Rob Brown, Sam Mason, Pete Meyers, Ellen David Friedman, Megan Graham, Shoshe Cole, Rachel Gunderson, David Kornreich, Dave Marsh, Angela Cornell, Leni Hochman, Eric Evans and Lindsay Mercer tell us about unionizing baristas at Gimme!, the Ithaca College faculty fired three, help from the Cornell Labor Law Clinic, workers supporting the Robin Fund, unionbusting at Cornell, and bad building practices of Cayuga Medical Center. Recorded September 4, 2017.
Housing in Ithaca and Tompkins County is notoriously expensive. Teresa Halpert and Tom Eisenberg explain that many erroneously assume that adding any new housing -- even luxury housing -- will make excess housing filter down to the bottom. This doesn't work. It's too slow. Landlord upscale rather than reduce rents. Worst of all, there are not enough middle-income people through whose hands housing units would have to pass to make filtering work. New projects must be required to include affordable units.
Dr. Susan Soboroff discusses health insurance with Theresa Alt. Whether the ACA survives or is repealed, the much better way to go is single payer. A bill New York Health before both houses in Albany would provide for improved Medicare for all to cover everyone in New York State at lower cost. It has gained nearly enough cosponsors to pass. Recorded March 24, 2017.
Dan Lamb, who used to be an aide to Congressman M. Hinchey, tells Deirdre Silverman about threats to the Affordable Care Act and how to counter them. Congressional Republicans want to use budget reconciliation to cut funding to the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare. Other aspects of the ACA that don't involve expenditures cannot be affected by reconciliation and are a separate fight. It might be better to seek single payer within New York State. Recorded February 10, 2017.
Vienna after World War I faced devastating shortages of everything, especially housing. The City elected a socialist government, which built massive housing projects that provided not just places to live but laundries, clinics, day care, education and sports facilities. The buildings were solid and beautiful and established an ongoing tradition of quality public housing. Theresa Alt and Kathy Russell recently visited Vienna. Recorded December 9, 2016.
Ithaca DSA members produce a half-hour radio program on WRFI Community Radio called The Inquiring Socialist. The program airs at 10:00AM on alternate Fridays.
Ithaca DSA has a weekly cable access television program "Ithaca DSA Presents", a half-hour talk show covering local, national and international politics, economics and labor. It airs Tuesdays at 7:00 pm and several more times each week on Spectrum Cable Channel 13 in Tompkins County; DVDs of the program can be borrowed from the Alternatives Library in Anabel Taylor Hall on the Cornell Campus.
We will also be working on making Cornell pay for better and free TCAT, putting socialists in City government, supporting labor unions and affordable housing, and opposing police militarization and jail expansion in this community.
What We Believe
Democratic Socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.
We are dedicated first of all to democracy, and to bringing democracy into the economic sphere. We are not a political party that runs candidates. Rather, we are a political organization that engages in many activities as needed: electoral politics, issue politics, organizing, protest, and education.
