Hello, comrades.

I was recommended by an individual in r/DSA to post this here:

My chapter started around 2-3 years ago in a smaller midwest city. We began with a very active base and had around 20-30 highly active members. We ran campaigns, pushed mutual aid, and other community projects. Additionally, we had a very active steering committee before I joined, and I ran for steering to try to continue our momentum. Now, I am feeling guilty that our active base has diminished since I joined the steering committee. I have tried to ask some members why they think our membership activity has dropped, but everyone is just as confused as me. We had some infighting a few months back, but we met together as members to discuss and squash the beef. (I have wondered if people felt dissatisfied with the results of that meeting and are just now withdrawing)

Today, we have around 8-15 members who are actively organizing. I have been trying to pull back some our events because I don't want to overextend ourselves, but it feels like our active base is falling off a cliff. I really want my chapter to succeed because I have seen it succeed in the past. I have started creating trainings and trying to get new people involved in steering committee, but it feels like many of my fellow organizers don't have the time to keep up with steering responsibilities.

How do I help encourage folks to get involved?

What behaviors/actions should I avoid that could discourage involvement?

What have you in other chapters done to uplift your fellow members and get them involved?

Do any of you have any recommended readings to help me become a better organizer to uplift my comrades?

The Tenant Union Federation is set to roll out a report on the state of the nation’s tenants, covering the economic and political realities America’s 100 million renters are being pressured by and how communities are organizing to change them by collectively pushing back against landlords. They’re holding an organizing call on their report on the work tenant organizers are doing right now on Wednesday at 6PM ET. We can sign up to join them and learn more at bit(.)ly/TUFstateof.

I'm interested in the use of sortition as a means of advancing socialism. do you know of any chapters or working groups which have used sortition within DSA or promoted people's assemblies to become part of local government?

Mamdani has compromised and capitulated so much that the Atlantic is calling him a centrist.

Mamdani Is the Centrist We’ve Been Waiting For - The Atlantic

Defend Ilhan Omar. Organize for November. Stop treating the threat as somebody else’s problem.

I think they should utilize content that the local chapters have made, there’s probably thousands of testimonials out there about what they love doing with DSA or why they joined DSA. Make a little montage of the best stuff.

I’m sure other people feel similarly but my DSA is a real community. People you can turn to for help when there’s a problem. I think that’s one of the worst things capitalism did to us, it destroyed the idea of community but our brains need community. Not just socialization, that’s too shallow, we need to feel connected to one another. And capitalism has made us so isolated, every man for himself. DSA is the antidote to that, it’s about working together like socialists.

My DSA has helped me in so many ways. It got to the root of a lot of problems I had, primarily the feeling that I wasn’t doing anything to fight the system lol. But I’ve also met some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, people I just click with, and it’s been hard for me to find people I click with. Typical mentally ill, queer, neurodivergent, former gifted kid who struggles with just existing let alone getting out and doing stuff is definitely a vibe that is welcomed in DSA. It’s really such a welcoming environment, inclusivity is important to DSA in my experience.

I just want all our anticapitalist comrades to check out their local DSA and see what it’s like. Hell, people who are struggling with a lack of community might wanna check out what DSA is pushing, they’ll teach you a lot about politics and it’s a really supportive environment.

I’m really proud of our Sober Socialist Section. I’m personally on the road of recovery and it’s been life changing to have comrades who have had similar struggles.

I dunno, I’m just saying, the national YouTube channel should highlight local chapters more and show the world what we’re doing out in our communities!

Would the assailants be held accountable without prisons ?

Ten years ago, while socialist Bernie Sanders was making his historic run for the Democratic presidential nomination that drew millions of supporters and promised a “political revolution” to live long past his campaign, I was part of a small revolutionary organization that pooh-poohed him as a faux renegade.

The socialist left at the time had been largely marginal to the American political landscape. This was not only because so few socialists sat in political offices. Organized socialists were unable to insert our ideas, strategies, or demands beyond small meetings and study groups, only occasionally influencing national discourse by being part of movements that showed themselves on the street in mass numbers. But movements naturally ebb and flow, and in their absence, much of the Left would retreat back into itself time and again.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders showed that socialists could be relevant to mainstream discourse, could move the needle on major policy issues, and could do so on the basis of a class politics that resonates widely and deeply around the country. Though he didn’t win that primary nor the following one in 2020, Bernie’s runs transformed the mainstream political landscape and, along with it, the organized left.

The section of the Left that threw itself in with Bernie’s campaigns — most significantly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — grew exponentially in both numbers and influence and developed a deep well of experience and savvy. The section of the Left that scorned his campaigns in favor of independence from the Democratic Party and time-honored revolutionary principles stagnated or fell apart, leaving DSA and electoral projects at the forefront of an ascendant movement.

The Left was thus reorganized to take the lead from Bernie’s “political revolution,” where electoralism was one important piece of a broad strategy to contend for power and build a mass politics. Ten years on, that political revolution continues to grow, while the approach of smaller socialist sects that had characterized so much of the pre-2016 left has receded into the background. We need not return to the path of permanent outsiders ever again.

With DSA a powerful political force in the country and democratic socialist elected officials making concrete strides forward for working people, the intraleft debates that surfaced in 2016 are largely settled. They offer important lessons about the pitfalls of a sectarian approach that places organizational identity above building the biggest and most powerful left and holds rigidly onto traditional principles above shifting political realities.

Please look at this.

Folks behind the barbed wire are rising up again. We have now entered the second week of a hunger strike by those of our neighbors held at a GEO Group-operated ICE camp in Folkston, Georgia. At least 73 and reportedly as many as 500 detainees are participating. Many of those involved are asylum seekers, being held as prisoners indefinitely despite being accused of no crime whatsoever.

They are calling for their release and due process while they seek their day in court and an end to the spoiled food and dirty water, lack of access to medical care and abusive treatment by guards. (Link to their detailed report on human rights violations within the facility here.) And they’re now facing retaliation for their advocacy, with many strikers put in solitary confinement and at least one leader deported.

They’re asking for our support. Here’s a few steps we can take on their behalf:

🗣️ Join a phone blitz on behalf of the strikers. Advocates are asking us to reach out to Georgia’s senators and city and local officials to intervene with ICE on their behalf and conduct real oversight at the camp, along with speaking to facility and regional ICE personnel to let them know the public is watching and supports the protesters. We can find contact information, specific requests and language in their guide at bit(.)ly/phoneblitzguide. 🗣️

PHONE BLITZ FOR FOLKSTON

📢 Help spread the word about this strike. We can share the strikers’ open letter (find link) and video message and follow Shut Down Folkston ICE Processing Center, the Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights for updates. 📢

SIGNAL BOOST THEIR MESSAGE

✍🏾 Write letters of support to folks within the facility. We can find address details and the necessary names and information to get messages through in their open letter (find link here). ✍🏻

LET THEM KNOW THEY'RE NOT ALONE

🪧 If we’re local, join advocates at a rally outside the gates of the ICE camp this Sunday at 1PM ET – details here. 🪧

PROTEST SUNDAY

I wish I could see the face of the intern that got my replies 😂

In an interview with The New Yorker, Democratic Socialists of America national co-chair Megan Romer stated that DSA supported a free Palestine, meaning the establishment of a single state.

DSA's position is consistent, not only with the historical Palestinian vision for liberation, but also with its own democratic platform and with basic human decency.

The One Democratic State Initiative welcomes this decision and calls on all democratic organizations worldwide to also support the establishment of a democratic state instead of a settler one in Palestine.

Link to the full interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RWsHLvBntg

The One Democratic State Initiative is a Palestinian political organization working to revive the historical Palestinian vision for liberation —a single Palestinian state, for all of its citizens— and to mobilize individuals, entities and political parties, in Palestine and abroad, behind it.

Hasnieh Al-Natsheh and Alain Alameddine, two of its coordinators, are ready to answer your questions up until midnight, Occupied Palestine time. They'll make sure to answer any remaining questions tomorrow. Check out our website and ask away!

Some people are about to go to prison for a very, very long time, amirite guys?

Guys?

I’m surprised by the fact that he still wants to keep her around. He could replace her with someone else. Just like he did with the Sheriff.

What is the NYC-DSA’s reasoning? Does anyone know?

Especially since DSA called on Zohran to fire her… is he just ignoring their concerns?

Wouldn’t that get DSA to excommunicate him?

I have all these questions but no one to answer them 😭

Eviction proceedings can take a sledgehammer to normal family life in just the same way criminal proceedings do, and folks who lose can face homelessness and sink into an inescapable cycle of poverty. They are confusing and complicated, and too often a push-and-pull between people with resources who know the law and people without who don’t. One big thing that can help level the playing field is having counsel to represent them, but at least 90% of tenants go through this process without them.

Up until 2017, that was fine everywhere in the country. But tenant unions, DSA chapters and local activists have now passed into law tenant right to counsel in five states, two counties and 21 cities, helping keep more people in their homes and get folks more time to find new housing where they can’t, along with changing the way housing courts function on a daily basis and at a structural level. 🏫 This Thursday, the Autonomous Tenants Union Network is hosting a webinar at 8PM ET with the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel on these laws, their impact, and how the Connecticut DSA managed to get one passed in 2021. If we want to learn more and help empower more renters, let’s register to be part of it at the tinyurl in the image. 🏫