Features

September General Membership Meeting Preview –Brodie L

Good morning dear Comrades! This Saturday, our General Membership meeting will be in an idyllic spot with an apropos name: Venusian Gardens. We’ll have new and productive business and important updates.

Three resolutions bring transparency and efficiency into chapter business. First, a resolution to audit chapter business and form a directory. This will give us a centralized area to check what each Committee and Working Group is doing and give contact information and meeting times. Second, a resolution to establish and maintain a chapter wiki. The wiki would consolidate experiences, information, and processes that are currently residing in online databases and the minds of our dedicated members. Finally, a resolution to create a kanban board, or an exhaustive list of chapter work. This would track responsibilities and ensure chapter promises become chapter realities. Finally, with elections right on our doorstep, we will hear Voter Guide recommendations.

We will have free childcare and food. Local Council is working to ensure that all future meetings are as inclusive of our incredible membership as possible. Childcare givers should have an opportunity to participate. And, as everyone from the South would agree, meals are an important shared activity in building camaraderie. So, consider staying for a bit after the meeting to eat and mingle with others who are also working and fighting for the future we all deserve. Socialism in our time is not a thing that will happen overnight; it will take all of us meeting together, struggling together, and most of all, bringing class consciousness to the masses together. Every GM is an opportunity to pursue this critical goal, and I look forward to seeing all of you at the Venusian Gardens this Saturday at noon!

Marx’s Revolutionary Concept of Labor –Jess G

In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx advances a new and philosophical view of labor, one that distinguishes humanity. He describes his revolutionary concept of labor by using phrases such as practical human activity, free conscious activity, productive life-activity, and purposive, creative action. For Marx, these ideas define labor, as both a reality and a potential. Even more, they pinpoint what it means to be human. Here Marx expands (and quotes) Hegel’s notion of “labor as the essence of man.”

The object of labor, what it works on, is nature. Humans act upon and change the external environment. In this process of productive activity, we transform nature; we also transform ourselves. This is one of Marx’s key insights: humankind creates itself by remaking the environment. As he wrote in the Manuscripts, “the entire so- called history of the world [is] nothing but the creation of man through human labor.”

This self-creative activity is by nature social, as we work together in collective, coordinated relationships with others. Human being means social being—no Robinson Crusoes. Marx noted in the Manuscripts: “Just as society itself produces man as man, so is society produced by him.” Likewise history: We are the products as well as the creators of history. In this way, the species develops socially over time, making and remaking ourselves via practical, purposive activity—no fixed human nature. So essentially, we are both historical and socializing creatures.

My summary of Marx’s philosophical concept of labor stands in strong contrast to the actual history of labor, which takes different degraded forms according to the type of class-divided society (e.g., ancient slave, feudal serf, capitalist wage-laborer). Marx sees all these historical forms of labor as literally de-humanizing. But capitalism is not the end of history. In democratic-socialist society, we shall achieve the potential of free, conscious, creative—and truly human—activity.

Bulletins

Direct Service Meeting Tomorrow!

Please join us for tomorrow evening’s online meeting at 6pm to help plan October’s Brake Light Clinic! Brake Light Clinics, which we alternate monthly with Fork & Knife Club, originated here in New Orleans and are now replicated by other chapters across the country. We change brake lights for free, along with a health clinic and food distribution, and welcome all comrades and their ideas to continue helping grow and improve Direct Service’s initiatives. Monetary donations are always welcome, and help with supplies.

Join Our Next Cohort!

Our chapter recently completed its third Member Cohort with 14 new graduates. We’ve now had over 50 members (almost 10% of our total membership) complete the 6-ish-week program to organize as socialists in New Orleans DSA.

While the cohort is great for new members, we encourage any member in good standing to apply today to our upcoming cohort in October or future cohorts. We have two hybrid events to get us started, then three online sessions, concluding in December for a chapter-wide social and graduation.

If you’re a graduate of the cohort program and would like to be a part of our upcoming Cohort facilitation team, please contact Chelsea on Discord or email hello@dsaneworleans.org with how you’d like to get involved.

Health Justice: Chapter Adopts Medical Debt Relief Campaign with Undue Medical Debt

New Orleans DSA is partnering with Undue Medical Debt to raise $15k by February to eliminate medical debt in Orleans, St. Tammany, and Jefferson parishes. Since 2014, Undue Medical Debt has abolished billions of dollars in medical debt for over 31.6 million people in the United States. Every dollar we raise forgives $100 of debt. Stay tuned for updates from this exciting new campaign, set to begin October 1.

Any health professional comrades: please join us in our Health Justice channel on the Discord!

Volunteer for Lauren Jewett for Congress, LA-01!

Volunteer Hub | Contribute | 7:30p Monday volunteer calls | Request a sign

Election Day is Tuesday November 3, 2026. Special education teacher, DSA member, and longtime United Teachers of New Orleans (AFT Local 527) member Lauren Jewett is running for Congress in LA-01, which covers much of the Greater New Orleans metro, Lakeview, and parts of Uptown and Mid-City. She’s fighting for public schools and their teachers; Medicare for All, reproductive freedom, and keeping our hospitals open; paid family leave and universal childcare for every worker; restoring our coast with union jobs; and ending the billionaire takeover of our government.

Join the No Appetite for Apartheid Campaign

No Appetite for Apartheid (NA4A) is a multi-city retail- and consumer-boycott campaign against the zionist occupation of Palestine. By boycotting, we strengthen our solidarity with Palestinians against ongoing genocide, apartheid, and colonization. NA4A gives us an easy way to ensure our purchases aren’t contributing to the oppression of Palestinians, and it gives businesses an easy way to show and stand behind their values.

Volunteer to canvass with Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) or register your interest as a store-owner. The campaign primarily targets grocers and restaurants, but other stores are welcome to have their business certified apartheid-free. Check out the map to view participating stores in the New Orleans area.

Get Plugged in to Political Education!

We just read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and boy was it a doozy! Our next reading for October 18th is much shorter! We will be discussing Constructive Criticism by Gracie Lyons.

We have quite a few projects we’re working on, but we need participation to get things off the ground! We have two big projects that we’d like to get rolling on: a quarterly socialist forum open to the public; and a political economy of New Orleans class for Night School. If either of these projects interest you, make sure to come to the next Poli-Ed planning meeting on October 4th!

Community Calendar

Monday, September 21

Immigration Advocacy Working Group
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av #258 & Discord

DSA for Lauren Jewett Weekly Call
7:30 pm – 8:15 pm (Mondays)
Volunteer | Meet

Sober Soc Support Group
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Meet

Tuesday, September 22

Direct Service & Health Justice Meeting
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Meet

Wednesday, September 23

Queer Soc Meeting
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Meet

Electoral Committee Co-Work & Talk
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm (Wednesdays)
Morning Call, 5101 Canal Blvd (cash only)

Thursday, September 24

Afrosocialists & Socialists of Color Meeting
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av #258 & Virtual

Membership Working Group
8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
RSVP

Friday, September 25

Feminist Socialists Meeting
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av #258 & Meet

DSA Hangout
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Okay Bar, 1700 Port St

Saturday, September 26

Caregivers Park Hangout
9:30 am – 11:30 am
Fleur de Lis Park, 6701 Fleur de Lis Dr

New Orleans DSA General Meeting
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Venusian Gardens Art Gallery, 2601 Chartres – RSVP | Proxy

Sunday, September 27

Comms Meeting
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av #258 – Meet

Chapter Orientation
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
RSVP

Sober Soc Hangout
7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Location TBD (will be posted on Instagram/Discord)

Down the Road

October 3 Dance Party for Lauren Jewett
October 4 Coffee with Comrades
October 18 Poli-Ed Reading Meeting
October 24 New Orleans DSA General Meeting
October 30 DSA Gala