Theresa Alt and Conor Bednarski talk about their visions for affordable housing. Examples really exist. In the 20th century until the 1970s unions supported housing construction in New York City. The state gave money for mixed-income housing through Mitchell-Lama. Community land trusts allow people to buy their dwellings but not hugely profit when they sell them, so that the homes remain affordable. Vienna has been using tax money to build attractive housing since the 1920s. Recorded August 17, 2020.
David Foote and Theresa Alt look at DSA’s support for police abolition. The endorsed website #8toAbolition gives a good framework: 1) Defund the police; 2) Demilitarize communities; 3) Remove police from schools; 4) Free people from prisons & jails; 5) Repeal laws criminalizing survival; 6) Invest in community self-governance; 7) Provide safe housing for everyone; 8) Invest in care, not cops. Some of these, like housing, represent big local problems. Recorded August 7, 2020.
René Rojas reemphasizes that people who emigrated from the South to Northern cities and faced unemployment were forced to turn to crime to survive. Policing and incarceration are a cheap response to lack of a safety net. Abolition will get rid of the symptom of racist policing; it will not improve the quality of life in poor communities. Shift money from police budgets to address the underlying problems, but police budgets won’t yield enough money. Recorded July 16, 2020.
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.
