Comrades,
In case you missed the latest updates on our social media channels, here are some recent posts:
Some members of the Labor Circle staged a walk-in last week to demand more safety in schools. Read about it here in the San Francisco Independent Journal.
We wrote a Twitter thread regarding the strong mayor system in San Francisco and why progressive politics don’t really pass through the mayor. Read it here on Twitter.
We recently put out an update on DSA SF’s campaign for Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty. A large part of this campaign is an audit of DSA SF practices to become the anti-racist organization we need to be to win socialism. Read about our progress so far on Twitter.
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
🌹 Saturday, 10/2 (1:40 p.m.): “The Big Scary “S” Word” Screening (The Roxie)
🌹 Sunday, 10/3 (12:00 p.m.): Neighbors United Lit Drop (Jefferson Square Park)
🌹 Monday, 10/4 (7:30 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)
🌹 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)
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
Watch The Big Scary “S” Word!
Come to a screening of Yael Bridge’s movie “The Big Scary ‘S’ Word”at the Roxie on Saturday, October 2 at 1:40 p.m. There will be a DSA SF table after the screening, so come say hello. The Roxie is located at 3117 16th Street at Valencia Street in San Francisco.
Join Neighbors United to Lit Drop for a Tenants Rights Bootcamp!
The eviction moratorium is ending on September 30 and thousands of SF tenants will be at risk. Join Neighbors United to do some tenant organizing so we keep folks in their homes. Neighbors United will be hosting a lit drop on Sunday, October 3 at noon in Jefferson Square Park (Turk and Laguna). We’ll be dropping invites for our tenants rights bootcamp on October 7 at 7:00 p.m. in Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Fillmore. Email Pat at pcochran.media@gmail.com for more information.
Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal, A Webinar Discussion
Join the International Solidarity Organizing committee (ISOC) on Monday, October 4 at 7:30 p.m. for our first educational event for the chapter on Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal. We’ll be joined by speaker Stephen Zunes, who is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco and a DSA SF member. The event will begin with a fifteen minute video of relevant edits from DSA National’s recent talks on Afghanistan as well as a talk from The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research on Afghan politics. There may be a second speaker joining us, updates to come!
If you’re attending, please read this article before the event and watch this optional video, which presents a fascinating look into politics in Afghanistan.
Register in advance for this meeting here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
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.
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.
Promoting EWOC Organizer Trainings for Labor Priority
Labor Priority Political Education: 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.
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. – 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.
Join DSA SF’s Newest 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 on 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.
