Meeting details:
- Rochambo Coffee & Tea House, 1317 E Brady St
- February 19, 2019
- 6:30
Time for updates/planning:
- Guests from Jewish Voice for Peace will be in attendance to plan out education topic for 2/23 general meeting.
- Finalize reading group selections. Brainstorm how to present this to engage as many people as possible.
- Right wing / law enforcement infiltrators
- Democratic socialism 101 and 102
- This project has been shelved but could be a great thing in the future:
- With meetings decreasing from every 2 weeks to ever 4 weeks, should education committee take on something else? Eg, a symposium with different speakers on the same topic. Antiwar seems like a perfect fit for this idea. However, if we can’t pull this off we need to get started on an antiwar topic for a general meeting. There are a lot of different ideas, eg:
- War is evil and should be avoided at all costs
- Eg, Salvador Allende in Chile, the only use for a military is to overrule the popular will. If Chile had abolished its military, could there ever have been a coup?
- US use of drones and cluster bombings throughout Muslim world has created terrorists where previously there had been no terrorists
- “Democratic socialism” itself is a reaction against revolutionary socialism. Could explore this idea: violence is polarizing, has not been effective
- With meetings decreasing from every 2 weeks to ever 4 weeks, should education committee take on something else? Eg, a symposium with different speakers on the same topic. Antiwar seems like a perfect fit for this idea. However, if we can’t pull this off we need to get started on an antiwar topic for a general meeting. There are a lot of different ideas, eg:
General meeting topics
- Launch this topic:
- Economics for socialists: the tragedy of “the tragedy of the commons”
- https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/why-were-all-better-off-working-for-the-collective-good
- https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2009/10/podcast_elinor_ostrom_checks_i.html
- http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons#sthash.qeOts6v7.dpbs
- What kind of leftist are you?
- A very amusing, and actually pretty informative quiz:
- https://www.gotoquiz.com/which_type_of_socialist_are_you
- I was 96% Democratic Socialist: Democratic Socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, often with an emphasis on democratic management of enterprises within a socialistic economic system. The term “democratic socialism” is sometimes used synonymously with “socialism”; the adjective “democratic” is often added to distinguish it from the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic in practice. “Democratic socialism” is also sometimes used as a synonym for social democracy, although many say this is misleading as democratic socialism advocates social ownership of the means of production, whereas social democracy does not.
- We keep having problems of people not realizing how truly big tent DSA is and I think we need to explain this.
- A very amusing, and actually pretty informative quiz:
- Economics for socialists: the tragedy of “the tragedy of the commons”
People are working on these topics:
- Taylor
- Public option for funeral/burial services
- Andrew
- Electoral college and gerrymandering
- YIMBYs and gentrification. Building more housing units does not put downward pressure on prices
- Tom
- Public control over finance:
- Directing investment towards projects/firms with the greatest benefit which may not be most profitable
- how federal reserve is governed
- Fed lends money to banks at lower rates than those banks lend to ordinary people. So banks literally cannot lose
- macroeconomic policy
- Public control over finance:
- Ian
- McCarthyism
- Antiwar–Nick
- Foxconn–Mary (with race-to-the-bottom policies/Chris)
- Chris
- Race to the bottom
- Housing/predatory lending
- Housing/redlining
- Nationalizing companies
- Meidner plan
- How the public sector funds vast majority of R&D
- Full employment
- Retirement
Anyone interested in taking these topics?
- Police abolition. I have some background on a mobile crisis response team
- Capitalism’s weeping angels. Less than a decade after the banking crisis, the reforms of Dodd-Frank are already getting rolled back
- https://theintercept.com/2018/08/20/dodd-frank-rollback-banking-bill/
- Capital strike. Opponents of failed referendum that would have ended the state law that prohibited rent controls basically argued that if they did not get their way, they would stop building housing in order to harm ordinary Californians as well as collapse property taxes, also to harm ordinary Californians. On the very same day that this referendum was defeated, Austin voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum creating a $250 bond for affordable housing. While this bond measure has some serious problems, the comparison is striking: public investment for the public good
- Background on the referendum: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article213328069.html
- Very good evidence that rent control would not have affected construction: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/28/will-rent-control-kill-california-housing-production-not-necessarily-data-shows/
- Austin referendum: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/11/07/2018-election-250m-affordable-housing-bond.html
- Antisemitism
- https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/antisemitism-squirrel-hill-pittsburgh-shooting-racism
- https://972mag.com/how-the-sjp-taught-me-to-confront-anti-semitism/133572/
- https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/hunting-communists-they-were-really-after-jews-1.10702
- https://972mag.com/yes-the-right-of-return-is-feasible-heres-how-it-can-be-done/130560/
- https://972mag.com/an-alliance-of-hate-the-israeli-rights-ties-to-european-facism/118580/
- A few topics filed under “selling socialism to small businesses”
- Entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries
- http://www.demos.org/blog/2/19/16/david-brooks-incorrect-about-northern-europe
- http://www.demos.org/blog/3/16/16/nordic-innovation-arguments-never-die
- Social welfare and entrepreneurship
- https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/
- Entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries
- US at will employment law contrasted with employment law in other countries
- Professional sports lockouts
- Long term unemployment
- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/
- A closer look at poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and cost of living.
- Economics for socialists
- See here where Amazon’s $15/hour raise was deemed “suicidal” by libertarians: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/bernie-sanders-shows-how-to-do-politics
- Cooperatives in Italy
- https://thenextsystem.org/learning-from-emilia-romagna
- 20 hour work week (capitalism taking from us things other than money)
- https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/working-hours-vacation-productivity-united-states-nordic
- We need to do a deep organizing topic ASAP
- See if Derek will talk about building trust through mutual aid for a few minutes. Then talk about how social media can only do the most shallow of organizing:
- https://jacobinmag.com/2018/11/log-off-facebook-twitter-social-media-addiction
- https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/log-off-social-media-twitter-organizing-facebook
- See if Derek will talk about building trust through mutual aid for a few minutes. Then talk about how social media can only do the most shallow of organizing:
- Yellow vests
- Open borders
- electoral:
- https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/democratic-party-minnesota-farmer-labor-floyd-olson
- capital strike:
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
- https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/09/pittsburgh-upmc-hospital-single-payer-amazon
- Failed referendum to repeal rent control prohibition in California. The argument was essentially “if you do this we will stop building housing and the problem will get worse.” That same day, Austin voters approved public spending on affordable housing. The contrast is clear: the private sector threatens capital strike if they have to charge affordable rents; the public sector does not.
- https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article213328069.html
- Very good evidence that rent control would not have affected construction: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/28/will-rent-control-kill-california-housing-production-not-necessarily-data-shows/
- Compare to Austin referendum: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/11/07/2018-election-250m-affordable-housing-bond.html
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
- employee stock ownership plans:
- https://theintercept.com/2018/12/26/esop-plans-employee-ownership-bernie-sanders/
- Vulture (venture) capital / private equity
- https://newrepublic.com/article/145813/cause-consequences-retail-apocalypse
- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bje7zm/this-invisible-industry-might-be-the-worst-thing-about-late-capitalism
- When it went bankrupt, Toys R Us sold 1 out of every 5 toys in the entire country: https://theweek.com/articles/761124/how-vulture-capitalists-ate-toys-r
- https://www.newsday.com/business/analysis-private-equity-ownership-common-in-retail-bankruptcies-1.13503349
These topics are ready to go:
- Intellectual property in science/engineering – Chris
- Economics for socialists / famines (Chris)