DRUM Membership Assembly!

November 25, 2019

This past Sunday, DRUM held our first full membership assembly in 10 years. It was also the first time we brought together members from all our bases since we started our formal expansion in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and South Queens.

Last weekend, DRUM held our first full membership assembly in 10 years. It was also the first time we brought together members from all our bases since we started our formal expansion to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and South Queens was started 3 years ago.Over 150 DRUM members gathered at The Peoples Forum to share food, mingle, and enjoy member-led cultural work and performances, all representative of the diverse backgrounds and languages in our membership.We celebrated our accomplishments for this past year:

  • Fighting off Amazon
  • Winning drivers licenses for all New Yorkers
  • Blocking the citizenship question on the 2020 Census
  • Elevating importance of investing in communities rather than prisons and jails, a part of the No New Jails fight
  • The launch of Institutionalized Bullying campaign and platform
  • Successful work by our West Queens, South Queens, and Brooklyn Gender Justice committees in community engagement and agitation around gender, confronting violence and policing, building safety, and organizing
  • Getting our folks out of detention
  • Pushing back against the targeting of our people by the national security, surveillance, and immigration regime

We had songs, music, and dances by DRUM members, and natoks (plays) by the West Queens Gender Justice Committee.We also had a Young Peoples Liberation Zone, where young people got to engage in conversations of what justice means, do some screen printing, and play games.We also looked ahead to to 2020 to prepare for the Supreme Court decision on DACA and its aftermath, the importance of Census 2020 and our plans for community education, the the celebration of DRUM ’s 20th anniversary and a Gala.We also made two key announcements:

  1. We announced the decision to build out an electoral arm of DRUM after a 6 months process of discussion, debate, and study to understand both the strategic importance of such forms of power, as well as the very real limits and traps. We took a straw poll on potential names for an electoral organization.
  2. We also shared a first draft of a DRUM membership handbook (in English, Punjabi, Nepali, Bangla, and Urdu) which also came out of a 4 month process of strengthening membershipand building alignment on what it means to be a member of DRUM, and having a political home.

We are living in dangerous times, with ascendant right wing and reactionary forces here in the US and over the world. Yet, we are also seeing a rise in resistance, and growth of movements towards a better, equal, and just world. The membership assembly, and the conversations within it, are meant to be an important part of sharpening our visions and commitments.We ask you to support DRUM’s work to build grassroots leadership for the long term, and a peoples fighting organization.

Please help support this work:
https://www.drumnyc.org/donate/

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