Hello Sacramento DSA,

My name is Margot Rinaldo, and it is my pleasure to serve as your new co-chair! To introduce myself, I grew up in the Bay Area, spending the majority of my childhood in San Jose. However, in 2008 when I was 11 my childhood home was foreclosed, and thus began my years moving all around the Bay Area. I spent time living in San Jose, Cupertino, Redwood City, Portola Valley and finally ended up living in a tiny apartment in San Francisco with my dad. By the time I graduated high school I had already attended three different high schools in my four years.

Experiencing this housing insecurity throughout my teenage years and being forced to move around the Bay Area drove me to become passionate about politics and figuring out how we can use democratic systems to establish quality living conditions not just for the well-off but for everyone.

As your new co-chair, I plan to use my past experiences in organizing to help grow and retain our chapter by focusing on the development and retention of our membership. As many chapters have experienced difficulty recruiting members during the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we can work together during this time to solidify our internal culture of mutual support among members. This is something DSA has always been successful in doing, and I think the pandemic provides us the opportunity to more meaningfully provide support to one another and our Sacramento community! Additionally, I am further interested in assisting the housing committee on any initiatives they are working on to address local housing and homelessness concerns.

Please reach out to me through social media or email if you have any questions or concerns or would just like to chat! I am looking forward to working with and meeting you all and I am so excited to be back in DSA.

We Now Have a Mutual Aid Committee! And a Food & Supplies Distribution on March 2

DSA Sacramento is proud to announce the inaugural meeting of the Mutual Aid Working Group this Friday, February 26, at 7:00 pm. (Zoom registration here). Following passage of the resolution to create this group at last weekend's General Membership Meeting, we are ready to hit the ground running and begin doing work in our local community. To achieve the best outcomes possible, we invite all interested members to attend and help us plan the first in what will be a long campaign of aid, solidarity, and working together toward a better future.

By performing mutual aid work on the ground, it is the goal of the Mutual Aid Working Group to provide material relief to our neighbors, expand our chapter's membership, and build alliances with other community organizations who share our goals. Housing and food insecurity are major issues in the Sacramento region, and obvious entry points for us to begin this work. But we invite you to bring your own ideas to the group for areas of need.

For those who are unable to attend the working group meeting, please know that it is our goal to provide lots of opportunities for our members to get involved. We want to be out doing our work in the streets, engaging the community directly and building our movement through the relationships we forge. We know how important it can be for DSA members to know their efforts are making a difference, and helping our neighbors directly is a great place to start.

We already have one mutual aid event coming up! Join Sacramento Socialist Rifle Association, Sacramento SOUP, and DSA Sacramento for distribution to our unhoused neighbors next Tuesday, March 2, at 3 pm. We will be meeting at the corner of 8th & W St and walking, providing soup, cornbread, and snacks, as well as picking up as much trash as possible along the way. More food & supplies are always welcome.

Please wear masks & practicing social distancing to maintain our health and the health of the folks we interact with.

We are excited to begin this work and hope to see you at our meeting Friday night, or our event on March 2!

International Solidarity Updates: Haiti, India, Palestine, El Salvador

This part of the newsletter is for updates on international situations that national or Sacramento DSA has identified as priorities for our organization. If you would like to write any of these updates, please email us or consider joining our international committee!

DSA Calls on the WTO and USA to Stop Prioritizing Pharmaceutical Profits Over Global COVID Treatment

Distribution of COVID-19 tests and vaccinations to poorer countries has been lagging far behind that of richer countries. A large reason for this is because international trade laws (known as “TRIPS”) prioritize the profits of patent-holding pharmaceutical companies over saving lives. DSA’s International Committee recently issued a statement urging the World Trade Organization to waive the TRIPS laws in dealing with the COVID crisis. Their statement reads in part:

It should be absolutely unthinkable—at any time, but especially in the midst of a raging pandemic—to block the production of direly needed medical supplies for the sake of corporate profits. But this is exactly what the United States, and the majority of the Global North, are doing by upholding monopoly patent protections for pharmaceutical companies at the expense of countless lives in the Global South.

DSA IC supports the proposal by the governments of India and South Africa to waive the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS [Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights] regulations for all medical supplies needed for the diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19, and calls on the Biden administration to do the same. As socialists, we must fight for a system of trade that puts people over profits...

We have, tragically, already seen what happens when capital-friendly intellectual property laws limit the global ability to respond to a health crisis: countless thousands died at the peak of the AIDS crisis for lack of affordable treatment as a direct result of TRIPS. We must not make the same mistake again.

TRIPS is just one of many global rules of trade that emerged as a part of the project of neoliberal globalization in an attempt to wrest the power of global capital out of democratic control and naturalize the rule of “the market.” This system, defined by the WTO and a patchwork of bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements, is a major obstacle to the socialist project, undermining the power of labor, eroding environmental regulations, instigating a regulatory race to the bottom, and deepening neocolonial exploitation.

As socialists living in the imperial hegemon, whose capital-aligned government was the primary force behind the propagation of this unjust system, it is our particular duty to resist it. We call on all DSA members to recognize the necessity of struggle at the level of the global economic system and to organize for a just alternative—starting by supporting the Covid-19 TRIPS waiver.

Also, join us on Saturday at 11AM for a webinar to learn how the global rules of trade put profit before people — and what we can do about it!

DSA Raises Funds for Families of Fallen Comrades in El Salvador

The leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) fought a heroic struggle for democratic socialism against a brutal right-wing dictatorship in El Salvador’s civil war of the 1980s. Since the war ended in 1992, the FMLN has become one of the country’s most important political parties, using its position in government to expand social programs, educational opportunities for the poor, and government transparency.

The right-wing also remains powerful, however, and violence against the FMLN has increased in recent weeks. In January, two FMLN activists (and veterans of the civil war), Gloria Rogel de Lopez and Juan de Dios Portillo Tejada, were killed by assassins. The details of who planned the attack remain unknown, but the killers worked for the police and the health ministry.

DSA recently expressed solidarity with the FMLN and social movements in El Salvador as they face increased repression by right-wing forces in the country. And following the January killings, DSA is raising funds to support the families of our fallen comrades. You can donate to that effort here.

El Salvador is holding local and legislative elections this weekend. You can learn more about the results of those elections from a social movement perspective by watching a Facebook panel next Wednesday (March 10) at 4PM, hosted by CRIPDES, one of El Salvador’s largest campesino organIzations representing over 100,000 people in over 300 communities. The panel is in Spanish, but an English translation stream is available by emailing [email protected].

US Small Farmers Express Solidarity With Indian Farm Protest

Indian farmers and farmworker unions continue to hold the line in their showdown with the right-wing government’s plans to remake the agricultural economy on a neoliberal basis. Recently, a coalition of 87 farmer organizations and allied agroecology, farm and food justice groups in the United States issued a statement of solidarity with the Indian farmers that draws a connection between the struggle in India and the devastation inflicted on small farmers and local food economies by neoliberal governments in our own country:

India’s farmers have mobilized to create one of the world’s most vibrant protests in history, camping on the outskirts of New Delhi for more than two and a half months. Their rallying cry is to repeal the three unjust laws that were passed without their knowledge or consultation...

We recognize the role of the U.S. government in creating the conditions that have led to these repressive laws. The U.S. has been a key opponent of India’s limited use of [minimum support prices] at the World Trade Organization... But, that is not surprising: the U.S. government has been eroding the concept of parity (similar to MSP in India) at home for decades...

While the U.S. agricultural sector receives inordinately large support compared to many countries, access to that support remains inequitable. In particular, Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian-Pacific and other people of color producers, who lack secure land tenure and are concentrated in vegetable and small-scale cattle sectors, have been excluded historically. Support flows to larger agribusiness farming operations instead of the independent family farmers whose voices we amplify.

Let us be clear: what the Indian farmers are enduring now happened in the U.S. almost four decades ago... We have great respect for the unified struggles the farmers and farmworkers of Samyukt Kisan Morcha have built, and we stand with them. We urge both governments to support independent family farmers and localized food systems, ensuring food sovereignty and securing the livelihoods of millions who are the bedrock of its food security and nutritional wellbeing

(Full copy available here: https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/Solidarity Statement for Indias farmers from US based food and farm justice organisations February 2021.pdf)

Also, DSA Sac member Amreet Sandhu was on the Minority Reportz podcast this week (hosted by comedienne Mona Skaikh) talking about the Indian farmers protests -- check it out here! She explains it in easy-to-understand terms but also draws out the meaning of why it matters, and connects it to other struggles around the world. She also shouts out DSA Sac several times for their early solidarity with the movement. It’s a great place to start if you’re wondering what the largest protest in history is all about.

Upcoming Meeting Announcements:

Upcoming Sac DSA Meetings

All meetings taking place on Zoom, due to Covid. Open to all members! Some meetings require pre-registration so we can verify your DSA membership; just click the link and provide the email address you used when you joined DSA.

International Committee meeting, Thursday, Feb. 25 @ 7PM, Zoom link

Mutual Aid Working Group meeting, Friday, Feb. 26 @ 7PM, Zoom link

Electoral Committee meeting, Sunday, Feb. 28 @ 12PM, Zoom link

Executive Board meeting (open to all members), Tuesday, Mar 2 @ 7PM, Zoom link

Missed a Meeting? Here are the Notes!

Healthcare Committee meeting notes, 2/18/21

Housing Committee meeting notes, 2/21/21

Labor Committee meeting notes, 2/21/21

“Workers & the Green New Deal Today: A Conversation with Naomi Klein, Keon Liberato, and Kate Aronoff” Monday, March 1st, 5:00 PM PST, RSVP Here

Are you organizing for green jobs? Have you talked with your coworkers about climate change? Are you a union member, or are looking for a community with which to strategize about organizing for climate justice? Join us Monday, March 1st at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT for EWOC’s event Workers & the Green New Deal Today as we discuss organizing around climate-friendly work, building a movement to defeat the interests of oil and gas, and winning a just transition for all workers.

What We're Reading (Or Viewing, Or Listening To...)

This is a space where we share interesting articles, videos, podcasts -- whatever -- that our members have shared with each other online.

“Social Housing Is Becoming a Mainstream Policy Goal in the US” by Galen Herz

“Something perhaps relevant to the discussion at our last general body meeting: an article in Jacobin on the quiet explosion of support for social housing in the united states, a form of public housing more traditionally associated with socialist governments. It's especially relevant to us in California, with our state government having a long tradition of totally failing to provide any meaningful long-term support for public housing.”

“Can Steinberg Be Recalled?” by James Jackson

“One of our previous chapter co-chairs, James Jackson, just had a piece published in the Sac News and Review analyzing the ins and outs of the recall effort against Sac mayor Steinberg. FYI, we actually discussed the recall as a board last night because some of our members have indicated interest. The plan right now is for the electoral committee to discuss it at their meeting this month, and for us to discuss it as a chapter at our March general meeting. We do not yet have an official chapter position (James’s essay was written in his personal capacity)”

“I’m sorry. I had to share.”

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