BRIEFS

— Helena K (she/they) & Eric S (he/him), NOVA Branch Co-Chairs

In the coming weeks, the Defund MPD working group is gearing up for a DC budget campaign by hosting a series of political education events on policing and abolition — open to all comrades and friends. Join us on Saturday, January 30th for a Walking Tour of DC’s Policing Landscape, a safe and socially distant walking tour in and around Judiciary Square to learn about the history and present of the policing landscape in DC. Then in February, get equipped and energized to bring the people you already know into the fight for abolition by joining Defund MPD and Night School for a four-part training series on relational organizing for abolition — register your interest here and we’ll be in touch about details and scheduling.

Biden moves to oust top Labor Board attorney Peter Robb

MDC DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

NATIONAL DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Monday, January 25 | 5 – 6pm
Progressive Maryland Statewide Environmental Justice Task Force Meeting
Marylanders who are disproportionately impacted by climate change and are bearing the brunt of environmental racism must be made safe and free from toxins and environmental hazards like landfills and trash incinerators. If you care about bringing justice to our communities while benefiting the planet then please join us. See PM’s Weekly Memo here.

Thursday, February 11 | 6 – 8pm
DC WFP Community Reunion: Restore The Vote & Letter Writing
Community reunions are a monthly gathering of the WFP community, including members, activists, party builders, party organizers, and staff. It’s a place and time for all of our political party community to return home each month and to reunite, recalibrate and to recenter ourselves in why we live lives that are dedicated to struggling for justice for the people and the planet.

INFO ACCESS

GOOD READS

Novelist and essayist Fintan O’Toole makes the case in The Guardian for a moral, even literary, perspective on what Biden is facing and how his own history — “his private self, shadowed by loss” — is more important to the inquiry than his political history.

In The Conversation, a researcher confirms most people’s anecdotal impression about the Capitol invasion of warlord wannabes — “a lot of angry men who don’t like women.”

Another in an increasing number of op-eds arguing that good legislating can sidestep or stymie a conservative SCOTUS.

Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats asks what kind of room progressives and socialists can find to move our agenda in Biden World: “The most transformative presidents in American history never fully embraced the social movements of their time. Instead they seized the political space created by those movements. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, Franklin Roosevelt was not a socialist or trade unionist, and Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights activist. It was the relentless struggle in the streets and at the ballot box, as well as the efforts of unapologetic dissenters in the halls of Congress, that shaped these presidencies. ‘You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it,’ Roosevelt allegedly told the legendary activist and organizer A. Philip Randolph as the latter pushed FDR for labor and civil rights reforms.” As we recall, he did, culminating in the 1963 March.

Alicia Garza’s new book is reviewed by our comrade Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in The New Yorker. Yes, The New Yorker. “Garza’s account of the consequences of Reaganism makes clear that the Black Lives Matter generation came of age in the rubble of the civil-rights era, with the retrenching politics and policies rooted in Reaganism but readily inherited by a Democratic Party all too willing to do the bidding of the right.”

Bernie’s opening shot from his perch as Budget Committee chair, from The Guardian via Portside: “Joe Biden Must Put an End to Business as Usual. Here’s Where to Start”

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