NYC DSA Racial Justice Working Group

02/13/2026

📢 RJWG FEBRUARY GENERAL MEETING
📆 Tuesday, February 17th @ 7pm EST
💻 Virtual on Zoom (link in bio to register)

Join the Racial Justice Working Group for our February General Meeting! This month, we will:

✅ Discuss our RJWG Organizing Committee elections!
✅ Talk about passing the CURB Act and disbanding the SRG!
✅ Future projects and actions

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ELECTIONS ARE OPEN!
🔥JOIN US! 🔥
We’re looking for comrades to step up and join our Organizing Committee! We need folks to help us push forward critical campaigns including:

* Creating NYC’s Department of Community Safety
* Disbanding the Strategic Response Group of the NYPD
* And more

You do not need to be a seasoned DSA member to apply. If you’re ready to organize,  we’re ready to work with you.

Application deadline: February 21st [link in bio to apply]

11/17/2025

🌸 PANEL DISCUSSION 🌸 POLICING AND PUBLIC SAFETY UNDER A SOCIALIST MAYOR

Join NYC-DSA’s Racial Justice Working Group for a critical conversation with abolitionist organizers, educators, and policy experts as we explore a critical question: What can a socialist mayor concretely do to transform public safety in New York City?

With socialist Zohran Mamdani set to take office as NYC Mayor in January, we’re confronting a complex reality: What does it mean to lead a city with the largest, most over-resourced police department in the country?

We’ll dissect Mamdani’s policy priorities, envision a new Department of Community Safety, and strategize on how New Yorkers and a socialist administration can work together to end violent overpolicing and build accountability. Plus audience Q&A at 7PM.

🎤 PANELISTS:
* Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing & Professor at Brooklyn College
* Cheryl Rivera, Co-Founder of Another World & Crown Heights CARE Collective, editor at Lux Magazine
* Calvin John Smiley, author of Defund: Conversations Toward Abolition & Professor at Hunter College-CUNY
* Moderated by Jazz Hooks (NYC-DSA)

📅 November 22, 2025 📍, 629 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn 🕥 5:30-7:30PM (Panel starts 6PM) 💻 In-person + hybrid on Zoom

🔗 More info at the link in our bio
Doors open 5:30PM | Free event | All welcome

08/16/2025

August General Meeting this Sunday Aug 17th 5-6:30pm EST

We gather this month to remember Saniyah Cheatham and carry her memory forward 🕊️

We’ll also:
➡️ Continue our Our Streets: Decriminalizing Street Economies series with a focus on the Street Vendor Reform Bill
➡️ Phonebank City Council to support the CURB Act, pushing back on the NYPD’s violent SRG tactics
➡️ Have an open discussion on future projects + actions

📍 Virtual Only on Zoom
🔗 RSVP link in bio (Zoom link will be sent before the meeting)

✨ All are welcome — you don’t need to be a DSA member to join.

08/01/2025

Justice for Saniyah Cheatham!
We honor her life. We demand justice.
She should still be here.

Saniyah Cheatham was an 18-year-old student at Bronx Community College. On July 4th, she was arrested by the NYPD and taken to the 41st Precinct in the Bronx. By 12:40 am on July 5th, she was dead in a holding cell.

While the details of that night remain withheld, what we do know is this: Saniyah was a young Black woman – someone made especially vulnerable by the NYPD’s long-standing reliance on racist, abusive “broken windows” overpolicing.

Her death in custody is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a broader pattern of what too often happens when Black people and people of marginalized communities come into contact with police: surveillance, criminalization, and violence by design.

More than three weeks have passed, and the NYPD has released no body camera footage, surveillance video, or reports from the night Saniyah died.

We grieve with her loved ones and stand in deep solidarity. Her life was precious. Her death demands truth, transparency, and accountability.

Say her name.
Keep her memory alive.

06/18/2025

☎️ Join the Racial Justice Working Group for a phonebank to re-elect Alexa Avilés!
RSVP: bit.ly/AlexaPhonebankJune20

WHEN: THIS FRIDAY from 6:30-8:30pm on Zoom. Zoom link will be shared with RSVPs prior to the event.

Some of Alexa’s victories include…

✊🏽 Fighting Trump to keep ICE out of NYC as Chair of the City Council Immigration Committee

⚖️ Passing the How Many Stops Act to improve NYPD transparency

🇵🇸 Being one of the first Council Members to call for a ceasefire in Palestine

We have to show up for Alexa and stand against her challenger backed by big real estate and pro-Israel forces. They’re trying to buy this election, but our movement is more powerful than money!

Let’s all do our part to re-elect Alexa 🌹

06/10/2025

06/01/2025

Mutual aid in the park 🫂🌳

Today we shared free Plan B with our community—because healthcare should be free and accessible to all 💞

Stay updated on the Racial Justice Working Group’s work and join us at our next Plan B distribution by signing up for our newsletter (link in bio)🦋

Our next general meeting is June 22—open to everyone! RSVP in bio (virtual + in-person options). We’ll continue our “Our Streets: Decriminalizing Street Economies” series, addressing the criminalization of s*x workers, street vendors, delivery workers, and substance users—and how we fight over-policing in our communities. Come reclaim our streets with us! ✊

05/27/2025

Come pick up FREE Plan B at Prospect Park this Sunday June 1st between 2-5pm! 🫂🌳 RSVP info & exact pinned location is in our bio link 💕

Please help spread the word!🪽DM us if you have trouble finding us on the day!

05/15/2025

Join the Racial Justice Working Group this Sunday, May 18 @ 5pm ET for our May General Meeting where we’ll kick off the “Our Streets: Decriminalizing Street Economies” series!

At this meeting, we’ll:
• Discuss the history and theories surrounding s*x work in NYC and its criminalization
• Share updates on our current projects
• Discuss upcoming collaborations with organizations supporting street vendors, delivery workers, substance users, and those working against overpolicing in the streets and in city council

📍 Location: NYC-DSA office with virtual Zoom option
👥 This meeting is open to the public

✅ RSVP: Link in bio/on flyer, or scan the QR code on the flyer

03/23/2025

Out here in the park in Brooklyn giving away Plan B to the community because we keep us safe includes reproductive choice!

03/23/2025

Pick up your FREE Plan B at Herbert Von King park in Bed-Stuy today between 1-4pm! DM us if you can’t find us

03/15/2025

TOMORROW Sunday at 5pm - Racial Justice Working Group March general meeting. We will discuss our strategic responses to fascism in the form of the encroachment of the carceral state, police and ICE on our rights, as well as strategies for relational organizing from a therapeutic approach called Motivational Interviewing. We will discuss our priorities as a working group for the year, as well as the mistreatment and abuse of incarcerated New Yorkers through the wildcat correctional officers strike, next steps for addressing the carceral state through the CURB Act, which aims to curtail the abuses of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, and the Dignity Not Detention Act, which would end profiteering off of immigration detention in New York State.