Students here in New York and across the country are staging protests and encampments on university campuses in solidarity with Palestinians under siege in Gaza for over 200 days. The student movements are united by a common call for their institutions to divest and boycott the state of Israel, companies, and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation and ongoing genocide in Gaza. In response to this vast mobilization of students, the university administrations at Columbia, NYU, CUNY and elsewhere have handed out mass suspensions & even threats of expulsion to students involved in the encampments, in addition to unleashing NYPD to arrest students protesting peacefully on their campuses. Tonight, we will hear from the students themselves. We will hear from Britt, a student organizer at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at CUNY City College, about the ‘Five Demands’ of the students to the CUNY administration. We will also be joined in-studio by Erin, a student at NYU and a member of the National Coordinating Committee of YDSA, to hear the latest from the NYU encampment and what YDSA is doing to meet the national moment. 

*This episode was recorded at 7pm Tuesday night before the NYPD sweep and mass arrests of students at Columbia and CUNY. Go out and provide jail support for the arrested students & comrades opposing genocide at One Police Plaza  

Link to CUNY Gaza Solidarity Statement: https://twitter.com/cunygse/status/1785677626431934751/photo/1

In this episode we meet Jonathan Soto, the DSA endorsed candidate running for New York State Assembly in the North East Bronx. Jonathan is a public school parent, an inter-faith organizer and a democratic socialist, campaigning to unseat longtime incumbent Michael Benedetto in Assembly District 82. 

Tonight, we continue our series of interviews with NYC- DSA’s 2024 slate of endorsed candidates and will be talking with Eon Tyrell Huntley, a retail worker, father and tenant running for Assembly District 56 in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights. 

We’ll talk to Eon about the beauty of Bed Stuy, fighting for affordable rent, standing in solidarity with Palestine despite facing AIPAC money and so much more.

To learn more about Eon: www.eonforassembly.com 

Today in Albany, New York tenants numbering in the thousands descended onto our State’s Capitol Building in a Day of Mobilization, urging the New York Legislature to pass key legislation, such as Good Cause protections for tenants and greater rent support for low-income families facing eviction. Amidst the calls made by tenants and housing justice organizers for greater protections against the worst injustices of the current housing system, there also exists a new transformative vision of what housing could look like in our state. A new bill co-written by DSA-endorsed State Assembly member Emilly Gallagher representing North Brooklyn, would establish the New York Social Housing Development Authority and empower the state to build & maintain substantial new housing developments across the State that will be publicly funded, environmentally sustainable, permanently affordable by law, and democratically-controlled by tenants. If passed, the social housing authority would work to shift the balance of power over our whole housing system towards tenants and the state government and away from wealthy private developers that have no interest in building affordable housing, and the landlords that get rich from its scarcity. Tonight, we will hear from Renette, a DSA member and tenant organizer with HOPE Tenant Union, and Genevieve, a housing justice organizer with Ithaca DSA, on the importance of this new bill and the campaign to build beautiful, abundant, & affordable social housing for the whole working class of New York. 

Today is day 158 of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and also primary day for voters in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington.  

Over the last several weeks, hundreds of thousands of people across the country have voted "uncommitted" in the presidential primaries, to send a message to President Biden calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.  Tonight we’re joined by Ali and Tzara to talk about DSA’s role in the Vote Uncommitted campaign and what comes next to achieve a lasting ceasefire and the liberation of Palestine.  

To become a member of the Democratic Socialist America: https://www.dsausa.org/join

To follow Ali & Detroit DSA: @alihallalmi and @detroitdsa

Tonight, we’re talking to Claire Valdez, a NYC-DSA endorsed candidate for Assembly District 37 in Queens about what being endorsed by NYC-DSA and UAW Region 9A means to her, how she plans to bring her union organizing experience of becoming ‘more powerful than the boss’ to the halls of power in Albany and much more. 

There are currently 8 socialists endorsed by NYC-DSA serving in Albany in the Senate and Assembly. If electoral organizers get their way- that number could be 11 next year - the largest socialist block ever elected in New York.

NYC-DSA has voted to endorse three new-insurgent candidates this year- Claire in Queens, Eon Huntley in Brooklyn and Jonathan Soto in the Bronx. 

As we do every year, we will talk to all of the new-dsa endorsed candidates here on Revolutions Per Minute and tonight is the first in that series of interviews with the NYC-DSA’s 2024 slate. So stick around to hear from Claire, a union organizer running for Assembly District 37 in Queens - stretching from Long Island City, Sunnyside and Maspeth to Ridgewood. 

To learn more visit  https://claireforqueens.com/ and to sign up for a canvassing shift https://claireforqueens.com/events/

This past weekend, DSA held their inaugural kickoff for their new nationwide campaign for Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy. Spearheaded by the Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Campaign Commission, DSA will mobilize the organization’s tens of thousands of members across 150+ chapters across the country, not only to combat the advances of the far-right and their systematic attempt at every level of government to remove trans people from public life & restrict access to abortion, but also to advance a positive vision of queer liberation that protects queer spaces, our rights as workers, students & educators, and as human beings. Tonight, we will hear from Genevieve, joining us from Ithaca, NY and one of the leaders of this organization-wide project, to break down all the pieces of this ambitious campaign, how DSA will rise to fight the far-right, and why the struggle for trans rights & bodily autonomy is a struggle for the whole working class. 

Join DSA's Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy Campaign Commission: https://airtable.com/appxkhakxWCUXVVqO/pag9jCfy3jpsn74do/form

Support Tech Guild Workers organizing for trans rights at The New York Times:

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/nyt-respect-trans-workers

This episode of Revolutions Per Minute explores the life and legacy of Pablo Yoruba Guzman, who co-founded the New York chapter of the Young Lords, and later became a prominent television reporter on local news channels in the city. We are joined by Mickey Melendez, a fellow Young Lord, to discuss the group's occupations of the First People’s Church in Harlem and Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. We will also hear from New York City Council Member Charles Baron, the organizer Denise Oliver-Velez and CUNY scholar Johanna Fernandez on the legacy of the group.