Organizing

The Upper Valley DSA is currently focused on several local organizing priorities. For more information or to get involved, please contact us!

Housing Justice

Our Housing Justice research group is looking into a number of issues that touch everyone in the Upper Valley. Immediate needs like Housing Insecurity and the need for a low-barrier shelter, as well as coordinated Prison Release housing; medium-term priorities like Tenant Union Organizing and Eviction Support; and longer term goals around Land-Use policy, alternative housing models, and more. This widely and deeply felt issue is everywhere in the Upper Valley and we need your help. Get involved.

We are proud to partner with the Upper Valley Tenant's Union to build a mass movement to provide housing to all.

uvtu

Reproductive Justice

If you need resources, please check out our info sheet.

We are proud to partner with Upper Valley for Abortion Rights - UV4AR - to seek Reproductive Justice for all. This means the right to not have a child, but also the right to have a child, and to do so under safe and supportive conditions. The current capitalist system requires cheap and exploitable labour to concentrate wealth in very few hands. Forced birth of certain babies, and forced sterilization of others, to support the white supremacist order must be abolished. A just world would mean anyone could choose to not have a child for any reason, and also those who wish to have children would be supported with free and easy access to all healthcare, wages that can support a child in comfort and more.

Join us to get involved in moving towards this world.

UV4AR

Police and Prison Abolition

The Upper Valley Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America stands in solidarity with Black and Indigenous communities and organizations who call for the abolition of police and prisons. The United States was founded on stolen land and built with stolen labor. Police forces were created to protect the rights of white supremacy and serve the interests of racial capitalism, including by suppressing working-class strikes and enforcing Black Codes and Jim Crow. These violent and repressive roles assigned to policing continue today, including through state sanctioned police lynchings and millions of disproportionately Black and indigenous people locked into prison slavery. We say, “Enough!” As a necessary step towards decolonization and an end to capitalism, we call for the abolition of police and prisons.

The ultimate goal of the abolition of the police and prison industrial system is the creation of a society free from poverty, discrimination, and oppression, where crime is rare and approached as a problem of public health and where there is no need for a traditional police force or prison system. Towards this goal we seek an immediate reallocation of funding from police and prison budgets to the health, housing, library, social service, parks, and public works budgets that assist and lift up people in need and create livable communities for all. We further call on social service agencies to cease collaborating with police, insisting instead that communities in need are best and most safely supported by social service professionals. Seeking as well an end to the racist criminalization of undocumented workers, we call for an immediate halt to any collaboration between local and state governments and those on their employ with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.

Another world is possible. Eliminating the power, control, and indeed the very existence of police and prisons is necessary to create it.

Visit the Care Not Cops Campaign page to see how we are organizing for this future in Lebanon, NH.

Mutual Aid

Mutual aid is when people get together to meet each other's basic survival needs with a shared understanding that the systems we live under are not going to meet our needs and we can do it together right now. Mutual aid is a reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit!

SOLIDARITY, NOT CHARITY. “Charity” is a framework that often means rich people giving a little bit to poor people, and often frames people in need as morally lesser than rich people—as if poverty were the fault of the poor rather than the fault of systems of racism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, land theft and labor exploitation that make some people rich and keep other people poor. Charity looks like generosity from rich people, but actually upholds the systems that make most people poor for the benefit of the few.

Bike Collective

One of the clear messages from talking to folks at the People's Table was that transportation is an issue in the Upper Valley. Our chapter has a number of folks with experience and connections in the local cycling community. We are collecting and refurbishing bikes to provide to those most in need.

Welcoming Communities

Upper Valley DSA is committed to supporting these initiatives in our local towns. We have helped push elected representatives to pass strong ordinances protecting immigrant communities and are committed to helping maintain these protections.