Comrades,
Last week, we marched in solidarity with tenants from the Embarcadero to Veritas headquarters on Market and Bush as the statewide eviction moratorium expired. You can also read about it here in the San Francisco Independent Journal.
The day after, DSA SF member and District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston declared his district an “Eviction Free Zone” to help prepare renters in his district as eviction attempts arise, and encouraged renters facing eviction to seek legal counsel through the Tenant Right to Counsel program, which we endorsed in 2018.
This week, the International Solidarity Organizing Committee (ISOC) is hosting their first ever panel on Afghanistan today at 6:00 p.m., with speakers including University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes and journalist Anand Gopal, who is notable for reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan. You can find more details below.
If you can’t make it to this panel, join ISOC this Saturday, October 9, at 7:00 p.m. at the DSA SF office backyard (1916 McAllister St) for a documentary screening of “Bitter Lake” by Adam Curtis, which will give you an opportunity to educate yourself about the political history of Afghanistan that created today’s conditions. See more below.
And lastly, if you still haven’t joined our chapter yet but want to learn more about our work, come join us tomorrow, October 6 at 6:30 p.m. for an intro to DSA! Be sure to register if you haven’t yet.
If you’d like to learn more about the work that we do, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more timely updates.
Solidarity,
DSA SF Communications Committee
Upcoming Events
🌹 Tuesday, 10/5 (6:00 p.m.): Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal (Zoom)
🌹 Tuesday, 10/5 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): 21st Century Socialism Book Group reads Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias (Zoom)
🌹 Wednesday, 10/6 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee’s Organizer Training Series (Zoom)
🌹 Wednesday, 10/6 (6:30 p.m.): Intro to DSA (Zoom)
🌹 Saturday, 10/9 (7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m): Documentary Screening: “Bitter Lake” and the History of Afghanistan (DSA SF Office, 1916 McAllister St)
🌹 Sunday, 10/10 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee’s Organizer Training Series (Zoom)
🌹 Monday, 10/11 (2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m): Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony and Webinar (online) – 9:00 p.m): Documentary Screening: “Bitter Lake” and the History of Afghanistan (DSA SF Office, 1916 McAllister St)
🌹 Wednesday, 10/13 (6:45 p.m.): October Chapter Meeting (Zoom)
🌹 Sunday, 10/17 (12:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.): Labor Circles Priority Campaign Training Session (Zoom)
🌹 Wednesday, 11/24: Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony and Webinar (online)
Accessibility
As part of its plan of work this year, the Steering Committee identified accessibility as a long-standing chapter need. For accessibility concerns and accommodation requests, or if you would like to join the Chapter Accessibility Task Force to help us implement a chapter survey and accessibility guidelines, please email steering@dsasf.org.
Regular Chapter Meeting
| Mark your calendars – the next regular DSA SF chapter meeting is Wednesday, October 13 at 6:45 p.m.! |
Announcements
RESCHEDULED TO TODAY! Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal: A Webinar Discussion
TODAY at 6:00 p.m.! Join the International Solidarity Organizing Committee (ISOC) for our first panel on Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal. We’ll be joined by speaker Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco and DSA SF member, and Anand Gopal, Kabul-based author of “No Good Men Among the Living” and long-time journalist notable for his reporting on Afghanistan and the Middle East. Register here via zoom.
If you’re attending, please read this article before the event or watch this optional video for a fascinating look into politics in Afghanistan.
Join this week’s Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee Organizer Trainings for our Labor Priority Campaign
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is holding another series of labor organizing trainings! The six-session program will cover many fundamental workplace organizing practices like Mapping and Charting a Workplace, Leader Identification, Building an Organizing Committee, Organizing Conversations, Inoculation and Preparing for Boss Campaigns, Escalating Campaign Strategy, and Taking Public Action on the Boss. This week’s session will be held at two times (both times cover the same material): Wednesday, October 6 at 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m and Sunday, October 10 at 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sign up here. You’ll need to put down “DSA SF” as your referral in order to get registered.
Tenants Block BBQ
Come join TANC for a Tenants Block BBQ on Saturday October 9th at 1 pm. TANC builds a network of tenants in SF and this is an opportunity for tenants to talk to organizers and get info about their housing rights.
TANC will also be flyering during the week of October 4 in neighborhoods of SF that are low income and have had a high volume of tenant petitions in the past. If you are interested in putting up flyers, please contact tenantsolidarity@dsasf.org.
Documentary Screening: “Bitter Lake” and the History of Afghanistan
Join the the International Solidarity Organizing Committee (ISOC) on Saturday, October 9 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (1916 McAllister Street) for a screening of “Bitter Lake” to learn more about history of Afghanistan. With the U.S. Empire’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, it’s an opportune time to educate ourselves about the political history that created the conditions today in Afghanistan. Directed by Adam Curtis, “Bitter Lake” is a BBC documentary that helps explain these factors and covers some of the history of Afghanistan dating back to the 1970s. We will be screening the documentary in the backyard of the DSA SF office starting at 7:00 p.m. This events is outdoors for COVID-19 protection. Come for engaging conversation with comrades afterwards! Learn more here.
Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony and Webinars Monday, October 11 and Wednesday, November 24
Join us online on Monday, October 11 at 2:00 p.m. and Wednesday, November 24 to learn firsthand from Indigenous leaders about the obstacles and lack of basic human rights faced on a daily basis. You will learn how we can act in solidarity with Indigenous groups in this two-part webinar series, co-sponsored by Indigenous groups in California. As stated in The Red Deal “for our Earth and relatives to live, capitalism and colonialism must die.” Our work as Socialists to dismantle capitalism and colonialism is critical in preventing further erasure of Indigenous people, stewardship, and ancestral sites.
More details to come!
East Bay Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) training
East Bay DSA is holding a training program called Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) along with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), an autonomous tenants union. The SHOP program trains DSA members to become tenant organizers. It then helps them get plugged in to organizing in their own buildings or supporting others in doing so. The Tenant Solidarity committee hopes to get a group of DSA SF members to go through the trainings to develop tenant organizing skills. The committee also hopes to explore the possibility of expanding SHOP into a cross-chapter collaboration that can connect people with TANC’s SF chapter. If you are interested in participating in a future training, please sign up via this form. Email tenantsolidarity@dsasf.org with any questions.
Jane McAlevey’s Organizing Model: A Critical Evaluation
Jane McAlevey’s Organizing Model: A Critical Evaluation, Thursday, October 14, 7:00 PM
Jane McAlevey’s approach to labor organizing is having an impact throughout this country as well as around the world. Her workshops on organizing attract thousands of attendees. DSA has partnered with McAlevey and the United Electrical Workers (UE) to create EWOC, the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee, which has launched a series of workshops aimed at training workers to build power by organizing their co-workers. This panel will evaluate her approach, including what is both positive and negative. Register here.
Labor Circle Organizing Training
The Labor Circles Priority Campaign is hosting its first training session on Sunday, October 17 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m on Zoom. Come by to learn and practice labor organizing tactics, connect with comrades from your industry, and help build socialist power in the workplace! Register here.
Join DSA SF’s International Solidarity Organizing Committee!
DSA SF’s newly-elected International Solidarity Organizing Committee is looking for more members to join their work! There are many ways to plug into this work, such as doing research, supporting education events, and textbanking for upcoming actions. If interested, please fill out this form and they’ll get you up to speed on all things international solidarity. Once you fill out the form, join them on the #international-solidarity Slack channel for updates.
Volunteer for Single-Payer Healthcare Campaign
National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association has been ramping up the CalCare campaign as the bill for California state-level single-payer will return in January. They are focusing on priority districts, including AD 17 and AD 19 in San Francisco. For those areas, they are looking for District Leaders to lead locally. They’ll provide extensive training and support to these leaders. If you are interested, you can sign up here. If you want to participate in the campaign but not be a District Leader, please reach out to DSA SF member Ellen Y (by emailing healthcare@dsasf.org), who is a District Leader for AD 19 – she can get you started on text-banking voters!
Reading Groups
21st Century Socialism Book Group reads Erik Olin Wright’s “Envisioning Real Utopias”
Please join the Twenty-First Century Socialism Reading Group for its next book: “Envisioning Real Utopias” by Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019). The meeting will be today, Tuesday, October 5 at 6:30 p.m. This session is on Chapters 6 and 7. Register for Zoom here.
The new work of Wright––who was a preeminent figure in recent American socialist thought––is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system through a systematic reconstruction of goals and values for Leftists thinkers. Wright diverges from classical Marxism with his classification of subgroups in the working class. He introduced novel concepts to adapt a changing perspective for ideas like deep democracy and interstitial revolution. Rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.
The Twenty-First Century Socialism Reading Group usually meets every two weeks and reads 25-50 pages per session.
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