Wichita DSA Activity Report, Fall 2010 – 2011
Wichita DSA's last members' meeting took place on Sept. 11th, 2010, at Aaron Rivers's house. Following the business meeting, where new members of the executive board, Russell Fox and Todd Brown were elected, we had a potluck and a social gathering.
In the fall of 2010, focus was first directed at the Rally for Jobs in Washington DC on October 2nd.
YDS sponsored a student action on Student Debt and DSA joined theNational Day of Action to Defend Education on Oct. 7th.
Members attended and advertised a workshop on wage theft organized by Sunflower Community Action on Oct. 23rd.We have followed labor issues in our local community, and joined a coalition fighting a state bill to repress voter registration. We are part of a state-wide coalition to oppose anti-immigrant laws. Our members have spoken at legislators' open forums on the state budget and wage theft.
In the fall reading group, books discussed were Kim Bobo's Wage Theft in conjunction with the hearing organized by Sunflower. In November we read a classic text, Hal Draper's Two Souls of Socialism. In December, we tabled at the Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas' annual meeting.
So far in 2011, Wichita DSA has continued to put our agenda forward with different types of events. We opened the year with a
Letter Writing Workshop on Jan. 18th. About a dozen members got together and shared tips on writing letters to the editor of our main paper, working with the material provided by DSA. The event ended up being a great discussion forum on social security.
On Feb. 23rd Russell Fox, a DSA member and associate professor of political science at Friends University. He lectured on one of this semester's reading group books, Imagining Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright, and also integrated an update on the situation in Wisconsin into his talk. Musician Aaron Fowler led us in several labor songs at this event.
We cooperated with the YDS to organize a film viewing and discussion of The Dark Side of Chocolate on March 14th. This event also promoted Raise the Bar, Hershey! Campaign, which is pressing chocolate manufacturers to end exploitative child labor in the cocoa fields, and included a hand out with a "to do" kit for making sure your chocolate does not support slave labor or unfair trade, plus a list of web sites for more information.
On May 1st, International Workers Day, we had a great celebration, planned and sponsored together with the Sunflower Community Action and the Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas. The event included a get to know each other bingo, a potluck, speeches on the history and reason for the May Day event, a testimony on wage theft followed up by a letter writing action demanding full restitution for victims of wage theft, a speech on the historical ties between the socialist community and the peace movement, plus lots and lots of music.
On June 7, our meeting featured a report on the Showdown in Ohio with National People's Action in May. Louis Goseland from Sunflower Community Action gave us an update and led a discussion on Holding Banks and Wall Street Accountable. DSAers joined SCA for a demonstration against Wells Fargo.
We have also attended and supported a number of events organized by other activists in our community. For example, Topeka Rally March 26th, We Are One… Standing in Solidarity with Labor Rally on April 4th, Planned Parenthood Rally April 24, and other events in town. Please see our web-site www.wichitadsa.org for videos and information on our events.
The reading group has discussedImagining Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright, The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition...Socialism by John Nichols and The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth by John Bellamy Foster. The Fall semester opened with a discussion of various basic reading material from the YDS summer conference.
During the summer, folks have participated in various events on an individual basis, including various town hall meetings, strikes, actions and events.
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