Red Star's NPC Newsletter - January 2025

Hello from Red Star! Curious about what we’ve been up to? Read on to find out!

NPC Meeting Debrief (Jan 26th, 2025)

This year has already come with some major updates from our treasurer John! First off, John and the Budget and Finance committee have successfully been able to bring an initial offer to staff for wage increases. They successfully worked with the staff union on securing them $5,000 raises this year, and $3,000 raises in both 2026 and 2027. John is also working on fleshing out the financial aspects of our staff hiring process to ensure that we can fund staff positions for a minimum of three to four years before opening applications. This all can happen thanks to the wonderful work put in to establish our 2025 budget back in November.

As some might know, this month was met with NPC member Rose D’s resignation from the body. As the NPC begins its search for a replacement, we helped secure a more transparent NPC appointment process with a defined timeline at the NPC meeting on January 26th. Red Star believes that the position should be filled by an experienced leader who can confront the issues that face DSA today and the increasing attacks on trans people head-on. That’s why…

Hazel W. is applying for the NPC!

DSA will need to appoint a new NPC member for the remaining time from now until the convention. Red Star member Hazel W. will be applying for the position. We believe she matches the criteria previously outlined and is also extremely qualified for national leadership in DSA.

Since joining DSA in 2018, Hazel W. has been a vital organizer and leader for DSA in California and the Bay Area. Having grown up in the Bay Area, Hazel has seen firsthand how the cost of living has driven many working-class families out of the region. Her roots in organizing began with projects involving mutual aid around unhoused communities.

As a member of DSA San Francisco, Hazel has served on both the education board and the chapter steering committee alongside Palestinian Solidarity work through the No Appetite For Apartheid campaign and student encampment efforts. She has helped organize and develop leadership trainings which have played pivotal roles in reshaping the chapter into a more cohesive and democratic body. As a Co-Chair of the chapter, she led priority campaigns, identified organizational contradictions within the chapter, and helped craft remedies to address them.

Building off of her local experience in San Francisco, she brought her organizing skills statewide as the co-chair of  California DSA. As co-chair Hazel restructured the body around centralized priorities that developed organizers across the state, such as the Affordable, Rent-Controlled Housing (ARCH) Campaign. This campaign helped plug in organizers from small and rural California chapters and trained them to build organizing skills they could take back to their chapters.

Recently, Hazel’s work to expand name change confidentiality in California to include trans adults was highlighted in an article in the SF Chronicle which you can read here. Hazel’s work on this campaign draws directly from the experience gained throughout San Francisco and California DSA. 

Outside of DSA, Hazel works as a local journalist in the Bay Area with a focus on the criminalization of poverty and unhoused people.

Convention Planning Committee Updates

Updates from the Convention Planning Committee! The process of apportioning delegates to each chapter is about to begin as we start gearing up for the upcoming delegate election season. This is a pretty critical moment for us in DSA, and Red Star would like to emphasize the importance of using a fair and democratic election process.

To that end, we strongly encourage all members to push for the adoption of STV in their chapter’s delegate elections. STV ensures a fair and proportional representation that reflects the political diversity within each chapter. This process is a much more equitable method of voting that ensures minority groups have an equal chance to be represented at the convention. 

In addition to urging members to push for STV, we also want to encourage left-wing members of DSA to run as candidates in these upcoming delegate elections. Winning seats as delegates play a vital role in shaping DSA’s future and building DSA into the organization of the working class. 

Stay tuned for more updates from the Convention Planning Committee next month!

What We’re Reading 

• Sam: What Was Bolshevism? by Lars T. Lih
• Megan: The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies by John Langan, and Blue Collar Empire by Jeff Schuhrke
• John: Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Recipe Korner - Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Hello, my name is Megan and I’m busy a lot, especially in the evenings, so sometimes I cook things from cans. I’m Socialist Rachael Ray, don’t judge me. 

This is one of my go-tos when I’m trying to make something super-easy, plus quick and comforting and filling and perfect for winter, uses ingredients that I can mostly keep in the cupboard and freezer without having to go to the grocery store, but also, like, contains at least a vitamin or two. It’s EXTREMELY un-finicky and if things are in weird sizes, just work with it (if the 16-oz bag of frozen squash turns out to be a 10-oz bag, ok, who cares, add an extra carrot, or use 2 bags, or stick a sweet potato in there during the sautéeing step, it doesn’t matter; if the grocery store doesn’t have frozen squash but does have canned pumpkin, that’s also fine, just make sure it’s the pure canned pumpkin – which is usually actually butternut squash anyway, they’re the same plant – and not the spiced pie filling; oh you don’t have a big carrot, maybe you have a dried-out half-bag of baby carrots; add a handful of spinach or a rinsed can of chickpeas or last night’s leftover mashed potatoes, so many things are possible). 

The basic process: anything that’s going in raw, you sautée until soft, everything else goes in after, you boil it all for about 20 minutes, you put the Danger Stick in it, bam, you’ve got soup. I like using the Maesri curry paste, my Asian grocery store sells it for like a buck per can and I try to always have a few cans in the cupboard. Try to remember to use coconut milk and not coconut cream, but definitely don’t use coconut water (actually you probably can but it won’t be creamy). 

INGREDIENTS:

1 can of curry paste

1 can of coconut milk

1 16-ounce bag of frozen butternut squash

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups broth or stock, veg or chicken (Better than Bouillon-type deals also work fine)

1 onion, chopped - ideally about the size of a baseball (any color)

1 or 2 carrots, chopped (you can also add a peeled sweet potato, regular potato, prob any root veg)

1. Sautée your onions and carrots (and whatever other veg you’re sneaking in there) in a big pot on medium until they’re starting to soften

2. Add the curry paste into the sautéeing vegetables, let it cook in there a little bit, wake up the seasonings

3. Add your broth and use it to get any good brown bits up from the bottom of the pot (this is called deglazing, a word you should know because it’s an important flavor part of cooking)

4. Add your coconut milk and your squash. Stick a lid on the pan and crank up the heat for a few minutes to bring it up to a boil. (Adding a bag of frozen squash will have the predictable reaction of cooling everything down, so you’re just trying to get things back up for a minute)

5. Once you’ve got bubbles, give it another stir, turn the heat back down to medium/medium-low, put the lid back on, and let everything simmer for about 25 minutes. Try to give it a stir every 5-10 minutes so you can make sure it’s not sticking or burning (turn it lower if it is)

6. Everything should be soft. If it isn’t, go for another 5 minutes at a time until it is. Now, if you have an immersion blender (aka a Danger Stick, those things will take a fingertip off so be careful), immerse and blend until everything’s smooth! If you only have a regular blender, let everything cool down for a few minutes and then blend it in batches until it’s smooth. Don’t have any blender? Use a potato masher, it’ll be a little bit chunkier but who cares

7. It’s probably going to be pretty spicy depending on which curry paste you used, so you should definitely also serve it with a huge spoonful of chili paste because we’re not cowards, are we? 

Further discussion

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