This past month, Houston flooded and the Western United States burned. Earthquakes shook nations while hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Hurricane Irma, the strongest hurricane to form in the Atlantic Basin (outside of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico) on record, swelled amidst four other hurricanes collectively responsible for widespread death, homelessness, and power-outages that will leave Puerto Rico dark for months. Floods in South Asia have killed over 1,300 people and affected over 41 million more. More devastation is predicted to come. Meanwhile, our political leaders will continue business-as-usual while lamenting the fiscal cost. Continue reading

The Los Angeles chapter of DSA has ratified a chapter mission statement and a set of Organizational Priorities that will be used to guide the work of the elected chapter leadership going forward with 96.5% of voters voting in favor!  The ratified version of this document can be found here. Continue reading

Yesterday Thomas Bach—head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Olympics’ governing body of oligarchs and white-collar criminals—visited Los Angeles to invoke some old Nazi Olympic traditions at the Coliseum for a dreadful and bizarre NFL game between the recently relocated L.A. Rams and the unnamable Washington team. A German national, Bach was flown in specifically to light the Olympic cauldron, a symbol itself which was heavily invoked in the Nazi-run 1936 Olympics and inspired the Nazis to invent their own fiery tradition—the running of the torch. These allusions to fascist violence felt particularly egregious at an event benefitting and celebrating the NFL, an entity that tolerates misogyny and punishes those who speak out against racism, and hosting a team whose very name celebrates colonial violence and white supremacy. Continue reading

On October 21st, over a quarter million members of Southern California's African American and diverse community will converge on Crenshaw Blvd for Taste of Soul, one of the biggest street fairs in the country. DSA's Afrosocialist Caucus, DSA-LA's Racial Justice Caucus and the Sanctuary City Working Group invite you to help us infuse social action into this event rife with corporate ads and sponsors. We're looking forward to showing up full force and presenting democratic socialism to a group of people underrepresented in DSA. Continue reading

At our last chapter meeting, the DSA-LA Steering Committee presented a proposed mission statement and set of organizational priorities, which will be used to guide leadership and chapter decisions going forward. After taking chapter feedback in breakout groups at the meeting as well as online, we're presenting the revised Mission Statement and Organizational Priorities for chapter-wide ratification. Continue reading

September 13,  2017 Dear  Members  of  the  International  Olympic  Committee, Today you are announcing a decision that will fundamentally and detrimentally alter the course of the lives of many Los Angelenos. Sadly, the heaviest cost will be paid by the most vulnerable: the homeless, the poor, immigrants and communities of color. You’ll do so under the guise of “Olympic spirit”, national pride, and athleticism. You’ll make grand statements about how the Olympics will bring jobs, economic stimulation and fund youth sports programs. But what you won’t talk about are the tens of thousands of people who have been dispossessed of their homes and communities in Tokyo, Rio, and Sochi as a result of the Olympics. Or how many billions of public dollars have been diverted from the city coffers of Montreal, Barcelona, and Athens to pay for the cost overruns.  You won’t talk about the billions of dollars that will pour into the IOC, benefitting its grotesquely wealthy and elite members and the billions more that will land in the pockets of its privileged and opportunistic cohorts and business associates. You won’t talk about the trail of devastation that is the alloy of the Olympic  gold. Continue reading

The DSA Los Angeles Prison Abolition Working Group emphatically condemns the Los Angeles Police Department’s attempt to acquire drones for their Special Weapons and Tactics division (SWAT). While LAPD officials continue to insist that these drones would only be deployed for ‘special circumstances’ such as search and rescue, history clearly shows that military equipment acquired by the LAPD is predominantly used to occupy and oppress low-income communities of color in South LA, East LA, and Skid Row. In addition, President Trump's recent lift on the ban on military gear to local police has the community worried that drones are just the beginning. In order to be sure of LAPD's refusal to condone military police, they should attempt to distance themselves from Trump's much looser standards. Armed or not, drones are weapons of war-- to normalize them as a presence in our communities will further empower the most militarized police force in the nation, while enhancing a data collecting surveillance state that fosters an environment of fear, trauma, and violence. They are an instrument of the billion dollar military and prison industrial complex that devastates millions of lives across the globe, and which the LAPD plays a major role in here at home. Given their long record of corruption, misconduct, murder and ‘mission creep’, the LAPD does not have the trust of the community to acquire any more weapons or funding-- on the contrary, their behavior should be grounds for having far less.  Continue reading

Since our May election, one of the interim Steering Committee's top priorities has been the collaborative development of policies that aim to strengthen our organization and embody our commitment to transparent, democratic decision-making and the safety and inclusion of all of our members. The Steering Committee is currently piloting a full set of procedures and organizational guidelines, and we’re excited to share these proposed policies with the full membership over the next several weeks. The next weeks will offer a number of opportunities for members to ask questions and provide feedback on these policies both online, and in-person, followed by online votes.  In October, we’ll hold a formal vote to incorporate this set of proposed policies into the DSA-LA bylaws. We’ve developed this timeline and FAQ to ensure clarity and transparency throughout this chapter-wide decision-making process. We’re looking forward to working together in this next phase of building and strengthening our chapter together, and invite you to reach out with any questions! Continue reading

DSA Los Angeles has formally adopted an endorsement of Public Bank LA, with 97.1% of voters in favor of the endorsement. The Climate Justice Committee's proposal that DSA Los Angeles officially endorse and move to work in coalition with the Divest LA campaign, as well as the related Public Bank LA campaign that has evolved from it. Continue reading

The week following the DSA National Convention have been nothing short of chaotic. The 34 delegates that went to Chicago represented our chapter in a way that would make our entire chapter all proud and we wanted to take a moment to celebrate their accomplishments. Heading into the convention we had set three goals for ourselves: 1) vote in a democratic, transparent way that reflects our chapter; 2) forge relationships with other chapters with an eye towards coalition building and resource sharing; and 3) develop a strong, positive relationship with National. Throughout the Convention, delegates worked together in shared commitment, kindness, and solidarity to accomplish these goals and more. The thoughtfulness with which your delegates contemplated their votes—regularly conferring to discuss how changes made on the floor might be viewed by our membership, and self-organizing to ensure that the chapter’s minority opinions were represented in our voting—was inspiring. A number of chapters, impressed by our organization and effort to represent the chapter, voiced a desire to to model their future pre-convention organization around our example.  The voting guide we created for our delegates, which displayed the results of our chapter-wide polling, was lauded widely and other chapters have asked us to produce a resource describing the steps our chapter and delegation took so that they can follow a similar process at future conventions.  Continue reading