From the Boston Political Education Editorial Committee
In January, Cambridge police killed Arif Sayed Faisal, a 20-year-old UMass student experiencing a mental health crisis. Despite multiple protests and community outrage in the 5 months since the shooting, neither Cambridge Police (CPD) nor the established Police Review and Advisory Board (PRAB) have taken any concrete action to address the situation. On February 14th, …
Last week, Boston DSA received a letter from multiple former staffers alleging serious misconduct and abuse towards her staff by Ihssane Leckey. We believe these allegations are credible enough that they require a substantive response from the Leckey campaign. As a socialist organization, we have the obligation to treat workers' allegations of maltreatment and exploitation …
Continue reading "Boston DSA Coordinating Committee Statement re: Leckey Campaign Allegations"
A world of hurt You may already know by now that Bernie Sanders has suspended his presidential candidate campaign. It feels like a lifetime ago that a glorious moment had appeared in the American political sphere when we felt unstoppable; a moment where the bright light of liberation and justice had shown into this dark, …
- Nafis H. The novel coronavirus pandemic has governments scrambling to declare national emergencies and orders to “shelter-in-place” for residents of major cities. Scientists, both in the public and private sector, are working around the clock to develop a vaccine for this virus, but best case estimates suggest that it is still going to take …
Continue reading "Against Corona Capitalism: The biopolitics behind Covid19 drug development"
- Nafis H Author's Note: I originally received the book “Climate of Hope” by Carl Pope and Michael Bloomberg as a gag birthday gift. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d really read it at all. However, with Bloomberg throwing his hat in the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate ring, I was intrigued to find out what his version …
- Maddie H. One of the most important tools anyone can use to resist injustice is economic pressure. Whether it’s externally boycotting or internally refusing to provide your labor, economic pressure can be an extremely effective form of resistance, which is why corporations are particularly desperate to stop people from using that power. As one …
By Ben S. In Brief In this essay I define base-building as political work done in such a way that it either results in creating or strengthening existing mass democratic organizations (independent of any other political organization or NGO) of the working class and that develops individuals not previously engaged in political work as organizers …
Continue reading "Losing Politics: A Proposed Definition of Base-building"
by Adam S, Bronx/Upper Manhattan DSA The Monday before the Democratic congressional primary in New York, I slipped out of work early to make one final canvassing push for the long shot challenge to ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district. Getting off the train and heading down the stairs, past a …
Continue reading "For a Truly Pluralistic, Big Tent DSA: A Response to Jared Abbott and Momentum"
by Ben M As we pass the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent descent of the world economy into the Great Recession, the horizon is once again darkening for capitalism. While economic forecasts often resort to little more than reading tea leaves, e.g.- the regular predictions of a “double dip” …
Continue reading "The Coming Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks for Socialists"
There is a widespread problem in capitalist nations within the Global North, of conflating GDP with “standard of living”, and equating possessions and access to technology with personal well-being. Economic growth, in practice, means growth for the few privileged individuals and growing inequality for the rest. It is an obvious moral obligation to mitigate the destruction wrought by growth-induced climate change for vulnerable communities and future generations. We must rethink the modern meaning of the words “needs” and “well-being” in order to imagine a revolutionary post-growth future.