The Thorn – Mid-Missouri Democratic Socialists of America

Public Library: Public Workers!

Yesterday, Mid-Missouri DSA members, along with others from across the Columbia community, came out for the Daniel Boone Regional Library Board of Trustees Meeting to show support for the Daniel Boone Regional Library Workers United union during their contract negotiations with management.

We were proud to stand in solidarity once again with the first library workers union in Missouri history. We want to help share their message and their fight, so below we are including the full text of their open letter regarding the present situation in their negotiations with library management:

DBRL Workers United is disappointed in the Library Management’s refusal to make movement on proposals that will best support DBRL staff and patrons.

Management insists on “reserving the management right” to replace and fire Daniel Boone Regional Library workers and the services we provide with private contractors at any time. Management claims to care about staff, but we do not see that reflected in these proposals that aim to limit the power of our Union. This is union busting and unacceptable. Public libraries should be staffed by public employees.

Management rights and respecting workers don’t have to be mutually exclusive. While we have proposed policies that protect staff while still providing consistent service for patrons in inclement weather, Management insists on maintaining the right to force us to continue working outside in extreme weather conditions. We have proposed language limiting sub-contracting to ensure that library services continue to be provided by public employees, but Management disagrees and fails to value the relationships we have built through supporting our community.

We have come to the table over the last ten months with the intent to make the Daniel Boone Regional Library the best library in Mid-Missouri. We will continue to invite Management to work with us and take the necessary steps required to make this shared goal our reality.

If you would like to tell the library board and management that you stand with these essential workers, you can contact them here.

Solidarity forever with the workers of DBRL Workers United!

People tell us increasing the minimum wage will drive up prices: Here’s why it’s bullshit.

This blog post is dedicated to the guy who told our canvassers that he opposes minimum wage because he’s “an economist.” To that guy we entreat: Get a real job.

Right now, MidMO DSA is part of a campaign to gather signatures for a $15/hr minimum wage ballot initiative along with other DSA chapters across the state and our coalition partners, Missouri Jobs with Justice. Our chapter has, in just three months, gathered over a thousand signatures in Columbia alone, so suffice to say that enthusiasm for the campaign has been amazing. However, every now and then we get a few individuals who decide to push back with a little bit of economic orthodoxy best summed up in this watermarked 2016-esque meme:

So let’s talk about this idea, and why it doesn’t carry water. The idea here is called “wage push inflation.” It’s the idea that in order to preserve profits after an increase in wages, employers must increase prices, thereby driving inflation. It’s a tidy idea that, like a lot of capitalism, works on paper but not in the real world.

Let’s get this out of the way first: as many other people have pointed out in response to this meme, prices have risen even though the federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 since 2009, making the federal minimum wage worth less than at any period since the mid-20th century.

But even if the wage had been raised, there isn’t actually evidence that prices would have risen. Historical studies have found no strong correlation between increased mininum wage and prices. In one national study conducted by the Upjohn Institute, examining state and city-level minimum wage increases across the country from 1978-2015, researchers found that prices rose just .36% for every 10% increase in minimum wage. In some cases, an increased wage actually brought prices down!

At a national level, when the minimum wage was increased in 1980, 1981, 1990, 1991, 1996, 1997, 2007, AND 2008, inflation actually remained stable or decreased each time.

At a state level, 30 states have raised their minimum wage beyond the federal minimum.There has not been a noticeable price increase for states that have raised wages versus those that have kept wages at the federal minimum. Moreover, states with higher minimum wage recovered faster and saw their economies grow faster following the COVID19 pandemic.

While myths against minimum wage increases persist on the midwit right, actual empirical evidence shows time and time again that raising the minimum wage helps both workers and the economy more broadly. We can achieve that here too. Join our campaign!

Ashland Pride and the Fight for $15

This Sunday, MidMO DSA members joined our comrades in Missouri Jobs with Justice at the Ashland Pride Fest to gather signatures for the Fight for $15 ballot initiative campaign that we are conducting alongside JwJ, St. Louis DSA, and KC DSA. This campaign is a necessary act of solidarity with the queer working class.

US poverty wages disproportionately impact already marginalized communities. More than half of min wage workers in the US are women. Half of essential workers making less than $15/hr are BIPOC. Queer working class folks are similarly impacted.

LGBT+ workers earn 90 cents on the dollar compared to the average American worker. 80 cents on the dollar for Black LGBT+ workers, 79 cents for women LGBT+ workers, 70 cents for nonbinary workers and trans men, 60 cents for trans women.

23% of LGBT+ people in the US lived in poverty in 2020. 33% for LGBT+ POC. Particularly horrifying: more than twice the % of trans people live in poverty compared to the general population. The likelihood of living in poverty for a trans person in the US is up to 70%.

Many, if not an outright majority, of people of working age who live in poverty are working. Our wages however, are not capable of sustaining anything but poverty. A full time min. wage worker cannot afford a two bedroom rental in any state in the US.

It is desperately necessary for the working class of this country, white, cis, BIPOC, LGBT+, that we raise the minimum wage, and provide greater protections for working people. Our Fight for $15 initiative will not only raise the minimum wage in this state, But also guarantee paid sick leave for all workers, full and part time. This would be a game-changer for the working poor of our state. But we need your help!

Pledge your support to help us gather signatures, present to others, or share your story: https://mojwj.org/action/pledge-your-support-for-fair-wages-and-earned-sick-time/

We can do this. We can build a state that works for ALL of us. Join us!

Welcome to Mizzou YDSA

Mizzou YDSA is now in its fourth semester since its founding. This semester has been our most active yet, and it’s difficult to believe we’ve gotten to this point in less than two years.

We started off the academic year by meeting as many students as we could in the August heat of Speaker’s circle.

That momentum took us to our first General Meeting of the year. There, we heard from all of you about what changes you needed in your lives as students. These goals shaped the committees we formed: Environmental Action, Student Labor, Political Education, Mutual Aid, and The Thorn, itself.

We’ve held seminars on DSA as a working class organization, and on the history of the US’s involvement in the 1972 coup in Chile. We’ve also joined with Missouri Jobs with Justice to push for more direct-cash stimulus checks for working families in Boone County and in support of their Neighborhood Pledge to fund affordable housing and focus on infrastructure within Columbia.

We’re excited to build coalitions with all like-minded students on campus, and to see how our power can grow together. We understand that university student organizations aren’t the most effective way to build long-lasting change. None of us are here for very long, very few of our organizations collaborate with one another, and the university has mastered every technique to refuse our demands. Despite this, we know that we have a powerful role as students and workers on campus, and we want to use it.

Our ongoing goal is to build student autonomy – the ability for us to make decisions over our own lives. Especially in the face of the university, which has say over your education, housing, food, and employment.

Moving power to the masses is DSA’s goal everywhere. Building real democracy the only way it can exist – in a space free from capitalism.

How can we achieve this? There’s only one surefire way: through mass working-class power. Even when only looking at our problems here on campus at least one thing is clear: the owning class is the issue, it’s through their undemocratic control of the economy and exploitation of their workers that they remain in power.

However, even though we are being exploited, the working class holds all of the power in our society (even here at Mizzou). It is through the constant effort of the workers that our campus, Columbia, the US, and the entire world is able to continue functioning.

Halting this effort for even a single day can be catastrophic for the owners, something that has been clearly shown by the pandemic. This is the power behind a labor strike, but we can do so much more. By building a mass movement, workers could even freeze an entire nation’s economy. We could tear down and rebuild our social and political systems, but we can only do it together.

It could all start right here.