BRIEFS

MDC DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

NATIONAL DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Friday, January 8

7pm | Our Revolution MoCo Legislative Priorities Town Hall
With Dels. Julie Palakovich Carr, Gabe Acevero, Vaughn Stewart and David Moon.

Saturday, January 9

2 – 5pm | Progressive Maryland Statewide Member Assembly
Preparing action priorities for legislative session.

2 – 4pm | Eastern Shore Environmental Legislative Summit
To get a preview of all the environmental bills being considered in MD.

Tuesday, January 12

5:30pm | ONE DC’s Shared Work Training
Join ONE DC for their Shared Work Training, a workshop with direct testimony from DC residents around Black unemployment, learn about the Shared Work program from NELP Staff Attorney Nzingha Hooker and hear from Addy Baird, a Shared Work participant, on best practices when approaching an employer about the program. More information about the program can also be found here. Register here for Zoom access and more info.

INFO ACCESS

The Pubs Working Group has scheduled January’s Updates for Fridays, January 15 and 22. The February issue of the Washington Socialist will be sent Friday, January 29 and the article deadline is Saturday, January 23.

But, uh, who or what is the Pubs Working Group?

The Publications Working Group (#publications on Slack) is one of the longest-standing WGs in MDC DSA and is responsible for much of the chapter’s outward-facing communications — in particular for the chapter’s Friday Updates and for monthly issues (online since 2012) of the Washington Socialist newsletter, which publishes longer articles on socialist thought and action at all levels from the personal to the global.

The Pubs WG interlocks with the Comms department of the chapter’s Administrative Committee in recruiting and developing writers, editors, web specialists and design folks to be backup for all the chapter’s communications, both outward facing and internal, at need. As our chapter takes a lead in all our DMV communities’ responsible emergence from the COVID-19 crisis, Pubs WG will provide more non-digital content for outreach and organizing, such as posters, fliers and print brochures.

Members who indicate interest and skills in any of those comms specialties on our member survey have been or will be contacted to join this integral part of MDC DSA’s public face and representation. Achieving a socialist society means forging a wide consensus that socialism and socialist reforms have earned fair consideration by the public. That is our particular job, and our passion, in the Pubs WG.  

To contact us directly, email [email protected]

And speaking of Slack — 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

See Best of Good Reads in the January newsletter; pick out your own in 2021 that will make the cut for next January’s “Best of” and send the link — with comment if you like — to [email protected] .

Confused about what went down yesterday? CrimethInc. has compiled an excellent summary, including a rough timeline, on their website, and The Intercept explains how law enforcement appeared to have blatantly ignored the public planning for the Capitol siege.

Economist Richard Wolff, an old-school Marxist economist who hosts the show Economic Update on YouTube and Means TV, interviewed union boss Sara Nelson. Responding to a question about the capacity to call for a general strike, Nelson breaks down the need to normalize a strike in common workplaces before this strategy can be deployed en masse.

Awful news from out of LA: Vons and Albertsons stores just laid off every one of their full-time, union delivery drivers. They will be replaced with DoorDash gig workers who receive no benefits as a direct result of Prop 22.

In a terse pre-inauguration meditation in the New Left Review’s Sidecar, Mike Davis reflects that “… we first need to acknowledge our collective shame in failing last year to build an effective national protest movement against the policies that led to the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and the economic ruin of tens of millions more.” Despite the example of “hundreds of rank-and-file protests and job actions by healthcare, food industry and service workers … there was no real attempt at national coordination or the creation of an inclusive emergency coalition … The left needs to face the fact that despite the huge popularity of its ideas and the dynamic example of BLM we remain clueless and disorganized as a national force.”

Are you a 1 or a 5? Vice reports on union avoidance consulting firm IRI’s data collection methods of rating employees’ pro- or anti-union stance as falling within the gray area of legality. The newly formed Alphabet Workers Union, representing Google workers, says, “Instead of pouring resources into the very workers that drive the company, particularly those exploited by Alphabet’s two tiered employment system, Google is engaging with a company that violates the privacy of workers while pretending to welcome open discourse.”

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