DSA New Orleans members elected new leadership, approved new bylaws and made the chapter’s first campaign endorsement at the annual convention Saturday.

Over 60 attendees voted to change bylaws, including streamlining and clarifying the chapter’s endorsement process, clarifying the stance on nationally endorsed campaigns, establishing new credentials officer and alternate positions, and creating working groups for growth and diversity, as well as chapter conduct. The convention also resolved to prioritize Medicare for All and labor rights and to continue streamlining budgeting and finances for the coming year.

Another major milestone passed with an overwhelming majority, as Marguerite Green received DSA New Orleans’ first official political campaign endorsement as she begins her run for Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry.

A number of candidates ran for local council seats, with Jordan F. elected as a new co-chair alongside re-elected Co-Chair Michael E.

“We learned a lot talking about what campaigns were successful and which weren’t, and we’re in a great position to reorient our organizing around that. I’m looking forward to seeing how the chapter will grow by moving away from the activist model and into a place where more casual organizers can make meaningful contributions to our work,” said Jordan.

Michael echoed his sentiment.

“I’m excited to work with new leadership to strengthen and grow our chapter as we start to take up more ambitious campaigns for working-class demands,” she said. “It’s clear we’re becoming a serious, durable organization with real potential to fight for meaningful change in Louisiana, and I’m honored to serve our members in another term as chair.”

The entire elected Local Council includes Zach D. and Sophie K. as at-large Local Council members, Logan Y. as membership chair, Alli D. as treasurer, and Ryan S. as secretary. Michael E., Sue M., Frances G., Josh L., and Jordan F. were chosen to represent the chapter at DSA’s upcoming National Convention in August.

Following Saturday afternoon’s convention, DSA members met for a social at a chapter member’s home. We look forward to building a better world and New Orleans over the next year.

Co-chair:

Trey D:
Over the last several years, I believe we’ve witnessed a genuinely rare moment: for the first time in decades, we have the chance to truly build a unified, durable and powerful workers’ movement in New Orleans and nationwide. Generations of stagnant wages, the Great Recession, and the endless fiasco that is our political system have swept underfoot generations of old lies about socialism (and a lot of other lies besides). As a result, our organization has grown from a tiny sect to the largest anticapitalist organization in the country in at least 50 years.
I am running for co-chair because I believe our chapter, and DSA at large, now faces a profound and crucial question: what comes next? How do we turn this moment into a durable, powerful and multiracial workers’ organization?
I believe we must prioritize, above all, both sustained membership growth and democratic durability. Growth that will continue regardless of who is in office or what happens on election day; growth which actively and tirelessly reaches beyond the heavily white demographics of our current membership. Democratic durability that is built on creating opportunities for involvement in our movement beyond committee-centered, single-issue organizing; durability that is founded on making democratic self-organization a part of the fabric of working peoples’ lives.
I hope that some of my work over the last fifteen months as membership chair, such as creating the chapter Mobilizers Program to ensure every person expressing interest in our chapter is connected with an established member, leading development on the chapter website, and co-authoring the Collective Power Network’s Regional Representation plank, has contributed to beginning to address these goals. But as a chapter, I feel we must deepen our commitment to them, and if elected to co-chair, doing so will be my priority.

Michael E:

I’m Michael (she/her). I’m a restaurant worker and student who got my start in organizing as a rank-and-file labor activist, and later as an organizer for United Labor Unions, working primarily with school custodians. I’ve served as co-chair of New Orleans DSA for the past year, working on new member onboarding, navigating our coalition work in the Three Point Platform campaign, and helping to lead our chapter program process. For us to stand a chance in the struggle against the rich power players who run our state, and win working class victories that materially change peoples lives, we have to build our chapter. We’ve got to pair campaign activity with strong systems for growth & member development.

If elected to a second term as co-chair I’ll work to

• Collaborate with the Labor Committee to build working class power through support for organizing in major industries
• Team up with the Membership Chair and Mobilizers to implement a strategy for growth – one that emphasizes reaching and building trust with working class communities of color and working class women
• Create tools to help incorporate political education and organizer training into all of our activity
• Help guide our work in coalition with membership based organizations and working class communities whose priorities align with our own, especially on key issues like education, healthcare, labor and environment

Jordan F:

We are at a rare moment for the socialist movement. We’ve continued to grow through ongoing political crises because more and more people believe that we are going to win. Our role as organizers is to show people that we will win. We do this when we create material changes for our neighbors and coworkers. And we make these changes by building real power. We must always be thinking about our work in relation to how it builds power, and as co-chair I’ll continue to challenge the membership and chapter leadership to think in these terms.
I’ll do this by focusing my efforts on a small set of concrete goals:

• Pushing the chapter to do more outward-facing events and outreach to build trust in our work and make it visible to our neighbors.
• Creating and supporting an internal body focused on onboarding and welcoming new members.
• Creating and supporting the Growth & Diversity Working Group to organize our neighborhoods beyond specific issue areas.
• Developing a Leadership Development strategy. To identify informal leaders, create a succession plan for elected leadership, and create tools and trainings.
• Centering political development and education in all our work.

Read Jordan’s full Statement

Click below to read all other candidate statements.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has signaled his intention to sign the “fetal heartbeat bill” (SB 184, HB 133, HB 484) that would criminalize abortion after a heartbeat is detected, usually at 6 weeks. This bill is the result of decades of work by anti-choice zealots to shut down abortion access state by state.

This bill won’t protect life in Louisiana. It won’t do anything about the maternal mortality rate that is the 2nd worst in the country. It won’t stop the 45% of pregnancy-related deaths that are preventable. It won’t address the fact that childbirth is 4x more deadly for black people in Louisiana, and 3x more deadly for parents over 35. It won’t provide greater access to healthcare. It won’t help a single person living in this state.

It won’t help parents provide for their children’s food, shelter, education, or healthcare. It won’t create jobs and livelihoods to sustain families. It won’t stop violence. This bill is meant to punish and dominate. To steal autonomy and choice from pregnant people. This bill is designed — as most of Louisiana’s abortion laws are designed — to punish working class people and make our lives harder. Already, 95% of parishes don’t have an abortion clinic (75% of Louisianans live in a parish without a clinic). People seeking abortions already have to arrange transportation and travel, take multiple days off work, receive medically unnecessary ultrasounds and state-mandated counseling, and self-fund procedures that cost hundreds of dollars — starting around $500 in the first trimester and getting more expensive as time passes.

Happy May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day. This Wednesday, May 1st, DSA New Orleans will be joining the annual march organized by New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. We’ll gather in Congo Square at 1:30 PM and we invite all of you to join us! Remember to wear red.

We have a ton of great events planned this month. In addition to our regular monthly Brake Light Clinic, we’re doing two Medicare-for-All canvasses. We’ve got a film screening about Anne Braden, a southern socialist organizer and civil rights activist. Our Socialists of Color Caucus is hosting a forum about liberation movements in the Caribbean. We’ve got a book event about the red state teachers’ strikes, and we’ll close out the month with a social.

*Upcoming June Convention*

Upcoming DSA Events

Upcoming Events

Chapter Program Meeting: Our Priorities
Monday, April 22nd, 6:30 – 8pm
2022 St. Bernard Ave

We’re working on our chapter program, which will help guide our work and focus our efforts as we organize for a better world. In February members identified four issues they want to focus more on: growing the chapter, labor organizing, healthcare justice and environmental issues.

We’re getting together to brainstorm and develop action plans for our chapter based on member feedback, and we want everyone to come! Dinner provided, children welcome. Wheelchair accessible building.

Socialist Cookout on the Bayou

Friday, April 26th, 6:30pm til late
On the Bayou between St. Ann & Dumaine

We’re having a cookout and everyone’s invited! Bring cold drinks or something to throw on the grill — or just bring yourself. Children welcome. Nearby bathroom available.

Wheelchair accessibility info: event will be held in a grassy area. The bathroom is, unfortunately, not wheelchair accessible.

There are plenty of ways to keep up to date with us as we try to build a better world:

• Take a regular look at our events page for the latest meetings and events coming up.
• Follow us on social media to learn more about democratic socialism, upcoming events, and our spin on local politics: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
• Sign up here to become a DSA member.

We hope to see you soon!

Hello & thanks to everyone who attended our April general meeting. We had at least 80 attendees, making this our chapter’s biggest meeting yet!

We were lucky to welcome Miriam from Familias Unidas en Accion as a guest speaker. Hannah gave a recap from the Dallas DSA conference, where 10 delegates from our chapter met DSA leaders from all over Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Josh went over some guidelines for our upcoming chapter convention in June, and we heard updates from all of our committees and caucuses. 

Jordan gave a report back on our chapter program development and our work to develop political proposals and strategies around priorities of growing & diversifying the chapter, labor organizing, ecosocialism and healthcare justice. 

Finally, we voted to approve proposed financial reforms to our chapter bylaws, to establish a Media Policy Working Group, and to endorse the Ecosocialist Green New Deal Principles.

Read the minutes from Tuesday’s meeting here. 

Version 2. February 2019.

The Work of Many

In the introduction to v2 of New Orleans DSA’s Gimme a Brake! (Light): A DIY Guide, we refer to the brake light clinic as “genius.” We should be clear the “genius” referred to herein is not ourselves, but the person who came up with the idea of these clinics, DSA organizer Kaitlin Marone. What a cool idea!

Many of us are writers, and we can tell you, a cool idea gets you pretty much nowhere. It doesn’t accomplish anything, on its own. What an idea can do is bring people together. And that’s what it did here in New Orleans. Marone took the idea to the newly-established DSA local. The brake light clinic’s success is not its idea: it is its execution, which is the work of many.

Only two people*  who worked on the original version of this guide had a hand in creating v2. That’s because in the past year and a half, the brake light clinics have gone from a cool idea to an ongoing project that has helped our chapter recruit members, develop new leadership, sharpen our political education, develop better organizing skills, and record our institutional knowledge. That is the work of many.

This guide was built by consensus. We started the process by gathering information about clinics around the country and soliciting feedback from people who had built on our work. Then we met around a table in New Orleans, each of us outfitted with a printout of the old guide, plus every piece of organizing material we had developed since. And then we went, page by page, talking about whether each piece of information was necessary, clear, and accurate. Then we rewrote and came back and did it again. And again.

It is revolutionary to be more proud of a group project – of true consensus – than an individual effort.

As we release this v2 guide, we are orienting ourselves for deeper questions. How can we transform this project into a more sustained demand? In Louisiana, there is no part of life untouched by the carceral state. Should we fight to end money bail? Can we agitate to change the fee schedule for traffic violations? How can we leverage our position and build power to influence the 2020 District Attorney race in Orleans Parish?

The work of many will continue. We are overjoyed that you’re on the journey with us.

In Solidarity,

Direct Service Committee

New Orleans DSA

*and not Kaitlin Marone!

We had a great crowd last night at our New Member Dinner. About thirty new faces! It was good to meet everybody and enjoy delicious food, wine and king cake. Stay posted for details on our next chapter dinner, which will be scheduled sometime in mid-late March after everyone recovers from Carnival season!

 DSA New Orleans stands in solidarity with striking Los Angeles teachers!

🌹🌹🌹🌹

Across the U.S., education workers are under attack. They’ve been pushed to the edge by charter schools and austerity.

Today more than 30,000 education workers in L.A. went on strike for the first time in 30 years. They’re demanding an end to school privatization, inflated class sizes, excessive testing and decreased funding.

As socialists and working people, we believe that support for labor struggles is a central priority of our movement. To demonstrate our solidarity, we’re donating $100 to a strike fund for Los Angeles education workers and sending them a statement of support from our chapter.

Solidarity forever!

Strike fund: https://act.dsausa.org/donate/utla_strike_fund/