Democratic Socialists of America - Denver

Democratic Socialists of America - Denver is a Colorado affiliate of Democratic Socialists of America.

Contact

In April 2017 Democratic Socialists of America - Denver contact was Kristofer Dubbels.^[1]

Tammy Story connection

Democratic Socialists of America - Denver May 31 2020.

We met with Senator Tammy Story this week to discuss extending the statewide eviction moratorium. CO lawmakers: We are calling on you to do your part by extending the eviction stay, so we can keep fighting to #CancelRent!

Liam Kelly, Mariah Wood, Ben Fried, Christian Maiorino, Erik Harvey.

Steven Woodrow, Mariah Wood, Juan Antonio Marcano, Liam Kelly, Grayson Landauer, Christian Maiorino, Daniel Grosso.

Chris Hansen, Mariah Wood, Juan Antonio Marcano, Liam Kelly, Daniel, Christian Maiorino, Erik Harvey, Jake Douglas.

Working Families Party overlap

Democratic Socialists of America - Denver March 5 at 10:07 AM ·

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

As leaders of the Colorado Working Families Party, we call on the Working Families Party national leadership to immediately join us in endorsing Bernie Sanders for President.

Hon. Joseph A. Salazar*, Exec. Committee (CD-7)
Jeri Shepherd*, Exec. Committee (CD-4)
Mike McCorkle*, Exec. Committee (CD-1)
Terry Tucker*, State Committee (CD-6)
Dana Manning*, State Committee (CD-1)
Cleo Dioletis*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Laurie Roberts*, State Committee (CD-3)
Miguel Ceballos-Ruiz*, State Committee (CD-1)
Kristofer Dubbels*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Justin Morgan*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Sarah Morgan*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Steve Mendoza*, State Committee (CD-1)
Andrew Sannier*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Anna Crawford*, State Committee (Denver DSA)
Ashlyn Velasquez* State Committee (Denver DSA)

Candi CdeBaca endorsement

Democratic Socialists of America - Denver June 5 2019.

We don't have a final count yet, but we feel comfortable reporting that DSA member Candi CdeBaca will be the new city councillor for District 9! This is an amazing night for democratic socialism and the broad left in Denver. Image may contain: 1 person, text

Colorado Working Families June 4 at 10:51 PM · With her lead continuing to grow, we're ready to say: the incredible, inimitable community advocate Candi CdeBaca will be the next member of the Denver City Council from District 9.

Feminist Socialist Committee Hosts Women’s Day Panel

On March 11th 2018, the Democratic Socialists of America - Denver Feminist Socialist Committee held a panel for International Women’s Day to hear and better understand the diverse experiences of women in their workplaces. Moderated by our very own comrade, Ashlyn Velasquez, we heard from four amazing speakers Julie Banuelos, Danielle Montour, Kaitlin Peterson, and Ashley Panelli. We challenged ideas about feminism and capitalism, and explored how we can improve working conditions for women. Thank you to all of our comrades who volunteered equipment and people-power for a very successful event in a beautiful art gallery. The FemmeSoc Committee is excited to plan future events!^[2]

DSA endorsements

Julie Gonzales Wins SD 34 Primary, Joins DSA, Denver DSA News, July 2018;^[3]

Congratulations to our first state senator in Colorado! On June 26, Julie Gonzales and her team had a big win in the Democratic state primary for Senate District 34. Denver DSA is honored to have worked alongside Julie since endorsing her last year. Dozens of our members contributed by knocking doors, phone banking, creating a campaign ad, and more. Julie joined DSA shortly after her victory.

Our endorsed candidate for State Treasurer, Bernard Douthit, also concluded an impressive campaign. We are excited to continue organizing with Bernie around popular issues like Medicare for All and public banking. In addition canvassing for Julie in the general this fall, the Electoral Committee is now looking into ballot initiatives for the 2019 citywide elections.

Teacher comrades

Eric Blanc May 17 2019·

Denver DSA wins the prize for sweetness: at last night's event, they presented me with this poster signed by DSAers and Denver teachers as a thank you gift. Gonna miss you comrades, come visit in NYC! — with Jake Douglas, Jhoni Palmer, Jeremy Cous Cous Hedlund, Jeremiah Flood, Kevin Hundt and Mae Black.

Colorado Working Families Party

Democratic Socialists of America - Denver ’s elected delegates attended the Colorado Working Families Party Annual State Committee Meeting and cast their votes on behalf of the chapter on a range of candidates and ballot initiatives ahead of the November 2018 elections. We are excited to be a part of the Colorado Working Families Party and hope to help it grow into a powerhouse of progressive change across the state.

Influencing the Democrats

According to Miles Kampf-Lassin, the Democratic Party of Denver has officially ratified an anti-capitalist plank in its platform.

The move was spurred by members of the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America who petitioned Denver County Democratic Assembly delegates to vote for an amendment to the official party platform. The language states:

“We believe the economy should be democratically owned and controlled in order to serve the needs of the many, not to make profits for the few.

On March 24 2018, the amendment passed with overwhelming support, and it will now be listed in the Democratic Party of Denver’s platform preamble. Denver DSA chair Kristofer Dubbels said that there was initially some open opposition to the proposal, including a number of delegates who told him it “would never pass.” When the vote came up, however, of the nearly 1,000 delegates present, roughly 90 percent raised their cards in approval.

Earlier in the month, 15 members of Denver DSA were elected as delegates during the Democratic Party of Denver caucus, running on a pledge to bring new enthusiasm to the party and help spark more engagement from youth (nearly all of the newly elected delegates are under 30). They say they were surprised by how little resistance they faced, and how open the local party was to the empowering of a slate of socialists.

Once elected, the DSA delegates turned to amending the party platform to reflect a more radical political vision. Dubbels says that members discussed various planks on issues ranging from municipal WiFi to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Ultimately, explains Dubbels, they decided on “something along the lines of the original Clause IV of the British Labour Party's constitution, which explicitly advocated for common ownership of the means of production.”

That clause, originally drafted in 1917 by British socialist and co-founder of the London School of Economics Sidney Webb, read: “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”

The clause was adopted by the Labour Party in its 1918 official constitution, in what commentators and media outlets reported was the first time the party had affirmed “definitely socialistic” principles.

The clause remained in Labour’s constitution until Tony Blair and his centrist New Labour coalition oversaw its removal in 1995, in order to make the party more appealing to “middle England.”

During this same period in the United States, Bill Clinton and the New Democrats sought to realign the Democratic Party toward the center-right, enacting welfare “reform” and deregulating the financial industry.

Today, with Jeremy Corbyn as Labour’s leader, a campaign is mounting to bring back Clause IV, and Corbyn has signaled an openness to adding in language promoting public investment in and control over certain industries. The party’s 2017 manifesto, meanwhile, includes calls for public ownership of railways, energy companies and the mail system, along with a slew of redistributive programs from housing to social care.

Organizers from California to Massachusetts have over the past two years amended local Democratic Party platforms to include calls for such progressive policies as a guaranteed federal jobs program, single-payer healthcare, student loan debt forgiveness, an end to for-profit prisons and taxing carbon emissions. On a national level, in 2016, Sanders supporters successfully helped pass the most progressive platform in the Democratic Party’s history.

A recent paper from Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, found that the strategy of transforming the Democratic Party through shifting platforms to the left is “actually a winning electoral strategy that can help bring back disenfranchised working-class voters and less educated voters who currently may not vote at all or identify with right-wing populism,” as Keith A. Spencer writes in Salon.

While the platform in Denver isn’t binding, and Dubbels acknowledges that the amendment is “far to the left of every single elected Democrat currently in office” in the city, he also says that it has planted a flag for the party’s left flank and proves that socialist ideas “already have a built-in popularity among the party's grassroots.”

Kaitlin Peterson, a member of Denver DSA and new Denver County Democratic Assembly delegate, says the passage of the socialist amendment "shows that the success of Bernie Sanders and his message wasn’t a fluke. People sincerely want a more democratically controlled economy and they are aware that many of the social injustices we see today are because of the power that is given to corporations under our current political system. The Democratic Party establishment needs to sit up and pay attention to this if they want to survive."

After the March 24 vote, all 15 Denver DSA members signed up as delegates to the Colorado Democratic Party's State Assembly where, at an upcoming meeting on April 14, they hope to add the amendment to the state’s Democratic Party platform.

And, according to Dubbels, the group will “continue our efforts both to bring radicals into the Democratic Party and to radicalize everyone who is already there. A lot of people agree with us already and just need to be told they aren't alone.”^[4]

Healthcare protest

Five protesters were cited July 7, 2017 while attempting to hold a sit-in at U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s Denver office to urge a “no” vote on the Senate health care bill.

The sit-in by the Democratic Socialists of America was one of many held by the group nationwide targeting Republican senators. In Denver, 12 protesters entered the building’s lobby in the afternoon for a sit-in. Gardner’s staff invited five of them upstairs and facilitated a phone call with the senator. Afterward, the group refused to leave until Gardner vowed to vote no.

“Trumpcare, which is a de facto repeal of the Affordable Care Act, would make universal health care very difficult to implement in the near future,” DSA Denver spokesman Kristofer Dubbels said. “Cory Gardner’s refusal to hold any sort of forum where the public can interact with him and hear our comments with him have essentially forced us to engage in actions like this.”

“After speaking with Senator Gardner, his health care policy staff and his state director, several individuals from Democratic Socialists of America still refused to leave our office space after the building and our office closed,” said Alex Siciliano, a spokesman for Gardner.

“We are required to remove the individuals from our office after it closes so we had to request police to peacefully remove them,” he continued. “The top priority is always going to be to allow these individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights in a safe environment. We continue to do everything we can to allow that to continue.”

Carolee Strom, Merrill Carter, Chris Diehn, Jessica Westerbur and Jeremy Wilburn were cited for trespassing and released.^[5]

Members of DSA // Denver Democratic Socialists // core group

As of April 1, 2017;

Members of Denver DSA Racial Justice Committee

As of April 28, 2017;

Admin

Noah Berman

Other Members

DSA Business Meeting

DSA Business Meeting · Hosted by Democratic Socialists of America - Denver

Saturday, October 14 at 2 PM - 4 PM MDT

Park Hill UCC, 2600 Leyden St, Denver, Colorado 80207^[6]

Invited on Facebook

Interested

Went

Organizing Meeting

Organizing Meeting, hosted by Democratic Socialists of America - Denver, Saturday, March 25 at 2 PM - 3:30 PM MDT

Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, 2401 Welton St, Denver, Colorado 80205^[7]