Neighborhood Meetings are part of DSA-LA’s Neighborhood Solidarity Program—our chapter’s campaign to strengthen and grow socialist organization by uniting with our neighbors through tenant organizing, mutual aid work, and political study. This and all other South Bay Neighborhood Meetings are open to new and long-time comrades who live in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, Lawndale, Alondra Park, Carson, and West Carson.

Our second Neighborhood Meeting will build on discussions and projects outlined in our first meeting— including tenant organizing work alongside our own neighbors. Like all Neighborhood Meetings, the agenda will be designed to engage all comrades in the Neighborhood Solidarity Program in tangible ways that build hyperlocal solidarity through housing justice issues; addressing immediate needs through mutual aid work (e.g. shared child watch, accessing government benefits, etc..); and engaging in regular political study and consciousness-raising.

Building on our conversation last time about Socialist Strategy & Electoralism, our study topic for this meeting will be Socialist Struggle at the Workplace. Totaling ~23 pages, the following set of recommended excerpts and articles provide a foundation for discussion on social strategy in workplace organizing:

• 6- page excerpt from The Marxist View of the Labor Unions: Complex & Critical (La Botz, 2013): A brief overview of Marxist socialists’ “relationship to the unions of which they are members, in that they are loyal to the union only insofar as it fights for workers, critical of the unions when they fail to do so.”

• The Necessity of Organization: The League of Revolutionary Struggle and the Watsonville Canning Strike (Shapiro in Viewpoint, 2018 – 17 pages). The story of Mexicana workers (many undocumented and majority women) who — “in the face of the most difficult odds imaginable” — pulled off a successful wildcat strike when their affiliated Teamster union ceased to function in the mid 1980s. Through their struggle they not only won a new contract, but also forced the business owner to sell the company. The piece commends the worker’s self activity, the unity of forces as key to the strike’s success, and the importance of insurgent institutions and long-lasting formations.

If you have questions about whether or not this is your Neighborhood – email us at [email protected] and we’ll get back to you right away.