Interested or want to get involved? Please email us at contact@palousedsa.org or fill out our chapter interest form and sign up for our email list.
What do we have going on?
The Palouse region of Washington and Idaho presents some unique challenges for organizing. A land grant university each in Moscow and Pullman, with a number of small bedroom towns and farming communities, surrounded by a vast desert of wheat makes for an isolated yet rich community. There is a complete ecosystem, if on a smaller scale, of what one might expect to find in any larger metro in a major coastal area and yet is fairly isolated even from the neighboring Spokane and LC Valleys.
The nature of the towns is that they are inextricably tied to the universities and all of their ebbs and flows. A high rate of population turnover as students come and go and as professionals move through their careers, with a relative lack of other industries and geographic isolation, results in an organizing base that is ever shifting. We hope you will join us in our endeavor to make a better community for all on the Palouse while giving newcomers to the socialist movement the opportunity to quickly develop hands on skills and experience that they can take to other places.
STUDENT? Check out the Young Democratic Socialists of America!
YDSA Chapters at Washington State University and University of Idaho!
Our Current Regular Events and Meetings
All of these meetings are open to the public
General Meeting: This is our monthly business meeting, where we discuss and vote on any business that the chapter has. Working groups and members involved in other community initiatives provide report backs. Often the meeting will involve a short educational component or political discussion.
Educational Meetings: This is our monthly lecture series where a member or guest provides a primer on a subject relevant to the socialist movement or American political discourse, followed by a moderated discussion. These are the best meetings for non-members and newcomers.
Book Club: Meeting weekly, the book club rotates regularly through democratically selected titles. Meeting times are selected every time we take up a new title. We have a public discord channel for discussion, which you can contact us to join.
Socials: We occasionally host social events as a low-pressure way for interested community members and chapter members to hang out and get to know each other. These are open to all! We also frequently have informal socials after our general and educational meetings. If you can’t make it one of the meetings but want to join us for one of these informal socials, reach out and we can let you know where we plan to go after our meeting.
Working Groups
These are official working groups of the Palouse chapter. They are semi-autonomous groupings intended to streamline the chapter’s relationship to work on local issues. Community members who believe that they know of places where the community has needs that these groups can help with should feel free to reach out. If you are interested in supporting the work these groups are doing or partnering with them on projects, we would also love to hear from you. Active participation in the internal organizing of these groups requires membership in the DSA.
BAWG – Bodily Autonomy Working Group
The chapter recognizes the autonomy of people over their own bodies as fundamental to our political program. As a chapter operating partly in Idaho, a center of reaction to the rights of Americans to make decisions about their own healthcare, we see a need to have a focused group connecting our organizing efforts to regional and national initiatives to reinforce and assert these rights. This group meets regularly and is actively doing work.
Membership Development
In an area with such high transience, the chapter recognizes a need to create a focused group for recruiting and integrating new members into the chapter. Most of the population locally is connected in some manner or another to the university system and these connections are usually temporary. We aim to support those interested in becoming part of the socialist movement to feel confident that they have something to contribute, help them figure out where to start with organizing, and provide a reliable point of contact to have their questions answered and address concerns. The group also takes responsibility for hosting our socials and training members on organizing
Housing Working Group
The need for solidarity among tenants is crucial in a town where such an enormous portion of the population finds their lives tied up with unaccountable corporate housing companies. Few who come to the area are able to buy houses and the cost of owning a home is very steep when competing against landlords seeking properties to rent for profit. While the Palouse has not experienced quite the degree of rent inflation that some other areas have, there are myriad other ways in which landlords exploit tenants and fail in their obligation to provide safe and adequate housing
Socialist in Office Committee
This committee is responsible for working with and keeping the chapter connected to any DSA members who are elected officials. Currently we work with Carla De Lira, a Pullman city council member.
Coming Soon: Labor Working Group
MEMBER ASSOCIATED PROJECTS
Pullman for Palestine (PfP)
The ongoing genocide in Gaza and renewed violence against Palestinians in the West Bank demands the attention of anti-imperialists. The DSA has made Palestine solidarity a crucial part of the work of the organization in recognition of the importance of internationalism to the socialist movement. This group emerged from the efforts of the Palouse DSA to pass a ceasefire resolution through the Pullman city council. While that effort was unsuccessful, PfP has continued to organize the community for awareness and participation in Palestine solidarity. You can go to pullmanforpalestine.org to learn more about this organization.
KRFP – 90.3FM Moscow/ Pullman
We are proud supporters of the best damn community radio station on Palouse. KRFP recently celebrated its 20th anniversary! While our organization is relatively new to the area, we are proud to underwrite for the KRFP as it enters its 20th year of radio excellence and encourage our membership to support the station. You can hear Under Construction, a program co-hosted by a DSA member and close community ally of the DSA, on Tuesdays from 7:30-9:30. You can hear our underwriting message playing every day on the station. To listen online or support KRFP, you can go to KRFP.org. Be sure to save 90.3FM to your radio station favorites.
Palouse Mutual Aid Network
The mutual aid network is a decentralized network of community members working on various mutual aid projects. The group is relatively new and still finding its footing. Groups in the network include housing, food insecurity, prisoner support, skill share, community media, and bodily autonomy. Among the projects emerging out of the group are a Food Not Bombs chapter and the Hammer Time Newsletter. You can reach out to us to be placed on the mailing list. There is no centralized point of contact or social media presence.
Work in Progress: Hammer Time
Hammer Time emerged out of a DSA member’s recognition of the need for some kind of independent physical format media. A means of sharing vital community information and keeping community members plugged into opportunities to show up in person and build relationships in their community, Hammer Time is planned to take the form of a weekly subscription based weekly newsletter with a detailed list of EVERYTHING being put on by allies of progress and community building on the Palouse. It will also contain local interest writing and special interest columns for labor solidarity, political organizing, and local eco focused projects. Please reach out if you have or would like to develop any skills that would be useful to print media, as well as with any interest in the content of the paper or to support the effort to get Hammer Time off the ground.
Labor Organizing
We are proud to have the support and participation of a number of union members locally and have partnered with local labor unions on some community events. We have a relationship with Starbucks Workers United and we look forward to building a May Day coalition based off of our successful May Day picnic in 2024.
