Help DSA SF step in where the city falls short
As the city stumbles to vaccinate essential workers and vulnerable populations, our chapter, in conjunction with our comrade/District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, is stepping in to make sure vulnerable seniors in D5 don’t fall through the cracks. Many seniors are struggling to navigate the city and state’s appointment system and we are stepping in to provide desperately needed mutual aid.
Join comrades TONIGHT from 6 to 8 p.m. to call seniors and help them make appointments for their vaccinations. Click here to join the Zoom. You can contact our comrade Ian James at ianhenryjames@gmail.com for more information.
Upcoming Events
? DSA SF March Chapter Meeting
Join us for our upcoming Monthly Meeting onWednesday, March 10, at 7 p.m. (check-in begins at 6:45 p.m.). Join us to hear what our chapter has been up to and learn how you can get involved. We have several voting items on the agenda for this month, so make sure you reach out to eligibility@dsasf.org with any questions about voting eligibility. Register for the meeting here.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Marx But Were Afraid to Ask
Join the Education Committee on Thursday, March 11th at 6:30 p.m. for an interactive session and discussion of the ideas of Karl Marx. After a brief introduction, participants will choose short passages/quotations from Marx to analyze and discuss. This educational exercise is intended to make Marx more accessible and less intimidating, especially for newcomers, while also allowing those already familiar with Marx to dig deeper into his key texts. For access to the passages/quotations, as well as the Zoom link, please register here.
The Paris Commune: 150th Anniversary Event
Join the Education Committee on Thursday, March 18 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss selections from Karl Marx’s “The Civil War in France” to learn about and remember the Paris Commune. On March 18, 1871, the workers of Paris declared the Paris Commune, which Marx called “the glorious harbinger of a new society.” The Franco-Prussian war marked the end of the Second Napoleonic Empire in France. After the city of Paris had been encircled, bombarded, and starved by the Prussian army, working people expelled the new French government from Paris and created new democratic institutions of their own to discuss and decide on policies around work, education, the arts, and more. The Commune lived for two months until the French state massacred up to 20,000 communards in a single week. 150 years later, the Paris Commune remains an inspiration to socialists around the world and an important event for thinking about the transition to a just society. Register here for the reading and Zoom links.
COVID-19 Relief In Navajo Nation Solidarity Phone Bank
On Sunday, March 21 from 2 to 5 p.m., join a coalition of DSA chapters in phone banking to raise funds for existing grassroots mutual aid relief networks in Navajo Nation, which has been devastated by COVID-19. RSVP here!
See more events on our event calendar here!
Announcements
Hotels Not Hospitals—Now With Apartments!
Hotels Not Hospitals is excited to announce that we are in the process of securing one-year apartment leases for our unhoused partners currently sheltered in hotel rooms. Community-supported housing (CSH), modeled after community-supported agriculture (CSA), is an opportunity for us to collectively transform San Francisco’s response to homelessness and ensure all our neighbors have access to safe and secure housing. Set up your monthly contribution today at any amount, and sign up to help us build out the CSH model this year!
Dean Preston Weekly Update
This week’s Dean Preston update includes detailed information about a number of things, including:
- Information about local vaccine eligibility, which has expanded to include healthcare workers, people 65 and older, education and childcare workers, emergency services workers, and food and agriculture workers;
- Tonight’s joint Dean/DSA SF phonebank event, from 6 to 8 p.m, to register vulnerable seniors for vaccine appointments (Zoom here);
- Dean’s call to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to make Muni free for all for the duration of the public health crisis; and
- Dean’s resolution, in conjunction with the Bay Area Tigray Community, condemning human rights violations against the people of Tigray and urging Congressional action.
Read the full update here.
Reading Groups
EcoSoc Book Club: Silvia Federici’s Re-Enchanting the World
Join the Ecosocialist Committee’s book club on bi-weekly Mondays in March, with the next session on Monday, March 15 from 6 to 7 p.m. We’re reading and discussing Silvia Federici’s Re-enchanting the World: Feminism & the Politics of the Commons. This reading group is open to all. Register here today!
Future Economies Reading Group: Commons-Based Peer Production
If, as Marx says, “slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine,” what forms of domination can be ended with the advent of global communication networks? This month the Future Economies Reading Group will study new modes of production enabled by new technologies. Join us on Tuesday, March 30, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
We will investigate a positive vision of a future centered around the redevelopment of the commons—imagine Wikipedia but for all of production. We’ll also read an introduction to McKenzie Wark’s theory of the Vectoralist Class, a new subset of the ruling class which draws its power from control overflows of information. Find the short readings and Zoom details here.
