Before our General Meeting, two events are scheduled: the Vigil for Palestine this Friday and another Protest/Rally on January 5th. These dates were chosen based on the availability of local organizers. If we want to endorse and support the Protest/Rally on January 5th, we’ll need to pass it as an emergency proposal. Later on, we can decide whether to incorporate this work into a full Focus Campaign.
See Meeting about cooperating on future Palestine actions with other groups for more details.
As a reminder, Side Quests (and emergency proposals) must include at least one of three essential functions: administrative work, outreach work, and political education work. Focus campaigns should be “strategically focused, with specific goals to advance socialism and build power for the working class; they should involve organizing for power and mass mobilization of the broader working class in SJC.”
Emergency Proposal: We co-host a Protest/Rally for Palestine on January 5th to exert pressure on Josh Harder and his supporters by leading an exit from the Democratic Party, no matter what their stance on a Ceasefire is in the future. -
We need 5 co-sponsors to bring this proposal to the Steering Committee.
As a socialist organization, we should aim to move people beyond merely petitioning Democrats (or Republicans) for reforms or concessions in exchange for our support. In the long run, this approach keeps us as junior partners in their coalition, as we are relying on them getting elected to get these concessions. This not only hinders us from building our own parties and institutions but also makes us responsible for their actions (political education, building power for the working class ).
We should continue to do outreach via phone banking. At the previous phone bank, numerous people said they were not aware of the actions taking place locally, but they wanted to participate. We also need to reach out to any union members/organizations that we may know to attend to get the ball rolling on a larger local coalition (outreach work).
During our next General Meeting, I think we should talk about making “Free Palestine” our second Focus Campaign. However, I believe we should change our authorization frequency to monthly instead of every six months. Given the dire situation in Gaza, we need to honestly assess whether our efforts are making a real impact or if we’re just spinning our wheels. It’s crucial that our work is effective.
Focus Campaign Proposal: If we do choose to move forward with this as a Focus Campaign, I believe our work would be best spent on coalition building, even if it means only one big action a month. The California primary is on March 5th, 2024 with ballots going out a month before that. Now is the optimal time for groups that participate in Democratic Party electioneering to leverage their influence - money/volunteers.
We should continue highlighting the drawbacks of our current two-party system and actively recruit people away from the Democratic Party. Rather than delving deep into the history of Israel/Palestine, we should concentrate on the present and potential future scenarios. You cannot build power unless you understand the reality that you are in today.
We can discuss these details further at the upcoming meeting, where your agreement or disagreement is welcomed. As we discussed during our end-of-year meeting, let’s use this opportunity to learn from past mistakes and develop a clear, detailed, and streamlined campaign process. If we want to do this right, it means implementing the Membership Pipeline, managing the database, and will require a lot of delegation and skill sharing to make sure we do not fall behind.
