nominations. The forest of names with cadence-count histories is pretty amazing.

It might be fun, of a sort, to get in a shouting match with a toxic conspiracy theorist. But the opportunity may offer to change the person’s mind instead, as this Guardian article indicates.

Not a big surprise, but Trumpland is putting loyalist minders in transition meetings between the incoming Biden folks and civil servants in the executive departments.

And if you are nervous about next Tuesday – a co-production from Vice News compiles surrealist comedian Vic Berger’s five years of absurdist Trump coverage into the form of a one-hour movie.

DC’s attorney general bars Doordash from raising commission fees charged to restaurants above the city’s 15 percent cap. Hope the move doesn’t show up in workers’ paychecks.

Demography is destiny, but for whom? “The joke is that the GOP is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of,” says David Shor, a Democratic polling and data expert, who has unsettling news about the inevitable Dem majority.

For our liberation, queer and trans people must organize as socialists, and socialists must defend queer and trans life, these authors argue in the DSA Organizer. DSA, they say, offers a unique political home for queer and trans workers.,

And to end on something lighter – a thorough review of CyberPunk 2077 filters an apocalyptic future, but also covers where the game falls short on issues relevant to socialists – particularly in terms of non-binary representation and in the abusive labor practices that contributed to its production.

Ages have come and gone, kingdoms and powers and dynasties have risen and fallen, old glories and ancient wisdoms have been turned into dust, heroes and sages have been forgotten and many a mighty and fearsome god has been hurled into the lightless chasms of oblivion.

But ye, Plebs, Populace, People, Rabble, Mob, Proletariat, live and abide forever.
- Arturo Giovannitti