1) YDS RELEASES 2005-2006 ACTIVIST AGENDA
                  2) NEW YDS FLYERS / ORGANIZE FIRST MEETINGS
                  3) FALL SPEAKING TOURS GALORE!
                  4) NEW DEMOCRATIC LEFT IN PRINT & ON-LINE
                  5) FAT CATS GETTING FATTER: INEQUALITY GROWS
                  6) WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITING!
                  7) STOP NYU'S ATTACK ON GRAD. EMPLOYEES!
                  8) MUST LABOR BUREAUCRATIZE TO ORGANIZE?

**SPECIAL ALERT: RESPONDING TO THE HURRICANE TRAGEDY**
Hurricane Katrina unleashed one of the worst natural disasters in US history.  Hundreds of thousands are stranded without food, clean water or shelter for the foreseeable future.  Those who didn't evacuate the hardest hit areas in time were those who literally couldn't: the sick, the elderly, and the poor.  Hurricane Katrina devastated a part of the country already known for intense poverty and environmental degradation.  We're now learning that the Bush administration had cut flood preparedness funds for the New Orleans area in order to fund wars abroad while sending many of the region's National Guard servicemen and women into Iraq.  The tragedy raises other questions about oil and climate change, race and class disparities, and the inadequate state of security and relief agency preparedness.

One way YDSers can respond to the tragedy is organizing with other groups on and off campus to raise money for relief work.  Along the way you can educate folks about the politics of the tragedy and why our national priorities need to change.


1) YDS RELEASES 2005-2006 ACTIVIST AGENDA
At the recently concluded YDS retreat, we voted on and passed our Activist Agenda for this academic calendar year.  While YDS chapters are autonomous and set their own priorities locally on their campuses and in their communities, the Activist Agenda is designed to give our members a sense of political direction and to provide our chapters with a range of campaign ideas.  The following are the headings of our main Activist Agenda items:

• Political Development of YDS: Updating our Political Program
• Young Democratic Left: The Electoral Committee of the YDS
• Low Wage Economy/Worker Justice Campaign
• Building the Books-Not-Bombs Agenda

In addition to the highlighted primary Agenda items above, we've listed on our website a fantastic list of campaign resources on topics from U.S. Foreign Policy & Militarism, Social Provision & Education, Labor Movement Solidarity, Civil Liberties, Anti-Racism & Immigrant Rights, Feminism & Sexual Liberation, Environmental Justice, and Electoral Politics.  There are a number of local and national progressive organizations that have already worked to develop quality materials around a series of campaigns.  We encourage our members to take advantage of these resources while integrating a democratic socialist analysis into their activist efforts.  
READ THE FULL TEXT OF OUR ACTIVIST AGENDA: www.ydsusa.org
Let us know what you think, how we can help you carry through items in the Activist Agenda, or if you want to get more involved.


2) NEW YDS FLYERS / ORGANIZE FIRST MEETINGS
We recently posted a number of sample meeting flyers to the resource page on the YDS website.  These flyers are for our chapters to use around campuses to recruit and advertise YDS meetings.  Contact YDS if you need help setting up your first meeting of the semester or if you need materials to table with.  The beginning of the semester and student activity fairs are critical for involving new people and getting your YDS group off to a good start.  These are the following flyer design titles:

• Capitalist Lie #1: The Poor Deserve to be Poor
• Could YOU be a Socialist?
• Optimus Marx: Transforming Society
• Bush: Where the Hell is He Taking Us?
• Liberty, Democracy, Socialism
• Capitalist Lie #2: The Rich Deserve to be Rich 

Flyers can viewed and downloaded as PDFs here: www.ydsusa.org/resources.html


3) FALL SPEAKING TOURS GALORE!
Below are a sampling of excellent speaking tours and left-wing events travelling across the country.  We encourage YDSers to contact any of these organizations or individuals to host a stop at your school or in your local community.

YDS Organizers Campus Tour for Teach-Ins and Trainings
Speaking tour for 2005-2006 school year
YDS organizers are scheduling visits around the country to speak at and help organize teach-ins, debates, activist trainings, and strategy sessions to assist YDS members and chapters.
www.ydsusa.org 212-727-8610 ext. 24 or yds@dsausa.org

Linking the Movements for Global Justice and Against the War
Speaking tour in early October 2005
Meet people from around the world who are struggling against World Bank, the IMF, U.S. military intervention - the global system that creates these conditions, that places corporate rights over human rights. Hear about their struggles and share your strategies.
www.50years.org/action/oct2005/index.html

Fire the Boss!
Speaking tour from Nov. 6-18th 2005
'Recuperated' Factory Workers and Unemployed Worker Movements in Argentina
come to share experiences with workers (and students) in North America.
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/08/19/1531221

Christian Parenti: Author and The Nation magazine correspondent
Sponsored campus visits (with honorarium) throughout 2005-6 school year
Parenti recently was the keynote speaker at the YDS summer retreat.  He has enthusiastically asked for YDSers to host him on their campuses to talk about a range of potential issues - from Iraq, the Latin America, the Left, criminal injustice, and more.
Contact him at: 718-383-4743 or christian_parenti@yahoo.com

'Marx In Soho': Performances of Howard Zinn's play
Touring throughout 2005-6 school year
A challenging, passionate, humorous and entertaining play (performed at YDS' winter conference) about Karl Marx, contemporary politics and the failures of capitalism.
www.ironagetheatre.org/marx.html


4) NEW DEMOCRATIC LEFT IN PRINT & ON-LINE
The Summer 2005 issue of Democratic Left has been posted to DSA's web site.  The issue contains two articles on the heath care crisis, important information about DSA's national convention in Los Angeles and an article on the demands of the peace movement as well as book reviews.
View on-line as a PDF: www.dsausa.org/dl/Summer_2005.pdf


5) FAT CATS GETTING FATTER: INEQUALITY GROWS
Poverty and Uninsured Rising in the Land of Plenty
A new U.S. Census Bureau report finds that the number of Americans in poverty and without health insurance grew for the 4th straight year. Thirty-seven million Americans now live in poverty­nearly and 45.8 million lack basic health insurance coverage. The Census Bureau also reports that median household income remained stagnant for the fifth straight year. The fruits of the so-called Bush “economic recovery” are clearly not reaching most Americans.
Read talking points here from American Progress: www.americanprogressaction.org

Perverse Rewards
by Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed and DSA Honorary Chair)
http://progressive.org/?q=mag_ehren0905

Labor Day Report
2004 was a banner year for CEOs and a dismal year for workers, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, "Executive Excess 2005: Defense Contractors Get More Bucks for the Bang."
The ratio of average CEO pay (now $11.8 million) to worker pay (now $27,460) spiked up from 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004.
If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the United States would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour.  The report found that CEOs are individually profiting from the Iraq War, with huge average raises at the biggest defense contractors.
Read more from United for a Fair Economy: www.faireconomy.org/CEO


6) WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITING!
Globalism for the Rest of Us: With the birth of a global union, the world may be flat, but wages don’t have to be
by Harold Meyerson (DSA Vice Chair, writer for Washington Post & American Prospect)
www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10184


7) SUPPORT NYU GRAD. STUDENT EMPLOYEES & THEIR UNION!
Yesterday, a huge gathering of graduate employees and their supporters rallied at New York University (NYU) to protest the university’s announcement it would no longer bargain with more than 1,000 graduate student employees and teaching assistants and would impose its own pay and work rules on the workers.
 
Calling the university’s move nothing short of union-busting, student, union and community leaders staged a massive protest Aug. 31, a date that coincides with the expiration of the four-year contract between the graduate employees, members of UAW Local 2110 and NYU. About 80 people were arrested at the rally, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
 
In March 2001, NYU made good on its history of respect for human rights by becoming the first private university to recognize and bargain with a graduate workers’ union. Like other university graduate students, the NYU student employees teach classes, grade papers and tests and guide undergraduates.
 
In 2004, in a partisan 3–2 ruling, Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stated that NYU and other private universities do not have a legal obligation to bargain with teaching assistants, research assistants and other academic student employees. But nothing in the NLRB decision prevents NYU administrators from honoring the democratic process and respecting the majority of NYU teaching and research assistants who have repeatedly expressed their preference in favor of union representation.
 
“This isn’t about the Bush administration or the National Labor Relations Board and the war they are waging against working families and our unions­we expect that from them. This is about the Sexton administration and union-busting from a university that has turned its back on the workers who make it work­and we won’t tolerate it,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the cheering crowd.
 
To learn more about this historic struggle and what you can do about it, click here: www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/ns08312005.cfm


8) MUST LABOR BUREAUCRATIZE TO ORGANIZE?
If you are a union member and haven't yet made acquaintance with the Association for Union Democracy, it's high time you did. This is a great resource for learning your rights as a union member and discovering other union members, possibly in your union, who are working on extending or defending union democracy. The organization was established by Herman Benson, an old DSA member. Go to: www.uniondemocracy.com The Association for Union Democracy publishes the Union Democracy Review with news and commentary on labor democracy and integrity. Much of its content is posted on the Association's web site. Those of you with some familiarity with Herman Benson will not be surprised to learn that he is rather skeptical of the Change to Win Coalition's strategy, and he published a good summary of his arguments in the latest issue of Union Democracy Review. The article is posted on Benson's blog:
http://bensonsudblog.blogspot.com/



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