Access the web version of this update here.

UPFRONT

• DSA National Convention roundup
• GND for PS campaign kicks off with Rep Bowman - volunteers needed
• Fall 2021 reading group sign-ups

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Delegates at 2021 DSA Convention vote to stay course, expand national DSA activity

On Sunday, over 1,000 delegates representing DSA chapters across the country finished up at the DSA National Convention. Throughout the last week, delegates have been voting, discussing, and debating the best way to utilize the national DSA’s war-chest to realize socialism in the post-Bernie world.

You can view a full list of resolutions that passed here. Ultimately, delegates voted mostly to stay the course — holding commitments to labor solidarity, Green New Deal organizing and local tenant organizing projects. Delegates also voted to continue DSA’s strategy of exploiting the Democratic Party ballot line to elect socialist candidates to office. A few new campaigns passed without major objection in the convention’s consent agenda: commitment to support mass abolition work; formation of a national reparations committee; and commitment of more resources to Spanish language translation and bilingual organizing.

Debate on resolutions were briefly interrupted by the Socialist Internationalism Plenary which took place on August 7. The plenary included speeches from Jeremy Corbyn, UK MP and former Labor Party leader, Dilma Rousseff (former President of Brazil) and Omar Barghouti (co-founder of the BDS movement) among others.

Delegates greenlit national DSA to develop a few new functions: Res 23 (711 yes to 256 no) wills the creation of a grant program to support chapters embarking on state and locally focused Childcare for All efforts; Res 30 (682-324) directs national DSA to create a matching funds mechanism to help chapters open offices; and Res 29 (542-471) provides stipends of $2k/mo to the National Political Committee’s steering members.

Finally, delegates voted for a new NPC (the political committee which helps allocate and direct national DSA resources): Aaron Warner (LA), Ashik Siddique (Metro DC), Austin González (Richmond, VA), Gilman Bagga (Louisville, KY), Gustavo Gordillo (NYC), Jen McKinney (Oregon), Jen Bolen (San Francisco), Jose Alejandro La Luz (NYC), Justin Charles (NYC), Kara Hall (Vegas), Kristian Hernandez (North Texas), Laura Gabby (NYC), Matt Miller (Boston), Sabrina Chan (Chicago), Sofia Cutler (NJ) and Sydney Ghazarian (LA).

For a longer review of what went down at the convention, check out our web edition of the weekly update. (And we'll have a full overview of all the gossip, drama and happenings from the Convention published in the Washington Socialist in the near future.)

Green New Deal for Public Schools campaign is launched. Volunteers needed.

If you missed Tuesday night’s campaign launch with Rep Jamaal Bowman, catch the recording here. As local members of the working class, we need all hands on deck in order to get this passed! Metro DC, we are asking not only for your signature, but for your help calling our local education workers, building trades workers, parents, and students to come together to support this plan to protect our people and our climate. Here are the different ways you can get involved in this campaign:

• Join us by signing this petition and click “YES” to get plugged into our volunteer efforts. Please circulate to sympathetic educators!
• Volunteer for national level phone-banking here.
• Volunteer for tabling and phone-banking local educators here. (Non-education workers only for sake of ethics concerns)
• Educators are encouraged to join the Outreach meeting this Sunday, August 15 at 3pm (direct link)
• Full team meeting this Sunday, August 15 at 5pm (direct link)

Every day, millions of public school students, teachers and staff work and learn in crumbling, unventilated buildings that swelter in summer and freeze in winter. It’s no different in the Metropolitan DC area, where public schools have been historically underserved by local leadership and educators’ unions have been demonized and subject to recurrent anti-worker campaigns. Now, during a precarious return to schools in the middle of a resurgent pandemic, it’s high time we stand with teachers and their students.

The Green New Deal for Public Schools Act of 2021 (H.R. 4442) is a step in the right direction. It will invest an unprecedented $1.4 trillion over 10 years in America’s K-12 public schools to build the carbon-free, climate-resilient schools of tomorrow. That funding will create 1.3 million jobs per year and eliminate 78 million tons of CO2 annually, while also hiring more teachers and staff, removing toxic materials, expanding community services and closing the education gap. The bill includes: $486 billion towards Green School Facilities; $250 billion towards Resource Increases; $100 million towards Community Engagement; and $695 billion for Accessibility.

This bill can purposefully turn our public schools, acknowledged as our most universal public good by folks on all sides of the argument, into “CENTERS FOR COMMUNITY RESILIENCE” as we rebuild working-class power while steadily eroding the hegemony of capitalism in all its forms and practices. At the local level, we are choosing specific schools in the DMV to organize as communities of working-class power. We are building community support for this singular effort, including with local House members who still need to become co-sponsors.

BRIEFS

MDC DSA Labor working group updates - Strathmore solidarity action TODAY

We’ll be back at the Strathmore theater in North Bethesda on Friday to talk to patrons going to see the band America! The ticket workers are at a standstill with management and so we need to keep the pressure on. RSVP here! There is not only going to be Scabby the Rat there but also A Horse With No Name.

Our regular Labor working group meeting will be Monday, August 16 at 7pm. Topics will include our elections coming up in October, ongoing solidarity efforts and internal improvements. RSVP here!

Food | Justice working group to contribute to Temperance Alley workday this Saturday (8/14), 3-7pm

From 3 to 7pm on August 14, a team from Metro DC DSA’s Food | Justice working group will be headed out to DC’s Temperance Alley to aid in Saturday’s community work day. Temperance Alley is a WIP garden park and community space located behind 1931 13th St NW. Those interested in helping to build out this shared community space are invited to join members this Saturday in helping to support the workday (DSA members can head over to the #food-justice channel on Slack to learn more).

The Food | Justice working group was formed to collectively learn about agriculture in partnership with existing farms and gardens in the DMV area, while working toward establishing a physical garden and shared community space. If you’re interested in getting involved with this new, locally focused working group, the group will meet on Monday, August 16 at 5:30pm.

Park Police breaks vows to halt dispersal of encampment in DC's Burke Park

National Park Police have announced their intention to remove everyone experiencing homelessness from Burke Park on August 16. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner of 2F08 Alexandra Bailey sent a notice to US Park Police urging them to halt their removal process and called on DC Councilmembers Brianne Nadeau (who quickly voiced support for the effort) and Brooke Pinto (who, as of this writing, has ghosted community activists). Commissioner Bailey previously led a successful effort to stall camp dispersal back in July.

In the case that US Park Police go forward with the forced displacement, supporters are asked to go to Burke Park (12 and Mass NW) at 10am on August 15th to aid residents in packing up their valuables. (DSA members can keep track of these developments in the #tenantsrights channel on Slack).

DC Council introduces resolution in support of Medicare for All

In the 2021 Organizing Guide, the national DSA for M4A campaign set a goal of passing resolutions in support of the Medicare for All (M4A) in 5 majority Black and Latinx cities and counties. Towards this goal, our local M4A Working Group has been working towards introducing such a resolution in the DC Council. This week, CM Christina Henderson, together with DSA-member CM Janeese Lewis George, as well as CMs Brianne K. Nadeau, Mary M. Cheh, Charles Allen, Anita Bonds, and Robert C. White, Jr., introduced the “Sense of the Council Medicare for All Support Resolution of 2021“, written in large part by our DSA comrades and coalition partners. With 7 of the 13 members of the council in support, this resolution is well on its way to passage when the council returns from recess in the fall. In the “Statement of Introduction”, CM Henderson writes:

“This resolution will express the Council’s commitment to providing universal, affordable, and accessible health care to every resident of the District of Columbia, regardless of their employment status or ability to share costs…

This resolution urges the United States Congress to provide universal, comprehensive health coverage with zero cost-sharing for patients and endorses the federal Medicare for All Act and the State-Based Universal Health Care Act…

I look forward to working with my Council colleagues and other stakeholders to advance and pass this resolution and then seek permanent legislative options that will promote universal health coverage for residents in the District.”

Keep eyes on this newsletter for updates on making sure this resolution is brought to pass in the Council. Over the past few months, resolutions of support for Medicare for All have been passed by local governments in Montgomery County, PG County, and Annapolis (next stop – NOVA?).

INFO ACCESS

GOOD READS

Where we are getting our info: Journalism’s Class Problem Has Gotten Worse, from the Spectator (!) … given our demographics, DSAers should not feel too complacent about this. Is the secret simply an awareness of class relations? Stay tuned …

Is This The Beginning Of A New Labor Movement? comes from the YouTube Channel “Curiosity Stream—Second Thought” and provides an almost embarrassing shout out to DSA for promoting awareness of class struggle.

Part “read,” part slide deck and full of pithy and relatable info on race-class intersectionality, touted by our comrade Reana K.

Review of Biden’s Infrastructure bill from In These Times provides a clear roundup of the infrastructure negotiations. Prepared by a local DSA member.

These Koch-fueled creeps have been buying up the K-12 public school ecosystem for years — one reason we need to crank up our campaign for the Green New Deal for Public Schools to the max. From Portside and Common Dreams.

DSA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

COMMUNITY BULLETIN

Large Kitchen Space Needed | Good Trouble Co-Op
Good Trouble Cooperative is looking for a large kitchen space so that they can better deliver their mutual aid/food service. Have leads? Know of someone who might? Get in touch with  [email protected].

ALLIED CALENDAR

Monday, August 16

7pm | Real & Meal screening of A Thousand Cuts
Reel & Meal will feature A Thousand Cuts, a feature-length documentary distributed through PBS Frontline. The documentary and discussion afterward will be streamed on Zoom. Registration is required. A Thousand Cuts goes inside the escalating war between the government and the press in the Philippines, and follows Maria Ressa, a renowned journalist who has become a top target of President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on the news media. More info about the film and Reel & Meal, a Greenbelt, MD, institution, is here and here.

The flame of thought, the magnificence of art, the wonder of discovery, and the audacity of invention all belong to revolutionary periods when humanity, tired of its chains, shatters them and stops inebriated to breathe the breeze of a vaster and freer horizon..

- Virgilia D'Andrea