Features

New Orleans DSA Proudly Endorses Our Comrade Lauren Jewett for Congress, LA-01!

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

• Funding our public schools and paying teachers their true worth;
• Medicare for All, reproductive freedom, and keeping our hospitals open;
• Winning paid family leave and universal childcare for every worker;
• Restoring our coast with union jobs, paid for by the companies that destroyed it;
• Ending the billionaire takeover of our government and ensuring that power resides with us, the people.

Steve Scalise has held this seat since 2008. He created the first federal school voucher program in history, and his buddy Jeff Landry wants to pull $150 million out of Louisiana public schools to do the same thing here. A quarter of our rural hospitals are at risk of closing, and he whipped the votes to cut Medicaid anyway. Flood premiums have more than doubled, pushing 50,000+ households out of the program, and the House he runs does nothing about it.

While the billionaires backing his caucus get their tax cuts, our kids lose their teachers, our neighbors lose their coverage, and our coast erodes into the Gulf.

Lauren spends her summer helping feed students hit by SNAP cuts. Scalise spends his playing Chicken Little on Fox News, panicking about socialists gaining traction in the Democratic Party.

The House Majority Leader says we’re winning and that it’s scary to see. Good. The man who spoke at David Duke’s convention should be scared of us.

This year, working people won with Melat Kiros in Denver, Mamdani’s slate in New York, and Janeese Lewis George in D.C. It’s time we brought one home too, because Workers Deserve More!

Election Day is Tuesday November 3, 2026.

Get Involved:

• Campaign volunteer calls every Monday at 6:30 pm on Zoom – next one is TONIGHT (8/3)! bit.ly/jewettvolmtg
• Website | Volunteer | Contribute
• Help Lead Our Chapter’s Endorsement Campaign

Protect Renters! Save Right to Counsel!

Did you read the news? This week, Nola.com reported that Mayor Moreno is cutting funding to a key program – Right to Counsel – that ensures New Orleans renters have a lawyer when facing eviction.

Before the program launched in 2021, over 66% of eviction cases ended in eviction. In the past two years, the program has been so effective that only 22% of cases end in eviction. We cannot let the administration backslide on renter protections — especially when rising rents are squeezing working class wallets and the State is ramping up criminalization of homeless people.

Cutting Right to Counsel is not only dangerous, but adds to New Orleans’ legacy of racist housing policies. According to Jane Place’s 2019 report, Black renters were five times more likely to face an eviction before Right to Counsel. Why would Mayor Moreno want to put Black mothers out of their homes when Jeff Landry and the Louisiana State Police are threatening to put people in jail for sleeping on the street?

Full funding for the program is only around $2 million annually. That’s some of the City’s best-spent money keeping hundreds of households stable and preventing homelessness each year. We need the City to recommit to renters, and for Mayor Moreno to stand up for the policy that she sponsored. Say it loud and say it clear: No one should face an eviction without a lawyer.

Check our calendar for an upcoming teach-in on August 8 with comrades in the Renters’ Rights Assembly, and learn about future canvassing opportunities. We need to hit the ground running soon, so stay tuned for updates!

Pre-Order Shirts Featuring Art by Influential New Orleanian Sign Painter Pam Collins

If you’ve been to the chapter’s office in the New Orleans Healing Center in the last couple of months, you may have seen a new hand-painted New Orleans Democratic Socialists of America sign. This was made by Pam Collins, an influential sign painter who was described as “unofficially, the official artist of the city of New Orleans” by the time she retired in 2013. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to commission her and excited to say you can now pre-order shirts featuring her design!

Who is Pam Collins? After years of painting signs for events and private businesses (customers ranging all the way from bars and clubs to funeral homes and auto shops), Pam Collins became the City’s first Black sign painter in 1983. She held this position for 31 years, during which time her work became an integral part of the landscape of the city and what makes New Orleans, New Orleans. This art form is fading as computer-printed signs become more readily available and artists retire, but the cultural impact remains and the tradition lives on. You can learn more and hear from Ms. Pam and other New Orleanian sign painters by reading the article linked here or watching her interview clip in the video linked here.

You can use this form to pre-order shirts featuring her design as well as red DSA logo shirts and Global Liberation Now pelican shirts. You can also order the skulls and roses shirt design on our Good Press shop.

Bulletins

Northshore Reading Group: On Contradiction & On Practice

Join us tonight at 6:00 pm at the Causeway Branch Library in Mandeville, to discuss “On Contradiction” and “On Practice” by Mao and build the confidence and knowledge necessary to be an effective socialist. Through political education, we fight the ideas we have absorbed living in the heart of empire. Through discussion, we learn to analyze our own material conditions. Reading groups are a great first step for building the confidence to discuss politics in your everyday life, which will be necessary to build a mass movement.

Immigration Advocacy Language Exchange & Partnerships

Join our language exchange! Every Thursday evening, details on Discord.

We’re building connections with local partners supporting our immigrant comrades & neighbors. Join us in the Discord #immigration-advocacy-working-group channel to keep informed on: local partners, upcoming dates to watch, and resources on how to stay involved. If you have connections to local organizations that you would like to connect, please join our working group!

More Opportunities to Build Our Political Education Program

At our monthly planning meeting last night (8/2), the poli-ed committee reviewed our bylaws and approved exciting changes, including the creation of subcommittees and commissions. Due to the time needed for discussion around the bylaws, we also approved a special meeting next Sunday (8/9) at 4:00 pm at the Healing Center and online to address the rest of our planning agenda. Come join us and be a part of this important committee!

Sober Soc: Weekly Planning Meetings

Join Sober Soc Sundays at 8:00 pm in Discord Meeting Room #2 and decide how this section will be shaped and where and when we will be having meetups. These events are explicitly alcohol- and drug-free, although we accept comrades at any point of their sober journey. We hope to see y’all there! Solidarity!

Direct Service & Health Justice Updates

We had an amazing Brake Light Clinic yesterday in Olde Towne Slidell! Thanks to everyone who came out and volunteered!

Our next New Orleans Brake Light Clinic is Saturday, August 15, at AP Tureaud Park; volunteer here. Our next Meeting is Tuesday, August 25, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm, online.

DS+HJ always welcomes donations for food and supplies.

Community Calendar

Monday, August 3

Northshore Reading Group: On Contradiction & On Practice (Mao Zedong)
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Causeway Branch Library, 3457 US-190, Mandeville

Tuesday, August 4

🌹 🌹 🌹

Wednesday, August 5

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

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

Thursday, August 6

DSA Downtown-Marigny Happy Hour
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm (every Thursday)
Anna’s, 2601 Royal St

Immigration Advocacy Language Exchange
(every Thursday)
Details on Discord

Friday, August 7

🌹 🌹 🌹

Saturday, August 8

A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting Local Surveillance
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av

New Orleans Renters’ Rights Assembly Teach-In
TBA

Sunday, August 9

Political Education Committee Special Meeting

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Av #258 & Online

Solidarity Tech Training
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
RSVP

Sober Socialists
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Discord

Down the Road

August 14 FemSoc Interest Meeting
August 15 Brake Light Clinic: AP Tureaud Park
August 16 Poli-Ed Reading Group: Settler Colonialism is the Disaster
August 22 New Orleans DSA General Meeting
September 6 Coffee With Comrades