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DSA North Star Caucus blog

North Star Mourns the Death of Danny Fetonte

11/21/2022

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Long time DSA and NS  member Danny Fetonte died October 23, 2022 after a battle with cancer.  He will be missed, both by DSA members and non-members alike.

Danny was a leader in the founding and growth of the Austin DSA chapter but his geographical reach went well beyond Austin.  He traveled to recruit and meet with DSA members in other beginning chapters across the state of Texas, His organizing work was crucial in generating several of the now existing DSA chapters in the state.

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If You Don't Hit It, It Won't Fall: On the Socialist Majority Caucus statement

11/18/2022

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A Critique of the Socialist Majority Caucus statement, 'Against the Right and the Center: A Democratic Socialist Strategy for Working Class Power'

By Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher Nov. 2022. 

On the eve of the 2022 election, DSA's Socialist Majority Caucus has declared  itself as a force actively engaged in building a broad united front against the far Right, with the particular aim of defeating GOP candidates across the board. It matters even more so because that task is not over with this electoral round, but will continue to 2024 and beyond.

…This formulation merges an anti-far Right/antifascist fight  with a fight against centrist Democrats, leading to a moment where the working class wins state power. We would agree that there are conflicts and struggles on all these fronts, but formulating it this way causes more problems and confusion than it solves or clarifies.  There are three sets of struggles that need to be conducted, but the question is, at this moment, what is the principal struggle and who is the principal enemy…

Assessing the Terrain

Here is where the issue of assessing the terrain becomes critical. We don't put the fight against the right on a par with the fight with the center.  In fact, we  advocate a more nuanced approach: First, unite and develop the progressive forces (Everyone from the Congressional Progressive caucus, Progressive Democrats of America,  and the Working Families Party, on one hand, and the socialists, including Bernie, AOC, and those to their left on the other hand). Second, the progressive and Left forces must win over as many of the middle forces as we can (The Biden Dems, their close allies, Blue dogs, independent voters and even a few never-Trump Republicans). Third, isolate and divide the right (Overt fascists, Trump's rightwing populists and the Christian nationalists) and crush them batch by batch. Basically, we want to and need to avoid fighting all our adversaries at once.

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Debating DSA's Strategy

11/14/2022

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Views among DSA members and leaders differ. There are multiple caucuses, each consisting of more or less like-minded people. One is called Socialist Majority. The paper linked below is their contribution to the debate on DSA's future. (Feel free to weigh in.)

https://www.socialistmajority.com/theagitator/smcperspective2022

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Inflation and Corporate Greed

11/4/2022

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​Our economic crisis isn’t inflation, it’s corporate greed and the GOP will only make that worse

By Senator Bernie Sanders
​

Corporate greed is at a 70-year high and oil companies are buying back stock, not lowering prices

As we enter the final week of the midterm election, voters are expressing deep concern about the state of the economy and inflation. They should.

Today, we live in an economy in which the billionaires are getting much richer while working families fall further behind. Unbelievably, while 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, we now have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our country – with three multi-billionaires owning more wealth than the bottom half of Americans. While employers squeeze workers and their unions for cuts to health care and other benefits, the CEOs of major corporations now make nearly 400 times more than their average employees – the largest employer-worker gap in our history.

During this campaign, my Republican colleagues talk a lot about inflation, and they are right to do so. Over the last year, Americans have become sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices for food, gas, health care, prescription drugs, housing and other necessities. 

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Vote to Protect Democracy

11/4/2022

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Two Weeks to High-Stakes Midterms, Two Years to 2024

10/26/2022

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by Max Elbaum. Convergence. 
 
Towards 2024…
To varying degrees all of these challenges are being taken up by key segments of today’s progressive movement. But coordination among different groups—unified messaging, effective allocation of resources, division of labor, more rapid spread of best organizing practices—is undeveloped. MAGA operates as a unified force, while progressives remain fragmented. That must change if we are to become a contender for political power. The most recent push for our movement to move decisively on this front --Time to Re-Align: We Can’t Win from Our Safety Zones—deserves serious attention.

Read more:
https://convergencemag.com/articles/two-weeks-to-high-stakes-midterms-two-years-to-2024/
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Conscription: Unjust Wars and Those Who Refuse to Fight Them

10/19/2022

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By Bill Barclay

Bill Barclay is a long-time DSA member, a participant in the North Star Caucus, a member of the National Political Education Committee, and a principal in the Chicago Political Economy Group.

This is excerpted from an article in the Democratic Left Blog of DSA.
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Fifty-five years ago this week, on October 21, 1967, almost a hundred thousand people attended a  protest against the war in Vietnam, and some 50,000 marched on the Pentagon. Anger about the war that was wreaking such destruction on that country and a draft that was sending so many conscripts to kill and die fueled this and many more protests. As the United States has fought its “forever wars” in the past decades, the anger toward  universal conscription has faded, because the conscripts of a “volunteer” army enroll primarily for economic reasons. Today, soldiers in Russia face conscription over a war none of them sought and few want to fight in. Bill Barclay reflects on the race and class issues of universal conscription. . . .
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The Uncomfortable Truths That Could Yet Defeat Fascism

10/17/2022

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​By Anand Giridharadas
Mr. Giridharadas is the author, most recently, of “The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy.”  ( long)

​
Polls swing this way and that way, but the larger story they tell is unmistakable. With the midterm elections, Americans are being offered a clear choice between continued and expanded liberal democracy, on the one hand, and fascism, on the other. And it’s more or less a dead heat.
It is time to speak an uncomfortable truth: The pro-democracy side is at risk not just because of potential electoral rigging, voter suppression and other forms of unfair play by the right, as real as those things are. In America (as in various other countries), the pro-democracy cause — a coalition of progressives, liberals, moderates, even decent Republicans who still believe in free elections and facts — is struggling to win the battle for hearts and minds.
The pro-democracy side can still very much prevail. But it needs to go beyond its present modus operandi, a mix of fatalism and despair and living in perpetual reaction to the right and policy wonkiness and praying for indictments. It needs to build a new and improved movement — feisty, galvanizing, magnanimous, rooted and expansionary — that can outcompete the fascists and seize the age.
I believe pro-democracy forces can do this because I spent the past few years reporting on people full of hope who show a way forward, organizers who refuse to give in to fatalism about their country or its citizens. These organizers are doing yeoman’s work changing minds and expanding support for true multiracial democracy, and they recognize what more of their allies on the left must: The fascists are doing as well as they are because they understand people as they are and cater to deep unmet needs, and any pro-democracy movement worth its salt needs to match them at that — but for good
Continue reading the main story
In their own circles and sometimes in public, these organizers warn that the right is outcompeting small-d democrats in its psychological insight into voters and their anxieties, its messaging, its knack for narrative, its instinct to make its cause not just a policy program but also a home offering meaning, comfort and belonging. They worry, meanwhile, that their own allies can be hamstrung by a naïve and high-minded view of human nature, a bias for the wonky over the guttural, a self-sabotaging coolness toward those who don’t perfectly understand, a quaint belief in going high against opponents who keep stooping to new lows and a lack of fight and a lack of talent at seizing the mic and telling the kinds of galvanizing stories that bend nations’ arcs.
The organizers I’ve been following believe they have a playbook for a pro-democracy movement that can go beyond merely resisting to winning. It involves more than just serving up sound public policy and warning that the other side is dangerous; it also means creating an approachable, edifying, transcendent movement to dazzle and pull people in. For many on the left, embracing the organizers’ playbook will require leaving behind old habits and learning new ones. What is at stake, of course, is everything.
Command Attention
The right presently runs laps around the left in its ability to manage and use attention. It understands the power of provocation to make people have the conversation that most benefits its side. “Tucker Carlson said what about the war on ‘legacy Americans’?” “Donald Trump said what about those countries in Africa?” It understands that sometimes it’s worth looking ridiculous to achieve saturation of the discourse. It knows that the more one’s ideas are repeated — positively, negatively, however — the more they seem to millions of people like common sense. It knows that when the opposition is endlessly consumed by responding to its ideas, that opposition isn’t hawking its own wares.
Democrats and their allies lag on this score, bringing four-point plans to gunfights. Mr. Trump’s wall was a bad policy with a shrewd theory of attention. President Biden’s Build Back Better was a good policy with a nonexistent theory of attention. The political left tends to be both bad at grabbing attention for the things it proposes and bad at proposing the kinds of things that would command the most attention.
An attentional lens, for example, would focus a light on the pressure applied on Mr. Biden, successfully, to wipe out some student debt. In a traditional analysis, the plan is a mixed bag, because it creates many winners but also engenders resentments among nonbeneficiaries. What that analysis underplays is that giving even a minority of Americans something that absolutely knocks their socks off, changes their lives forever and gets them talking about nothing else to every undecided person in earshot may be worth five Inflation Reduction Acts in political, if not policy, terms.
 
Read more.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/opinion/midterm-democracy-crisis.html


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The Fish Stinks From the Head

10/16/2022

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By Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect

 So the January 6th Committee subpoenas Donald Trump...

The committee concluded today’s hearing by voting to subpoena the former president, thereby upsetting both Trump (who surely will refuse to appear) and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who now must decide whether to prosecute Trump for blowing off the subpoena. Worse yet, Garland must decide before the next Congress, which has a 69 percent chance of being Republican according to FiveThirtyEight, convenes in January and abolishes the committee, rendering the subpoena moot.

To descend into the crassly political (that’s in my job description), should Garland decide to prosecute before the midterms, he might drive more Trump fanatics to the polls. Then again, he might drive more Trump critics to the polls, too.

Poor Merrick. If only the state of American democracy didn’t depend on his executing the law.

​Read Harold's full run-down of the Jan 6 committee here:

https://prospect.org/politics/fish-stinks-from-the-head-january-6th-committee-subpoena-trump
​
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Socialist International condemns abuse of authority and human rights violations in Iran

10/6/2022

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The Socialist International strongly condemns grave violations of human rights, repression and violence by the Islamic regime in Iran, as citizens have taken to the streets across the nation to protest against brutal treatment and abuses of power by the authorities.

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On Immigration And Latino Heritage Month

9/30/2022

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​About Immigration
Regardless of where we come from, what our color is, or how
we worship, every family wants the best for their children. But
today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists are putting
all of our families at risk. They rig the rules to enrich themselves
and avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while they
defund our schools and threaten seniors with cuts to Medicare
and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger
for our hard times at new immigrants—even tearing families
apart and losing children. When we reject their scapegoating
and come together across racial differences, we can make this a
nation we’re proud to leave all of our kids—whether we’re white,
Black, or brown, from down the street or across the globe.
 
From Ian Haney Lopez;  Merge Left. 
Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America
 
A response to Ron DeSantis and the MAGA Movement. 
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Power Concedes Nothing—How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections

9/28/2022

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Edited by Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and Maria Poblet (OR Books)
by Peter Olney
https://washingtonspectator.org/power-concedes-nothing-review/
 
For me, from the moment that Trump launched his campaign announcing his white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda, it was clear that he presented a danger to democracy and was an avatar for all the evils that have plagued our republic since its founding. 2016 was not a moment for equivocation or support for quixotic candidates like Dr. Jill Stein. History has absolved this viewpoint. The reversal of Roe v. Wade is only the most stunning result of a failure to pivot to support for Clinton in the general election (as candidate Sanders did that year).
Power Concedes Nothing is a consolidated anthem from the unions and immigrant rights, civil rights, and community groups that learned the lessons of 2016 and went all out in 2020 to defeat Trump and his minions up and down the ballot. There are 22 individual chapters written by over 40 organizer-authors. They have grasped that as a serious left, we do not stand on the sidelines and make excuses for our inaction by critiquing the obvious and enduring campaign and policy defects of corporate Democrats. We enter the fray eyes wide open, understanding that we are bound together in common purpose, which requires clarity about our enemy and sobriety about the weaknesses and duplicity of our temporary allies. The Trump years have schooled a lot of folks about the necessity of this united front. 
 
An important review  by our ally and labor organizer Peter Onley.  

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Tributes to Barbara Ehrenreich.   Feminist. Socialist,  DSA Leader.

9/21/2022

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Peter Dreier 
 https://jacobin.com/2022/09/barbara-ehrenreich-activism-writing-socialism
 
Katha Pollitt's obit in The Nation:  https://www.thenation.com/article/society/barbara-ehrenreich/
 
Steve Tarzynsky 
https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/barbara-ehrenreichgroundbreaking-critic-of-u-s-health-care%ef%bf%bc/

 
https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/remembering-barbara-ehrenreich-1941-2022/

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The Threat to Democracy:

9/10/2022

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North Star Discussion 

The recorded session is  here: https://youtu.be/v64q9gu5nEI
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Remembering  Barbara Ehrenreich

9/8/2022

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​Chris Riddiough 
 
Barbara was dynamic and thoughtful at the same time. She brought a feminist perspective to all her work. A few years after that encounter I heard her speak at the 1975 Socialist Feminist Conference. The conference was initiated by the New American Movement (one of DSA’s predecessor organizations) and planned by representatives of the socialist feminist women’s unions around the country.Pacifica Radio has a recording of her talk. 

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/remembering-barbara-ehrenreich-1941-2022/
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Labor Day Reflections

9/5/2022

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This Labor Day, we’re reflecting on the progress made and the work still to be done in the fight for what Black workers deserve. Then, we’re kickin’ it with the National Black Workers Center for their “Don’t Get Angry, Get Organized” Black Labor Day Event, from 12–7:30 PM ET today! (View the schedule, then register here.)

Less than 20 years after enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, were notified of the Emancipation Proclamation, the first Labor Day was observed on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. Though there was irony in honoring the labor of the 12-hour shifts that white Americans of the time were working while Black people were laboring under even harsher conditions despite the end of slavery, the holiday has come to represent the intersectionality of working-class people across all races. In 1882, the average work day was 12 hours and the week had no weekends; children were obligated to work to support their families instead of focusing on their education or their childhood, and many, especially Black and brown people, faced incredibly unsafe working conditions.

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More on Gong and French

9/1/2022

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By Chris Riddiough

(
Aug 31, 2022) In his response to Gong and French and Abbott and Duhalde, Max Sawicky writes, “The unpleasant truth is that DSA is snow-white, and the U.S. working class is not.” I would add another element to that. Not only is the working class not ‘snow-white,’ the group of DSA elected officials is not snow-white either. Why is this? Why is an organization that is so predominantly white represented in elected office by people who are very diverse? I don’t think it’s because of a conscious effort by the National Electoral Committee or by the chapters.

Max goes on to say, “I happen to think there are many black socialists…” and I would agree with him. And I would agree with another statement he makes – that calling on someone else to do something, as Gong and French do, is a non-starter. So, the question is what do we do?

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March for Justice.   1963—2022

8/29/2022

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    Commemorate the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs  and Justice.
For more on the 1963  March on Washington for Jobs and Justice see.
 
https://jacobin.com/2022/08/william-jones-interview-march-on-washington-fdr-jfk-king-randolph  
​

March for Justice 2022, 

In 2022, Over 5,000 Farmworkers and their supports marched on the California Capitol demanding legislation to protect their right to vote.


CALIFORNIA FARMWORKERS MARCH TO URGE NEWSOM TO SIGN VOTING RIGHTS BILL. By David Bacon

​

Capital & Main, 8/15/22
https://capitalandmain.com/california-farmworkers-march-to-urge-newsom-to-sign-voting-rights-bill
 
For more photos, go to David Bacon. Photographs.

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2023 DSA Convention Suggested Resolutions

8/28/2022

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Our North Star caucus will begin discussion of resolutions we hope to propose at the national convention next year. These are draft proposals from individual caucus members, not finalized positions. They are in no way official positions or proposals of the caucus, nor are they the result of any selection process. Save the link to this entry. As more suggestions come in, we will add them to this post. As usual, comments are open.

I.

“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to expand and create more participation in a more democratic DSA,
BE IT RESOLVED:  
(Amended portions are marked in bold and deleted portions are marked as  (delete    ). 
Constitution - Article VIII. National Political Committee
Section 2.
The members of the NPC shall be one representative of the Youth Section and 24 (delete '16') delegates elected at the national convention.    Of the elected members, no more than eight shall be men, at least eight shall be women, and at least eight (delete 'five') shall be racial or national minority members and for all genders of DSA. In the event that these minority positions are not filled at the Convention, the position(s) shall be filled by the NPC, except that only minority members of DSA may be elected to fill such vacancies. In case of other such vacancies, except a vacancy of the Youth Section Representative, the NPC shall appoint a member of the organization in good standing to serve until the next Convention. No person shall serve simultaneously on the National Staff and the NPC.
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“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to have a clear definition of membership in the DSA for identity and rights as a member,
BE IT RESOLVED:  
(Amended portions are marked in bold and deleted portions are marked as  (delete    ). 
 
By-Laws - Article I. Membership

Section 1.
Applicants for membership in the organization shall agree with the principles of the organization and pay annual dues (good for 12 calendar months).

Section 2.
Members will receive the organizational outreach publication. Members are encouraged to participate in political activities and education. New members will receive a membership card, and renewing members shall receive such a card upon request. Members will receive information on National policy from the National Office. A member is in good standing only if their payment of dues is current. Only members in good standing are eligible to hold office in the organization.   (delete   Membership in the organization may be maintained by persons who are up to one-year arrears in dues. Such members may cure their arrears and place themselves in good standing by paying their dues. )

Section 3.
Members can be expelled if they are found to be in substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization or if they consistently engage in undemocratic, disruptive behavior or if they are under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization. Members facing expulsion must receive written notice of charges against them and must be given the opportunity to be heard before the NPC or a subcommittee thereof, appointed for the purpose of considering expulsion.    “Member” or “dues paying membership” or “members fully paid up” is defined and includes a person who is current on their national dues to the DSA (good for 12 calendar months), or has their membership fee waived or reduced with  just cause  approved by the NPC, and who has not been expelled.  
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“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to expand and create more participation in a more democratic DSA for at large delegates,
BE IT RESOLVED:  
((Amended portions are marked in bold and deleted portions are marked as  (delete    ). 
 
By-Laws - Article VI. National Conventions

Section 1.
Delegates to the National Convention shall be apportioned based on the dues-paying membership of the organization (delete (including all members up to one-year arrears in dues).) Delegate to member ratios shall be set by the NPC at least 6 months before the Convention, except in the case of Special Conventions, where such ratios shall be set by the NPC as soon as possible after the Convention is called.
 
 
By-Laws - Article VI. National Conventions 

Section 2.   
Elections for at-large delegates shall be conducted by the NPC. A call for candidates for at-large delegates shall be sent to all at-large members not less than three months and not more than five months prior to the opening date of the Convention. Two months prior to the Convention a ballot containing the names of the delegate candidates shall be sent to at-large members. This ballot shall contain instructions regarding the number of delegates to be elected, voting procedures and date for the counting of ballots. Ballots shall be counted at the National Office one month prior to the Convention. No more than one-third (delete one-half )of the available positions for at large delegates may be available to men, no more than one- third of the available positions for at large delegates may be available to women, and no more than one-third (delete one-fifth) of the available positions (all genders) must be reserved for national and racial minorities.    Each of the three ballots, one for men, one for women, and one for (all genders) and for national and racial minorities, shall be conducted via “ranked choice voting.”  Those candidates who have been elected shall be immediately informed of their election by the National Office. 
 

 
“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to make the DSA National Conventions more accessible to its members,  
BE IT RESOLVED:  
(Amended portions are marked in bold). 
By-Laws - Article VI. National Conventions 
Section 5.
National Conventions shall be held in a location decided on by the NPC at least a year in advance of the convention, while continuing our practice of only patronizing union-staffed hotels or convention sites.     The National Convention must also be conducted using ZOOM and/or Skype and/or similar technology to avail itself to the general membership of the DSA.
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“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to have DSA practice democracy by expanding decision making,    
BE IT RESOLVED:  
(Amended portions are marked in bold). 
By-Laws - Article VI. National Conventions 
Section 6.
The NPC shall consist of one member of the Youth section and the 24 members duly elected among the delegates via three separate ballots for the 8 male members of the NPC, 8 female members of the NPC, and 8 members for (all genders) and national and racial minorities.  Each of the three ballots shall be conducted via “ranked choice voting.”   A fourth separate ballot shall be for the member elected to the NPC by the Youth section members themselves via “ranked choice voting.” 
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By-Laws - Article X. National Political Committee
 
“WHEREAS IT IS just and fair to have DSA practice democracy through “ranked choice voting,”     
BE IT RESOLVED:  
(Deleted portions are marked as (delete    ). 
 
Section 6.
Election of (delete at-large) members of the NPC shall take place at the National Convention under procedures set forth by the Nominating/Personnel Committee. (delete except that preferential voting will be used to elect at-large members of the NPC.)
____________________________________________________________________
 
II. (from Max Sawicky)

My view of the purpose of resolutions is as organizing tools, not only at the convention itself, but in the run-up to the convention, starting ASAP. We have enough statements. We need precise resolutions that invite support, that draw lines favoring us, that rope in natural North Star supporters and pacify hostile SMC people.

So what should the resolutions be? They should be few in number and brief in verbiage. Not quite slogans, but not 'statements' or proclamations either. I avoid process resolutions because 1) I am not familiar with DSA process, and 2) I think they are generally beside the point. Politics dictates process. Here are four possibilities:

1. DSA commits to the defeat of a Republican takeover of Congress by providing material support to Congressional campaigns, given the best allocation of resources, to be decided by local chapters in their diverse local political situations (MBS: I don't see how it could be otherwise. DSA culture seems to preclude centralization beyond the level implied here.).

Elections for state legislatures, since they draw district lines that have a great bearing on the outcomes of elections for the House of Representatives, should be approached in the same way. This need not restrict competition in Democratic Party primaries by candidates closely aligned with DSA priorities. Third party "spoiler" campaigns in general elections should usually be avoided.

2. DSA voices explicit support for the most progressive Democratic Party candidates for Congress in November elections, including 'The Squad,' Greg Casar, Summer Lee, (fill in your own favorites) etc. In keeping with #1, actual deployment of resources in this regard remains a chapter decision.

3. DSA commits to joint work with like-minded progressive organizations to these ends, again a chapter decision as local opportunities arise.

4. Regarding local campaigns, DSA condenses its national platform to four planks that seek to embrace the most pressing priorities and encourage chapters to focus on these priorities. (My own preference would include labor organizing, state government embrace of the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion, police defunding defined as shifting resources from armed police to alternative forms of social intervention, and school boards. Anti-racism would be major themes in the latter three.)

 


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Til Debt Do Us Part

8/26/2022

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By Max B. Sawicky

I did a piece for In These Times on the Biden Administration's student loan relief. Here's a teaser and a link. Please subscribe to ITT.

"On August 24, the Biden White House announced its plan to provide relief for Americans carrying student debt. The amount of debt cancellation may be as much as $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, and otherwise $10,000, in either case for individuals with annual incomes under $125,000 and married couples earning less than $250,000. There are other features of the plan that will help alleviate the debt burden — such as a 5 percent cap on payments of loans in relation to monthly incomes — but those are the headline numbers."
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Party Like It’s 1999!

8/21/2022

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I want to weigh in on the call from Jeremy Gong and Nick French (“G-F”) for a new progressive mass organization, and the response from Jared Abbott and David Duhalde (“A-D”). G-F calls on the likes of Bernie Sanders and ‘The Squad’ to spearhead the formation of a new national progressive front, in light of the failure of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to meet such limited goals as “Build Back Better,” among other deficiencies. I’m a member of DSA’s North Star Caucus, but this reaction is not any sort of collective caucus statement. My guess is that no more than a minority of North Star would agree with it.

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California Farmworkers March to Urge Governor Newsom to Sign Voting Rights Bill

8/16/2022

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California legislators have agreed. Fifty signed on as sponsors of AB 2183, the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, authored by Assemblymember Mark Stone (D- Santa Cruz). It passed the State Assembly on May 25 by a wide margin, and was sent to the Senate floor on August 11, where its passage is virtually certain.

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The Campaign for the PRO Act

8/15/2022

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From Politico;  August 15,2022
​
​After Congress cleared Democrats’ party-line package last week without a provision that would have reformed labor law to allow fines on employers, unions are prepping a last-ditch effort to convince the Senate to hold a vote on the Protecting the Right to Organize Act next month when lawmakers return from August recess.
No one expects them to pass it. But “our folks want to know where people stand, in a more formal way than whatever they'll tell them in a meeting or something back home,” Communication Workers of America’s Dan Mauer told Eleanor Friday. “They really want people to go on the record.”
CWA, SEIU, IUPAT, UAW and other unions are leading the charge as part of the Worker Power Coalition, Mauer said, which also includes other progressive organizations. It has been pushing for floor action on the bill since last year. This time, they’re up against a packed legislative agenda that includes issues like appropriations, policing, and antitrust.
The PRO Act is truly the bill that needs no introduction:Democrats’ holy grail of pro-union labor law reform that would make it far easier for workers to organize. If enacted, it would be the most significant overhaul of U.S. labor law since the 1940s.
​
​
Yet we don’t need to remind you that it’s been stalled in the upper chamber since the House passed it (again) in March 2021. It hasn’t even advanced out of committee.
The Senate version has just 47 cosponsors: 45 Democratic and two independent. One of the remaining three Democrats, Virginia’s Mark Warner, has said publicly he supports the legislation.
“We've got 47 senators who are signed on to the bill; we feel pretty confident about a couple of others,” Mauer said.
But the other two, Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, have stayed very quiet — a reflection of the purple state they represent and the subsequent line they must walk in appeasing members of both parties. Kelly is up for reelection in 2022 — and as the majority seeks to defend and build on their narrow-thin margin, no one wants to stick him between a rock and a hard place by putting him on the record.
As far as actual passage goes, organized labor has its sights set on electing more Democrats willing to eliminate the filibuster and pass the PRO Act with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes currently required.
“We're awfully close to having a [simple] majority — and we're awfully close to having a majority that doesn't think the filibuster should stand in the way of worker rights,” Mauer said. “Our figuring is that Tim Ryan and Mandela Barnes don’t plan on letting procedural high-jinks stand in the way of fighting workers.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office declined a request for comment.
 
 

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What Can Unions Do?  Video

7/29/2022

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This is the most promising moment for the American labor movement in decades. Not only have there been historic union victories at Amazon and Starbucks, but public approval for unions is the highest it’s been in half a century and young workers are showing an extraordinary level of interest in unions. Join leading figures behind this surge in union organizing as we discuss how best to increase worker power and ensure that this promising moment becomes a larger and truly lasting movement. What are the next steps for interested workers and for established unions? What will it take to strengthen the labor movement and make sure it fights for fairness for all workers?
 
https://youtu.be/nXg1EsPS_GE
 
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Labor, DSA, and The McEntee Moment

7/24/2022

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For a few years in the mid-1990s, AFSCME President Gerry McEntee (1935-2022) repositioned American labor and restored some of its clout.
By Harold Meyerson.
 
This is an important  history of part of labor including the role of DSA. It is a major improvement on the misinformation often shared about DSA and labor by newer, less well informed, DSA members and those who were in other left organizations. (ed)
 ….
At the same time, Wurf invested heavily in organizing. Along with teachers’ union president Albert Shanker, Wurf really built what had been the nation’s weak public sector unions into powerhouses—waging strikes and engaging in kindred agitation to the point that cities, counties and states granted their employees the right to collective bargaining. It was one such campaign, waged by the Black sanitation workers in Memphis, to which Martin Luther King, Jr. lent his support, during which he was murdered.
Like Bernie Sanders, Wurf had Brooklyn in his voice and socialism in his heart. The two big wall hangings in his office were photos of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. Under his leadership, AFSCME formed a de facto coalition with the United Auto Workers, the Machinists and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers to oppose the Cold War obsessions of Federation Presidents George Meany and then Lane Kirkland’s AFLCIO, making floor fights over such matters as labor’s support for Ronald Reagan’s Central American interventions a regular feature of the Federation’s conventions.
​

https://prospect.org/labor/the-mcentee-moment/

" Sit down, read, educate  yourself for the coming conflicts."  Mother Jones, circa 1914
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