The rail freight carriers that employ approximately 125,000 unionized employees have spent years prioritizing shareholders and executives, making record profits for the railroad industry. At the same time, the carriers have downsized the rail workforce by furloughing approximately 30% of rail workers, increasing the workload for those who remain. Workers do not receive paid sick …
Fund, Fix, and Free the T! Boston DSA statement on T closure
Painting credit: @Lizzie Rutberg Today, in an unprecedented and historic move, Governor Charlie Baker’s MBTA will shut down the entire Orange Line for thirty days of emergency maintenance. This, the severs a vital transit artery for hundreds of thousands of greater Boston residents, and forces riders to pay the price for decades of disinvestment from …
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#DonateYourVote2018 and AACC Endorsements
This year, members of Boston DSA have participated in the #DonateYourVote campaign through Emancipation Initiative's Ballots Over Bars campaign. The #DonateYourVote campaign partners an incarcerated person who has had their voting rights stripped away by the state, and a freeworld volunteer who will vote as their partner would. This year, 165 people volunteered to donate …
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Silence Is Betrayal
A group of people detained by ICE in Massachusetts—some of whom were on hunger strike last month—co-wrote a lengthy letter to us detailing their perspectives on detention: the conditions inside the jails, the exploitation of the incarcerated, and the hypocrisy of American values.
“One Weird Trick” to Building Socialism
By Frank Little Whenever I get angry about some particular strain of left-wing thought or discourse, I’ve found it’s helpful to remember that I live in a country where a decent chunk of the population have been bombarded with the idea that politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are socialists. I think it’s good …
Unite and Fight the Far-Right: From Charlottesville to Boston
On August 11, I wandered downtown Charlottesville with my medic buddy and his partner. Police had turned it into an armed camp with security checkpoints. I wandered through the stretch of the road, looking at spots where I had kneeled to provide first aid to the wounded, and standing for a time on the precise spot where Heather had been given CPR.
I Got Arrested and So Can You
Twenty of us offered ourselves up for the civil disobedience part of the rally—the prison blockade. We had very different reasons, but I think all of them basically came down to a desire to fight injustice and build a better world. We were brought into the protest through different paths.
Building a Base Through Tenant Unionizing
By Chris E. and Mike L., Boston Refoundation Like nearly every other American city, Boston is facing a housing crisis. Rents are on the rise across the Greater Boston area, and processes of development and redevelopment displace longtime residents and restrict the population of ever-growing parts of the city to an ever-shrinking class of bourgeois …
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Eugenics 2.0: How Dialectical Materialism Can End the Nature vs. Nurture Debate.
By Nafis H. The recent opinion piece by prominent geneticist David Reich has once again fanned the flames of the debate on race, genetics, and intelligence. This is not a new debate — after eugenics was supposedly put to rest, it appeared that this ideology had taken refuge in the shadows of evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics. …
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Open Response: BDSA Endorsement Process
By Kathryn A., Steering Committee I’m heartened by the discussion I’ve seen unfolding over the past weeks, starting with the Electoral Working Group meeting, and then continued with the open letter signed onto by some of our comrades. This sparked discussions in person and across a variety of other platforms. I’ve seen other members take …