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November 21, 2025 |
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Features |
Socialist Night School: Organizing Against CBP and ICETonight at the Healing Center, 2372 St Claude #204, starting at 7:00 pm. Federal immigration police have attacked Los Angeles, Chicago, and Charlotte. We’ve seen aggressive abductions at schools, stores, workplaces, churches, and in residential neighborhoods. Greg Bovino is bringing more CBP and ICE to New Orleans. How can socialist organizers respond in this critical moment? This is a workshop on what to expect, how to take action, and how to stay safe. We’ll cover the basics of organizing. Organizing is about trust. Camaraderie builds power. What efforts are already underway in our community and how can allies support them? We’ll examine different policing agencies and their common tactics. Their practices include surveillance and intimidation, and culminate in opportunistic abductions outside workplaces, schools, churches, and stores. How can neighbors respond? Everyone takes on some degree of risk under authoritarianism. What can you do to keep yourself and your circle safe? Device security is about making yourself a hard target. What can we do to help each other now? We’ll move into breakout groups according to your neighborhood, experience, skillset, interest, occupation, and more, and build the community and the structures that will make us unconquerable to fascism. Solidarity means action. We look forward to seeing you tonight.
A General Meeting of Fostering Resistance - Brodie LTomorrow’s November GM promises to be one of our most impactful meetings to date. New Business includes motions to initiate a Chevron Out of FQF Campaign, create an LGTBQ+ Business Directory for our queer comrades to know where their dollars would do the most good, and to create an Immigration Advocacy Working Group. There will be a short debrief and discussion about our chapter’s electoral work from this cycle to gauge the chapter’s most pressing electoral concerns; we will follow up with a more detailed breakdown December 2nd at 6pm. Committee Updates and Report Backs will come as a handout with asks and dates. Four Breakout Groups will address the chapter’s most pressing concerns.
Please keep in mind that this change is an experiment at juggling some very important aspects of a General Meeting. We may not strike the right balance immediately, and we welcome any constructive comments on how to foster thriving democracy within our organization. As always, any concerns or comments can be sent to our DSA email. I am your Co-Chair, so you can also reach out to me directly on Discord (@brodemeister) or Signal (@brodemeister.19).
Stand With Gaby, Support Our ChildrenWhen immigration policing ramped up in Charlotte, school attendance plummeted 20%. Children are afraid to go to school and parents are afraid to send them. These police forces are coming to New Orleans this week, and they’ll use the same tactics of terrorizing schools, bus stops, churches, and work sites. Our school system has been incredibly complacent about mitigating the harms on our families and children. DSA school board representative Gaby Biro has been lobbying her colleagues to take action in two specific ways: verify students’ family and emergency contact information, and offer online classes for students to attend from home. Last night, we asked you to support Gaby by showing up at the school board meeting. Now, follow up on that action and email Superintendent Dr. Fateama Fulmore that our schools need to put these safety measures in place to protect our vulnerable families. Let her know that no family should be forced to choose between safety and education. No child should have to risk kidnapping or family separation to go to school. No school system entrusted with the hopes and dreams of this city should be complacent in these dangerous times. A public outcry can help motivate real action.
May You Live In Interesting TimesAs we said last week: “The issues we have amongst ourselves and the issues we have between us and our enemy, the capitalist system, are fundamentally different. Between us, we have non-antagonistic contradictions. Between us and this illegitimate system, we have antagonistic contradictions. We must always remember that issues between us are secondary to the issues that plague us societally.” This perspective is being played out in real time before our eyes. Groups all across New Orleans are rising to the challenge of federal overreach, setting aside their differences and focusing on the true threat to our community. While our feckless city and state leaders stand idly by, liberals, Marxist-Leninists, anarchists, and others are working to track ICE deployments and develop strategies to keep our neighbors safe. You need to be a part of this effort. There are myriad ways to plug into the effort, at all levels of commitment. Identify and join your Neighborhood Circle. Install Signal on your phone and plug into the channels that are doing the work. We will drive them out of our city. The city is energized and will not be the same once the pigs are gone. We must make the New Orleans metro area as inhospitable to them as we can. We all know that they’re all wearing Atlanta Falcons jerseys under their masks and ICE/CBP jackets, right? Get to it. There’s no time to lose.
This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful For All of You!Thanksgiving is upon us, and a number of us will be around friends and family who will have all kinds of questions, fears, and feelings about the recent excitement in New York and the state of the country in general. They were anxious last Thanksgiving, and over the past year they have watched the continuing unravelling of the country. We all know about the annoying uncle who just won’t shut up about his conservative nonsense, so maybe this is the year to call him out on all his BS. This is not the time to be timid. Remember that the arguments you have with conservatives are not about converting them: you’re actually talking to the people who are watching the debate, though your attention will be on your conservative opponent. Keep your points simple, point out obvious contradictions in the conservative worldview, and let your arguments marinate with the folks on the fence. Nobody changes their mind in a debate. It happens later, when they incorporate what they’ve learned into what they already know. You’re kneading bread, not opening a can of Pringles. Talk about the better world we want to build and help your loved ones see that they can have a hand in it. The failure of the capitalist system is obvious—you won’t have to engage in hypotheticals. Be comfortable with a few socialist concepts like surplus value (if you’re paid $100 a day and generate $1000 worth of value at your job, you’re being robbed of $900), international solidarity (the life of the neighborhood barista is just as valuable as the life of a Palestinian tailor), or abolition (the cops aren’t here to protect us, they’re here to be used against us), and do your best. You can do it. I believe in you.
Red Rabbits Recommendation: Starve the PigsIf you haven’t heard the news yet, Border Patrol, ICE, and possibly the National Guard are all coming to town this week to start rounding up our neighbors. In September, SCOTUS (servants of the ruling class) ruled in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem that racial profiling by immigration officials is just fine. As a result, the pigs can roll in and grab whomever they want. Multiple instances have been recorded of immigration officials rounding up US citizens who have Hispanic characteristics, basically telling them, “get in the van, we’ll sort it out later.” They fill their quotas by derailing the lives of members of our community. So look out for your neighbors any way you can. The pigs like to make their raids in public places, like parking lots of grocery stores and home improvement centers. They can’t roll into someone’s house without a warrant (so don’t open your front door). Return to the early COVID days, where we made grocery runs and hardware trips for our vulnerable neighbors. This time the threat comes from the masked men rather than tiny viruses. Do whatever you can to keep our working-class comrades out of harm’s way. Keeping them safe at home will hamper the feds’ ability to make the numbers they need on the Security Theater Road Show. They’ll have to move on by the end of the year—scaring the Carnival-season tourists is bad for business. Remember that church volunteers and immigrant labor rebuilt the city after Katrina. They were here for us while the federal government was dragging its feet. As our good friend Zohran Mamdani reminds us: "To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us." |
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Bulletins |
Proletarian PotluckSeize the means of nutrition by breaking bread with us after the General Meeting on Saturday, November 22nd ends (around 2pm)! The potluck will take place in the Healing Center Blue Room (room 204). If you’re coming to the General Meeting, you can just come to room 258 as usual and we’ll store any food you bring.
7th Ward Triangle Food Distribution with Fork and Knife ClubOn November 30th we'll be teaming up with DSA member Tenaj W and the 7th Ward Triangle to distribute hot meals and groceries at 1206 Touro St. You can join us to distribute meals or deliver groceries to the elderly. Sign up to volunteer.
Winter Coat Drive for Next Brake Light ClinicWe’ll be handing out winter coats at our December 13 Brake Light Clinic. If you’re able to donate winter clothing, please bring it by the office, Healing Center #258. Get in touch with the Direct Service & Health Justice Committee to learn more and help out. Volunteer here.
Poli-Ed Reading SeriesThe Reading Group meets every third Sunday, from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm, at the Healing Center #258. Our current reading series focuses on Palestine. See you at the next meeting! December 21 January 18 February 15
Join Up With Your Neighborhood CircleNeighborhood circles connect us to comrades where we live, work, or otherwise spend time. Use your circle to host gatherings, plan events, and organize around issues in your neighborhood. Click here to join yours today. Neighborhood circles follow the chapter's code of conduct and guidelines for respectful discussion.
Sign the Petition to Say No to Angola’s Camp J for ICE DetentionGovernor Landry re-opened the Camp J area of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola as an ICE detention center. Known as "the dungeon," Camp J is a site so brutal and inhumane that it was shut down due to its deplorable conditions. This is part of Landry and Trump’s broader, deeply racist, and anti-immigrant agenda. They want to further criminalize, cage, and dehumanize Black, Brown, and immigrant communities in order to enrich their donors and hold on to power. Sign the petition to shut it down at bit.ly/NO-ANGOLA.
Write Like a Socialist: We Have a World to Win!Have an update from your committee or working group? That’s a Bulletin! Want to tell us about an upcoming event? Add it to the Community Calendar! Got some opinion or analysis to share for the good of the membership? Write us a Feature! Make your contribution to the next edition of Solidarity Means Action from the link on Discord. |
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Community Calendar |
Friday, November 21Socialist Night School: Organizing Against CBP and ICE
Saturday, November 22New Orleans DSA General Meeting Proletarian Potluck
Sunday, November 23🌹 🌹 🌹
Monday, November 24Local Council Meeting
Tuesday, November 25Direct Service & Health Justice Meeting Membership Working Group
Wednesday, November 26🌹 🌹 🌹
Thursday, November 27🌹 🌹 🌹
Friday, November 28Queer Soc Planning Meeting
Saturday, November 29🌹 🌹 🌹
Sunday, November 30DSA Neighborhood Social: Northshore! Safety Coalition Training Chapter Orientation
Down the RoadDecember 2 New Orleans Rank & File Project Monthly Meeting |
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Solidarity Means Action is the weekly newsletter of the New Orleans Democratic Socialists of America. Subscribe for updates every Friday at 8:00 am Central. |
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