Maybe these kids know what they are doing

Politics in America, whether Democrat or Republican, basically involves politicians coming out once every two years, asking for your money and promising things they have no intention of actually doing. No wonder people are sick of it.
That's party politics, but it's NOT a political movement.

Enter the Democratic Socialists of America, full of naive millennials who haven't learned that you can't change the system.
Those crazy kids start doing stuff like holding Fix Broken Car Lights for Free events all over the country.
It's a gimmick, but it's a clever gimmick because it involves a political group actually doing something for average people (as opposed to what the Dems and Repubs do, which is nothing except collect their money).

But these crazy kids didn't stop there. They actually want to change the system.

With beers in hand and electronic music in the background, members of the Metro DC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America hashed through the facts: Each year, landlords in the city submit between 30,000 and 50,000 eviction filings in DC housing court, trapping tenants in a complex and intimidating legal system that rids them of their homes with frightening efficiency. Tenants often don’t show up for court and are evicted by default. Sometimes tenants aren’t even informed that they are facing eviction and have no chance to advocate for themselves. Many renters don’t know where to go for legal help. Many don’t know their rights. But what if people pushed back, the organizers wondered? What if tenants started clogging up that too-efficient court system? The house party ended, and a new housing campaign began.

“We decided to go to the courthouse and pull all of the dockets and start canvassing tenants facing eviction,” says Margaret McLaughlin, the chair of the Metro DC DSA chapter. “We wanted to let them know their rights—that they have a right to a lawyer. That they need to show up to court.”

The chapter started sending out 10 to 20 volunteer canvassers each weekend to do long days of door-knocking at rental units across the city. They hit roughly 200 doors on any given weekend, encouraging tenants to defend themselves from eviction. They wrote an organizing manual to guide their efforts. And they chose an aggressive name for the campaign: They called it Stomp Out Slumlords.

...So far, in 14 months of canvassing, Stomp Out Slumlords has reached more than 2,500 people.

“The court system is mostly working right now as a conveyor belt to evict people,” says Allison Hrabar, a member of the chapter’s steering committee. “We are throwing a wrench in that system.”

Wait just one minute. They can't do that! Can they?
It appears that they can.
DSA chapters in San Francisco, Austin, Chicago and New York have started fighting for tenant rights just like an actual socialist movement.
Emphasis on the word "movement".

n June 5, the residents of San Francisco overwhelmingly passed Proposition F, a ballot initiative that establishes a universal right to legal counsel for tenants facing eviction. The initiative will give every tenant in the city, regardless of income, a publicly funded attorney to help them navigate housing court and avoid homelessness.

Proposition F didn’t happen by accident. It was born from months of prime-grade campaigning on the part of the city’s 800-member DSA chapter and its allies, including the San Francisco Tenants Union.

“DSA members were the vast majority of the canvassers and door knockers,” says SF DSA’s Jen Snyder, who was the campaign manager for Proposition F. “We were the main driving volunteer force, we were the campaign staff, the campaign office was the DSA office.”

We are having the“the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has ever known" (and that was in 2014. It's much worse now), and no one in the Dems or Repubs have talked about, much less have done anything about it.
But those crazy kids at the DSA are doing something about it, and they are doing it on a person-by-person level.
If this keeps up they will scare the establishment.

n recent months, the Metro DC DSA chapter has expanded its anti-eviction efforts in the city and is now actively offering organizational support to renters who are attempting to establish tenants’ associations in their buildings.

It might explain why this is happening.
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Momentum

Momentum was formed from the embers of Mr Corbyn’s successful leadership campaign in 2015. What started as a rabble has turned into a slick network of nearly 30,000 activists, who pump out sharp videos on social media and canvass across the country, even outside election campaigns.

In Brighton, the group showed its growing influence on Labour’s internal workings. It digitally whipped its members, via push notifications in an app, to elect certain candidates to the arcane but important committees that help to set party policy. Its own events were stuffed with Labour’s powermakers. Thirty MPs spoke at The World Transformed, including John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary. Ed Miliband, Labour’s previous leader, ran a pub quiz as part of the programme

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k9disc's picture

@gjohnsit

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Cassiodorus's picture

who:

basically involves politicians coming out once every two years, asking for your money and promising things they have no intention of actually doing.

The Republicans, on the other hand, make good on their promises to do bad things.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus
They've been promising to balance the budget and outlaw abortions for decades.
Not to mention mandatory patriotism.
And let's not even get started on Trump's promises.

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mimi's picture

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lotlizard's picture

In the Bay Area, DSA is up against the latest version of predatory capitalism and imperialism — and feudal accumulations of wealth — Silicon Valley.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@lotlizard @lotlizard I don't know about you, but to me, that's the name of a PLACE; "Bay Area" = "Silicon Valley". It's not supposed to be some sociopolitical force conflated with a landmark a la "The Pentagon/The Vatican/The Kremlin".

I haven't lived there in all too long a time, but people have gone from admiring it to demonizing it basically overnight sometime in the past few years, right around the same time as all the other "NewTruth" came flooding in. I don't know what to think; I'm sick of "The Internet" talking down to me (AKA "[something]-'splaining", as is referred to in the NewSpeak) about something most people don't know jack about, then finding trendy new ways to shit on me when I try to share what I know.

I have been living my own worst nightmare ever since the morning after (s)Election Day of 2004; since then, my worst nightmare has only managed to get worse; it's like something is conspiring to nullify and erase the entirety of my existence. There is Only The Narrative now, and I am An Inconvenient Truth.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

lotlizard's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat  
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/13/exclusive-democratic-socialists-of-amer...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/facebook-censors...

“Silicon Valley” is just one of many originally geographical appellations that have become shorthand for an entire historical political and socioeconomic development, like “Hollywood,” “Wall Street,” or (in the Fifties and Sixties) “Madison Avenue.”

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@lotlizard After all, if you HAD, it would be new to me and probably never have had cause to become something I find "irritating."

I don't know about the latter two, but I betcha if I'd grown up in Hollywood, I might feel similarly about that. Please be respectful.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat
I know many people here in Oakland that have been displaced by the insane rent increases. Some, tragically, have joined the many people living on the street now. The beautiful essence of Oakland is disappearing and the force that's causing it started down south in Santa Clara and San Jose.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

it will be Mother Nature or our young people.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon