Why We Need Term Limits and Real Democracy in Metro Detroit DSA

By: Jonathan Mukes

The Moment That Changed Everything

When I ran for my second term as co-chair of the Black and Brown Alliance (BBA), I expected there to be several contested seats on our chapter’s Steering Committee. I expected a multi-tendency debate about strategy or maybe some deliberation about political vision, and how we build working-class power in Detroit’s communities of color. Instead, I watched the old steering committee agree with themselves along caucus lines. The same officers switched seats around the room, claiming new positions. It wasn’t about who had the best vision but about who was next in an unspoken line.

That experience showed me something many of us have felt for too long. Our chapter has a leadership stagnation problem. It’s not an accident. It’s the obvious outcome of power concentrating in the hands of a semi-permanent cohort that treats leadership positions as entitlements rather than responsibilities. They are managers rather than activists. Functionaries rather than revolutionaries.

This was the reason why I wrote the term limits resolution–linked here–for the upcoming convention. It’s a simple, commonsense proposal. Every leader in the chapter gets two consecutive terms in any elected or appointed leadership position. Afterwards they are expected to have a one-year return to general membership before returning to leadership. There should be no exceptions. There should be no loopholes. It’s a simple rule that works to preserve leadership pipelines, prevent burnout, and ensure that strategies remain grounded in the needs of the entire membership.

But despite broad support from plenty of independents and major caucuses like MUG and Bread & Roses, Groundwork’s leadership has responded with an amendment that guts the resolution. They’ve done what entrenched power always does when challenged. They are reaching for procedural weapons to protect their position.

The Ghost of R22: A Pattern Emerges

This isn’t news. We’ve seen them do a very similar tactic on a national level, you just need to look back at Resolution 22.

R22 was a resolution at the 2025 DSA national convention that aimed at cementing DSA’s anti-Zionist stance. The Detroit Chapter historically has had an interesting history with Zionism and my experience with convention showed me that the specter hadn’t fully left the building. R22 was introduced to align our organization with principled anti-imperialism and the liberation of the Palestinian people. I was one of the only Metro-Detroit delegates who voted for it unamended. Who, with the Detroit delegates at our table, argued that our organization’s political and moral compass demanded we take a clear stance against occupation and genocide, regardless of the impact it may have on our electoral work.

The Groundwork delegates from Detroit didn’t just disagree with me. They actively worked to kill the anti-Zionist resolution by using the same procedural maneuvering they are using now against term limits. They spread misinformation, they gutted the resolution with an amendment, they did everything in their power to preserve the status quo. The amended text removes the expulsion clause for members who are currently affiliated with Zionist lobby groups, oppose the Palestinian movement, or have knowingly provided material support to Israel.

Why does this matter? What does this have to do with a local bylaws fight about term limits? Well, it reveals a pattern. Groundwork’s leadership treats internal democracy as an obstacle whenever the outcome doesn’t suit them. Whether it’s a national stance on Palestine or a local effort to build new leadership, their instinct is to entrench power, control the narrative, and dilute accountability.

The Case for Fresh Air

Term limits aren’t a new or radical idea. They’re a civic principle. Everyone understands that no one should hold elected office forever because when power concentrates, perspective narrows, and the leadership class becomes pretty far removed from the rank and file.

In Metro Detroit DSA, the concentration of leadership not only creates burnout but also creates high ceilings. New members join with energy and ideas just to find a top-down culture where decisions are made before general meetings behind closed doors. The lack of shared responsibility means that newer members have fewer opportunities to organize, which is detrimental to the project of building working class power within our chapter and the movement as a whole. This culture creates the conditions for the “freshmen retention challenge”. There exists a steep drop-off where almost half of these new members leave after a single year. When new members feel as though they don’t have a say within the organization, or when they sense that real power is held by an unshakeable few, they disengage. They stop coming to meetings. Their dues lapse. And our movement loses that new energy. This is why it is especially important to cycle out leadership within the chapter. We need to remove entrenched leadership to make room for members with different perspectives from independents and smaller caucuses.

Groundwork’s amendment tries to strip the spirit out of my resolution. It seems to me like they want to keep the door open for unelected appointments and consecutive terms. If we limit elected terms, leaders will actually have to train and trust new leaders rather than cycling the same faces through the same seats. Leadership development takes work and some would rather preserve their positions than do that work.

How Democracy Is Circumvented

Appointed positions should not be the norm. The general body or the appropriate working group should vote for positions that directly impact the work that is going on. Leadership should reflect the democratic will of the people. While appointed positions may be needed for highly specialized positions, an election should be tried first.

My resolution is an attempt at fixing that problem. It explicitly states that no member can hold multiple officer or appointed positions simultaneously, and that after two terms, members must return to general membership for a full year. Groundwork’s amendment removes the restriction for appointed positions, albeit in a confusing, contradictory way, saying that term limits will be applied to appointed positions but also that those positions are exempt.

This is about ensuring that leadership is “a responsibility shared by the many, not a privilege held by the few,” as the resolution states.

A Vision for What Comes Next

Imagine a chapter where every leader is actively building more socialist organizers, where Steering Committee meetings include new faces with new ideas. Imagine a chapter where we don’t have to guess who’s really running things and how, because the structure is clear and the rules apply equally to everyone. Imagine a socialist organization in Metro-Detroit that has a leadership body with representation across numerous socialist tendencies, caucuses, with a focus on leadership development and working together as comrades in a project to overthrow liberalism and to dismantle capitalism.

The culture that would emerge from these practices would not only build a stronger, more robust movement, but we would see new leaders that would expand the capacity of the chapter. making way for more projects, more political education, and more impact in our communities. The power we build will bring more people to DSA. I desperately want to build socialism in my lifetime, but if that doesn’t happen, I want to create as many leaders and movement builders so the project can be realized after I’m gone. That can only happen if institutional knowledge within our chapter is openly shared, if strategy and tactics are heavily deliberated and debated, and if responsibilities are shared across caucus lines.

I want to be clear with my framing, these types of pro-democracy reforms are not only good for our chapter, but for the entire socialist movement. Revolutionary ends will always match their revolutionary means. If the organization that is building this revolutionary movement doesn’t take its values of democracy seriously, the new society that emerges from the project will not either.

To the members who are close to Groundwork but believe in democratic norms, I am not asking you to reject your friends. I am just asking you to look at the resolution text. Look at how they amended R22 at the national convention. Compare that to how they are amending this resolution. If our bylaws don’t protect against leadership hoarding, we are leaving the door open for the same anti-democratic practices that we are actively fighting against outside. We are telling new members that their energy is welcome, but their leadership is not. We are telling the experienced ones that burnout is their only exit strategy.

Return to Membership, Return to Democracy

I didn’t write this resolution because I have a personal grievance against any individual. I wrote it because I believe in what this chapter could become. I’ve seen the energy at BBA events. I’ve seen the passion at our general meetings. I’ve talked to newer members who are hungry to contribute but don’t know how to break through.

The term limits resolution is our chance to tell those members there is a path. Your turn is coming. We are building something that will outlast any of us.

We need a leadership pipeline, not a fence. We need a chapter where your second term is about training someone else and building new leaders, not about securing your seat. We need a return to membership, not as a punishment, but as a promise that leadership is a cycle, not a permanent state.

Vote for the original, unamended resolution. Vote to build a chapter where democracy isn’t just something we preach, but something we practice.

Jonathan Mukes is Co-Chair of the Black and Brown Alliance (BBA) and a member of the Democracy Coalition — a cross-caucus group of MUG, Bread & Roses, and independents working for transparency and democratic revival in Metro Detroit DSA.

Building a Pipeline, Not a Fence. was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Peter Landon

For nearly ten years, DSA has prided itself on being a “big tent.” What is meant by that shorthand? That the organization we share is filled with comrades who have different views of socialism and more importantly, the practices or paths of how to achieve it. These differences tend to be expressed through a range of caucuses asserting their politics in the day to day life of chapters and the national organization. They are most evident in the run up to, and deliberations of, our national conventions.

This holds true for our Detroit chapter and our annual conventions. But at the chapter level, and even nationally, you don’t need to be in a caucus to have a set of politics that is far different than many of your DSA comrades. Most, even the majority of DSA members, are not in caucuses — and obviously we all have our individual politics to express and organize around. Generally we join DSA because we want to make our politics impactful — and find others to make a collective difference.

Differences have existed in the socialist movement for over 150 years. Over our history, these perspectives have helped refine our paths to socialism but they’ve also created significant divides in our movement that have been consequential. There is much to learn from these outcomes. One lesson is that differences and debate are inevitable. How do we learn from this very much lived fact, and grow our organization and movement by addressing it?

In this spirit, I’ve submitted R 13–26.

It’s an attempt to openly address the differences that exist in DSA and deepen our shared knowledge of the various perspectives of socialism and the range of views for the steps necessary to get there.

The Reform & Revolution caucus produced the book, “A Users Guide to DSA” prior to the 2025 national DSA convention. It contains articles by over 30 DSA comrades representing a range of views from various caucuses on key differences within DSA. The debates are:

1. How to Fight Trump and Defend Working-Class and Oppressed People
2. Electoral Strategy and the Democratic Party
3. Labor Organizing and the Role of Socialists in the Workers Movement
4. How to Change the World?
5. What is Socialist Internationalism?

There’s also a very useful Introduction and a set of essays addressing “What is DSA?”

The goal is that these debates would give our Detroit membership a greater sense of the politics — and differences — competing to orient DSA. Ideally it deepens our collective understanding of our “big tent” socialist politics, the differences of emphasis, and puts the membership in a far more informed position to determine the possible directions for our organization — both in Detroit and nationally. The ways we sort through these debates, what conclusions we come to both individually and collectively, matters when it comes to how we engage the world. They can help hone our day to day politics and move the organization forward.

Should the resolution pass, the political education committee would be charged with organizing five debate sessions at the general membership meetings over the course of 2026–27 in the run up to the next national DSA convention in the summer of 2027. Planning these sessions would be based on the “DSA Users Guide” and could be supplemented as necessary. Members of the various caucuses, as well as non-caucused independents, would be encouraged to get involved in the preparations. The political education committee would coordinate the efforts.

Peter is a retired Teamster living in SW Detroit and a member of the Bread & Roses caucus.

Open Debate Is Necessary For Developing Socialist Politics & Practice was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Popular education is a method of teaching that centers the voices of students starting from their unique perspectives and situations.

The post How to use popular education to build worker power appeared first on EWOC.

DSA’s mass politics make it the only real political party in the United States.

The post It’s a Party in the USA appeared first on Democratic Left.

“The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity.” – Karl Marx, “Estranged Labour,” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Writing is one of the most important inventions in human history. It allowed us to build civilizations, to coordinate social structures across vast distances, and to fuel humanity’s social, political, and scientific development into the modern age. Thanks to the written word, we can read the exact thoughts of scholars who lived many thousands of years ago, communicate complex ideas to millions of people, and build the democratic political movements capable of remaking society for the benefit of working people.

It has never been more important to preserve and expand our ability to write and communicate clearly. Original writing is now being severely devalued by a current of anti-intellectualism, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, and an unprecedented public disinvestment in education. This is why Midwest Socialist wants to encourage Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members in the greater Midwest to develop their own skills at writing and communication.

Learn, Learn, and Learn Again

During the heyday of the democratic socialist movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century, deep engagement with Marxist theory was considered a prerequisite to leading workers in their struggle against oppression. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Eugene Debs, Antonio Gramsci, and countless others spent years developing tomes of political theory while they organized tirelessly to overthrow capitalism. They did not see organizing and theorizing as two separate activities, but as two integral parts of the same effort.

In the twentieth century, socialist governments considered mass political education an essential step in building a post-capitalist society. In 1961, Cuba sent 250,000 educated people into the countryside to teach millions of poor workers and campesinos to read, virtually eliminating illiteracy on the island within a few short years. The methods developed during this campaign served as an example for the entire Global South, and the model was successfully implemented in other countries around the world.

Socialist states with highly literate populations took this idea a step further. In East Germany, government-sponsored programs established spaces to encourage workers to express themselves creatively, including through prose and poetry. These programs would have been considered wasteful and useless in a capitalist society, but the socialist government of that country saw value in the political development of the working class through creative pursuits.

Closer to home, universal public education is one of the greatest surviving accomplishments of the working class movement in the United States. The collective knowledge of humanity is our birthright as working people, and it is our responsibility to engage with these ideas and educate ourselves.

A Hollow Education

The relevance of political broadsheets and hand-printed pamphlets has declined precipitously in the last hundred years, but the necessity to write clearly and convincingly has not. We live in a time when a significant percentage of young Americans are falling behind in school, when college students at our nation’s most prestigious universities are incapable of reading a whole book, and when AI is taking away the livelihoods of creative and intellectual laborers on an unprecedented scale. In this context, reading, writing, and learning have taken on new significance.

Public schools are under attack in the U.S. Compounding the damage of decades of chronic disinvestment, Republicans and Democrats alike have established charter school systems across the country that take state money to fund academies – often with reactionary pedagogical mandates –  and predatory, unstable for-profit schools through “school voucher” programs. These efforts take away resources from public schools and leave students behind. This is in addition to the current administration’s broad anti-intellectual right-wing attacks on science, history, tolerance in the classroom, and the basic principle that education should serve students rather than the state’s extremist political agenda.

Furthermore, all modern forms of mass media are deliberately constructed to turn working people into passive consumers of carefully curated political messages that shut out the possibility of radical change. They shamelessly promote unjust and insane wars, give billionaires and their servants unlimited airtime and space to advance their own agendas while marginalizing progressive voices, attempt to smear left-wing candidates for public office, and turn people away from transformative social and political structures.

AI is just the most recent extension of the centuries-long effort to control what working people know, think, and feel. A recent meta-study by the Brookings Institute highlights the dangers of using this untested technology in classrooms. Evidence is mounting that students and adults alike suffer a “cognitive debt” when they over-rely on chatbots to perform intellectual tasks, rendering them incapable of the basic skills needed to function in society and sharply limiting their ability to develop any kind of meaningful political consciousness.

This is why Midwest Socialist does not accept AI-generated writing and strongly discourages the use of AI writing programs. For too many, an ‘AI-assisted’ piece of writing is the end of a conversation rather than the beginning of one. It is an excuse not to engage with ideas, a way to treat essays and creative writing projects as problems to be solved, published, and put away as quickly as possible rather than an exercise in critical thinking and creativity. In this context, the adage “if you couldn’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it” takes on new meaning.

At a time when it appears possible to offload every intellectual exertion to an unthinking machine, engaging with ideas seriously and honestly is quickly becoming a revolutionary act in itself. Despite all the hype from tech companies, working people are still quite skeptical that AI will benefit society in the long run. We can consciously reject the implementation of technologies that don’t serve the needs of the working class.

Why We Write

“Our task is to make thinkers out of fighters and fighters out of thinkers.” – General Gordon Baker, revolutionary educator

All progressive transformation finds its energy from the creative labor of working people. To give an example from American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the face of the New Deal and arguably its most important champion, but he did not implement it. It required legions of skilled, educated, and competent artisans, craftspeople, engineers, laborers, administrators, artists, writers, and countless others working toward the unified goal of transforming society. We are going to need millions of engaged, curious people eager to work to better society. We will build the future we deserve through a combination of organizing, community building, and unshakable solidarity.

Right now, none of those efforts are where they need to be. In the context of economic stagnation and repression at home and abroad, the fight for a better world can at times feel hopeless. Individual action is not enough to reverse the long-term trends of illiteracy and intellectual shortcutting that have plagued our society for decades. We need robustly funded schools, mass political education, a media not beholden to private interests, and an economy that fosters creative pursuits as more than products to be packaged for consumption. But that effort starts by building our own capabilities, collaborating with others, and working tirelessly to create and sustain the kinds of unapologetically socialist institutions that will build a better society.

There’s a reason every child is taught to write essays in school. Writing teaches us to organize our thoughts, to engage with primary sources, and to express ourselves clearly and succinctly to a wide audience. These skills are essential to any political movement. We cannot rely on capitalist-controlled media and obsequious AI to do our thinking for us.

If it is indeed true that every cook can govern, as the old saying goes, then any DSA member can write. Not every single person must become a journalist, theorist, or polemicist. There are a million ways to contribute to our struggle. But if you wrote stories on lined notebook paper in the fifth grade, composed multi-paragraph social media posts in response to articles you see online, or simply have had ideas and perspectives on our work and movement, we want to hear from you. 

If you would like to write for Midwest Socialist, contact us through our Google form. Be sure to read our Editorial Policy before submitting. We publish op-eds, articles about leftist history, interviews, left-wing reviews of recently released media and leftist classics, and other forms of writing, and we are particularly interested in original journalism about events happening in the Midwest.

If you have an idea that you need help turning into an outline, an outline you need help turning into a draft, or an article you’re wrestling with, our Editorial Board offers Zoom appointments to discuss your ideas and help you build them into a publishable article. The editorial board doesn’t guarantee that every individual article will be published, but we will work with you to build your project into a piece we can all be proud of. Once you’ve submitted a draft, we will make edits and send a final draft ready to be published.

Writing is a skill that takes time and practice, just like learning a language, mastering a trade, or playing an instrument. The only way to improve is to jump right in, and Midwest Socialist is a great place to get started. We look forward to reading your work.

The post Why You Should Write for Midwest Socialist appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

In 1988 and 2016, DSA backed insurgent primary campaigns by gifted outsiders — but the aftermath of the Jesse Jackson and the Bernie Sanders campaigns were very different.

The post Why Wasn’t There a Long Jackson Moment? appeared first on Democratic Left.

You’ve probably received enough communications regarding this Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstrations, which will be held all across the country. At last count more than three thousand demonstrations are being organized, and there will no doubt be at least one near you.

In case you have been procrastinating, here is a link to find the demonstrations closest to you.

The first of these demos last June had a million or two people attend. The next one, in October, had at least five million. We’re aiming to double that this time, which would put us in striking distance of the 3.5% of the US population that research says is necessary to topple authoritarian regimes in the making. 

Against the backdrop of brutal anti-immigrant violence and preparation for election suppression at home, and clueless trade policy matched with deadly wars abroad, a growing number of Americans are coming out to the streets. These include people who have never been politically involved outside of voting every few years, and progressives who sat out the 2024 presidential elections because they didn’t think there was any difference between the two parties and the two candidates. Within DSA and the rest of the left this often took the form of denouncing the “twin parties of capital”. Which they are. But that picture, drawn without nuance, underestimated what fascism is and does.

Now we know. 

A reasonable question at this point is, ‘What sort of message should socialists be sending to the other demonstrators, and the world, a year into America’s fascist descent?’ You have the opportunity to weigh in on that as you make your protest sign. “No Kings” is a start, not a program. “Workers Over Billionaires” moves us closer to the ideas we need.

This mass demonstration of opposition is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to stop MAGA from dragging us along on its road to hell. For that we need to be broadening the struggle with other tactics and strategies (mutual aid, mass strikes, non-violent direct action, and electoral politics) that build a powerful anti-fascist movement and lay the basis for moving past the failed politics of the past. What happened in Minneapolis/St. Paul on January 23—‘No Work, No School, No Shopping’—is the best example so far. DSA has joined with labor and community partners in the May Day Strong coalition, which understands “No Kings” as a step toward a sharper critique of capitalism on May 1. On that day we will see how prepared we are to advance beyond a nationwide demonstration to a national movement.

We’ll see you out in the streets this weekend. And then we’ll continue to train and educate and prepare ourselves for the struggle ahead.

In the February issue of California Red we ran a background article on the California DSA campaign we call “The Fair and Responsible Tax Plan for California’s Wealthy”, which embraces both measures currently gathering signatures to qualify for the November state ballot. That was the first in a series we are running between now and the election. Here is the next installment.—Editor

The unfathomably vast yet still growing level of California’s economic inequality

Our East Bay DSA crew of five had planted ourselves in the parking lot of a supermarket in North Berkeley on a warm mid-March afternoon. We were collecting signatures for the Billionaires Tax and the Protecting Education and Health Care Act. During our three-hour shift we did not do badly, gathering several dozen for each measure. Even better were the conversations, which ranged from informing voters about the nuts and bolts of the proposals to broader questions about economic inequality: how much money do billionaires have, anyway? What share of the total income of California, the fifth largest economy in the world, goes to the one percent? What would be the right amount of taxes for them to pay? And how do we get them to pay their fair share? 

We explore a few of these ideas and numbers below.

A cool million

It used to be hard for the typical working class stiff to imagine what a million dollars looks like. A million dollars? That’s what millionaires have, and I’m not even close to being one of those, we would say. But that was before a million dollars or thereabouts became the average price of a house in Los Angeles. It’s slightly below that statewide, and slightly above that in San Francisco. But you get the idea. Generally speaking, if you can afford a home, you know what a million dollars looks like—it looks like your house. (If you’re a renter, it looks like that house.)

A billion dollars was even more unfathomable. We didn’t have many in the United States until relatively recently; as late as 1990 there were just 66 of them. Now there are close to a thousand, and we’ve got 213 right here in the Golden State. Since we know that a million dollars looks like a house these days, we can imagine that since a billion is a thousand millions, it would look like a thousand houses. 

No one needs a thousand houses to live in, so most billionaires scrape by with just ten or twelve. Of course, being billionaires, they need somewhat larger houses than most people, so they might spend five or ten million dollars or even more—fifty million! A hundred million!—on their humble abodes. If they owned ten of those, that could put a pretty big dent in their billion dollar fortune. But guess what? The average wealth of a billionaire is not a billion dollars. It’s currently around 8.6 billion dollars, according to inequality.org. So that would be 8,600 houses. 

Minus the dozen they “live” in, that would leave them with enough money to purchase 8,588 more houses. I don’t know about you, but as the numbers climb my ability to translate the million dollar house into a clear image of the wealth of billionaires is beginning to get somewhat unequal to the task. And that’s before we try to imagine what the total wealth of 213 billionaires looks like. 

Trillions

It is reliably estimated that thanks to the ginormous growth of their fortunes during the past ten years (Trump I’s tax cuts, pandemic economy when there was nothing to invest in except stock buybacks, Trump II’s continuing tax cuts, massive AI bubble, and outright looting of public resources) our couple hundred California billionaires collectively own (hold onto your “tax the rich” baseball cap) two trillion dollars’ worth of assets. In California they’re doing a little better than the average 8.6 billionaire; they’ve each got around 9.4 billion. 

Although I just said I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the houses when they added up to the average 8,600 houses each (adjusted now to 9,400), let’s try it out with trillions. That’s a thousand billions. So collectively our 213 ultra-rich people with their two trillion dollars would have, let’s see, carry the one, a bit over 1.8 million houses, at a million dollars each. 

You might think that that’s enough for anyone, and these individuals must be looking around for philanthropies to unload to. But no, according to a recent New York Times article, billionaire giving has fallen precipitously in the last few years as their ‘uneasy accommodation with fascism’ (fascism scholar Robert Paxton’s formulation describing the initial response of economic elites to the uncouth new political rulers) has grown considerably less uneasy—more like downright comfortable. The 213 billionaires in California have seen their total wealth grow by nearly a third in this period as the rest of us have been essentially running in place—and that’s not enough for some of them. 

If you listen to one of their loudest mouthpieces, tech mogul Ron Conway, the proposed billionaire tax is not only bad for his 212 other peeps; it’s way worse than that. He was recently quoted in a New York Times article with a sentiment that inadvertently revealed how that kind of bank account can warp one’s perspective: According to Mr. Conway, referring to the billionaire tax, “This is the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt.” Hmmm. I wonder whether the families of dozens of people who lost their lives and thousands who lost homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires in 2025 agree? Or if Japanese-Californians, 93,000 of whom were incarcerated during World War II, share that view? Or if Native Californians, whose population fell from a third a million people in 1800 to about 15,000 by 1910 during the genocide that did them in, would agree with Conway’s historical research? 

On the other hand

At the other end of the economic spectrum, California’s borders contain about 7 million people below the official poverty line, or 18% of its roughly 40 million people. But the official federal poverty line ($33,000/year for a family of four) is laughably (that’s probably the wrong word) below an actual ability to live. One measure of how many people are barely getting by in California is the number of MediCal recipients, dependent on the federal Medicaid funding stream for most of their care costs. Although California is a net donor to the federal treasury, it does rely on $20 billion per year from the feds to support MediCal. Some 15 million Californians are enrolled in MediCal.

Let’s move on from the tiny extremely rich and the very large poor slices of the state and look at the condition of the merely rich, the top 1% income earners, which includes the billionaires but extends downward to the merely well-to-do. Although calculations vary, the bottom rung of the ladder for a one percenter is just about a million dollars a year in income; the median merely rich, right in the middle of the one percent, is $3.6 million a year. Here’s chart to help us visualize how their share of total California income has grown over the past half century. 

That’s right, believe your eyes. The top 1%’s share of income in the Golden State has grown over the past half century from about one twelfth of total income to almost one third. Richest state in the richest country in the world? Yes, but a vast chunk of the riches seems to have ended up in the pockets of people who didn’t need the transfer. 

On the third hand, if all of the state’s total income had been divided up equally, every person in California in 2024 would have received around $80,000—which means that for a family of four, combining their incomes, the household would have had $320,000—just a little under ten times the official poverty line.  

“But that would be socialism!” cry the billionaires, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and probably quite a few temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Well, sort of. We’ll get into that some other time. One thing is clear: it would certainly be different from what we’ve got.

When HR-1, Trump’s Big Bad Budget Bill, first passed last summer, the California Medical Association warned of “catastrophic” consequences. They were right.

Residents of Glenn County now travel 40 minutes to the nearest emergency room, thanks to a 40% funding cut that forced the county’s only hospital to shut down. St. Johns Community Health in Los Angeles struggles to stay open, after seeing one-third of its operating revenue disappear. $50 million in cuts have forced the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to close more than half its community clinics; besides vaccinations, the clinics provided screening and treatment of tuberculosis and HIV. In Alameda County, Wilma Chan Hospital narrowly averted a layoff of 400 workers while the County searches  for new funding sources to keep them on the job.

MediCal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program, currently covers one in five working Californians and half the state’s children. A 25% cut in state and federal spending is expected to strip close to 3 million people of their coverage by 2028. People on Medicaid will lose access to reproductive health services.  

Nor has Medicare been spared. Refugees and asylum-seeking immigrants who were on  Medicare no longer qualify. Other non-citizens were already barred from the program. 

HR-1’s proponents claimed the only people harmed by Medicaid cuts will be those who should not have been getting benefits in the first place—what were once referred to as the “undeserving poor. ” The new law requires that any adult under 65 who is not caring for young children must provide proof of working at least 80 hours a month to qualify for Medicaid, so long as their employers met the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.  

“Too onerous”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, most people on Medicaid already work, but may find it “too onerous to demonstrate compliance” with the work requirement. The UC Berkeley Labor Center estimates that this could account for more than half the Californians expected to lose their MediCal coverage.  Their hours may fluctuate; they may be laid off temporarily or change jobs; they may be self-employed, or work for an employer who is unable or unwilling to provide the necessary documentation. The same illness that required access to Medicaid could also disqualify you from getting it, if it keeps you off work for any length of time. 

Work requirements don’t come cheap; one of the ironies of HR-1 is that the cost of implementing them could offset any savings from  throwing people off the rolls. Georgia is a case in point. Medicaid is jointly funded by state and federal governments, and one of the best features of the Affordable Care Act to make federal Medicaid dollars available for states  that cover people who make  up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Georgia took the money, but added a work requirement. As a result,  Pro Publica reports that “most of the tax dollars used to launch and implement the program have gone toward paying administrative costs rather than covering health care.”  Worse, many Georgians who complied with the work requirement still found their coverage terminated. 

The targets of HR-1

HR-1 targets those who benefited from expanded access to Medicaid—including 5 million Californians—in other ways. They are now required to reestablish their eligibility every six months. Every doctor’s visit requires  a $35 co-payment. In California, providers who will take them on as patients will likely become harder to find, since the state will no longer augment notoriously stingy Medicaid payments. And no one on Medicaid can count on being reimbursed if they get medical treatment more than a  month before their eligibility is confirmed.

More than any other group, Californias’s immigrants will feel the impact of the cuts;  here, the state must assume its share of the responsibility. California was the first state in the nation to grant MediCal eligibility without regard to immigration status. This did not come easy or happen overnight; it was the product of a protracted, step-by-step struggle to extend state funds to cover those denied access by the feds—first immigrant children, then Dreamers, finally all state residents, whether “legal” or not. 

This victory for immigrant rights is now in peril.  California has responded to lost federal health care dollars by barring any new enrollment in MediCal for undocumented adults. Those already enrolled must pay a $30 monthly premium. Even one missed payment gets you dropped from the program, with no opportunity to reenroll. In fact, leaving the program for any reason, even temporary, means you can’t get back in. Those who remain enrolled must now pay out of pocket for dental care.

A weapon in the war on immigrants

How is it that that a state that boasts the world’s fourth largest economy could allow access to health care to be used as a weapon in Donald Trump’s war on immigrants, all in the name of “austerity budgeting”? Much of the blame lies with the health care system itself. A plethora of profit-driven private insurance plans, coupled with various public programs that try to patch up the system’s holes, make rampant administrative waste and glaring inequities inevitable, while driving health care costs through the roof. 

The state legislature is already on record in favor of a “unified financing” system that provides comprehensive benefits and equal access for all Californians, at a projected savings of $158 billion a year. AB 1900, the latest attempt to adopt a single payer health plan in California, fleshes out what the system should look like.  But it is strictly a policy bill; effective financing for a truly comprehensive, universal health care system in the state would require federal waivers that aren’t likely to happen as long as Trump is in the White House. 

That doesn’t mean the money isn’t already there. It’s just that so much it is in the hands of people who are exempt from equitable taxation. That’s the rationale for the Billionaire’s Tax, a one-time 5 percent state tax on assets over $1 billion. It would affect only about 200 people, but would bring in enough money to offset all the federal revenue cuts from  HR-1. 

A second measure, to extend Proposition 55, the Education and Health Care Act of 2026, would make permanent an existing state tax on incomes in the top 2 percent’s brackets, due to expire in 2030. It wouldn’t bring in any new revenue, but it should prevent further cuts to cash-strapped public schools and colleges, and sets aside money as well for children’s health.

Both measures are currently collecting signatures for the November ballot and are endorsed by California DSA. On March 15, East Bay DSA created a Tax the Rich Working Group to get them on the ballot and work for their passage.

Neither measure represents a long-term solution to the health care crisis. They’re more like applying a tourniquet to a cut artery—a stopgap measure, to buy time until you can get the patient to a doctor. But without it, the patient could die. We can’t let that happen.

[Reprinted from Democratic Left]

Our ancestors in the labor movement fought for bread, but they fought for roses, too. This saying means that while we want subsistence, we also desire beauty.

As a union organizer and Silicon Valley DSA co-chair, I worked non-stop in 2025. Daily local fights just to earn my bread. Like many socialists, it was a joy to get to cheer on Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign. Then I had a realization: Why do so from afar? Why not give myself a rose? So I decided I would pack my bags and canvas for Mamdani. After trouncing Andrew Cuomo in the primary election, he was almost sure to win. It would be beautiful, and I needed a chance to celebrate.

I felt so compelled because frankly, we don’t often win on the Left: Bernie’s losses, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the destruction of Gaza had many feeling depleted. But every now and again? We get a long shot knockout.

A historic campaign
So here was the tale of the tape: On one side, a young, relatively green New York Assemblyman. A Muslim. An immigrant. A friggin’ Democratic Socialist. Just reeking of unelectability. On the other side, the most establishment Democrat who ever established: former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Zohran shouldn’t have stood a chance. But, despite smears of antisemitism, and the fact that Andrew Cuomo, a disgraced sex pest, was willing to ally with any Republican or billionaire with a checkbook, Zohran was able to organize a historic campaign. This campaign was built on real hope for working people and the mobilization of tens of thousands of volunteers.

On the ballot back home in Santa Clara County, there was Measure A, a ballot measure to raise $330 million for our public hospitals. I pushed for Silicon Valley DSA to endorse it. Campaigning for Measure A would be a strategic opportunity to build our chapter’s local notoriety and, of course, winning would be hugely meaningful in our community. Since I am a co-chair and I introduced the resolution for our endorsement, I was feeling a bit selfish leaving town so close to election day. Luckily, trusted comrades encouraged me to take the trip anyway. Those talks were roses for me.

In 2010, I had actually lived in Brooklyn. Returning on Saturday, November 1, 2025 was surreal. I roomed with a fascinating but cranky Russian woman named Merina, a 70-year-old immigrant who told me stories of isolation and despair, landlords who fixed nothing, and her past as an economist and poet. When I tried to talk to her about Zohran, she insisted that nothing could change and that Zohran and I were both naive. It reminded me of why his campaign, and his focus on the unvarnished details of working class life, was so empowering: because so many had lost hope. But in Zohran’s New York we all matter. Meeting Merina was a rose, even if she hated giving it to me.

How Zohran connected
The first canvas was Sunday in Park Slope. I got paired up with a first-time volunteer, a nurse practitioner. In my union, I represent similar workers and we bonded. Zohran connected with her because she sees how affordability impacts her patients. She was non-union and we talked about how she could change that. Our time together was a little rose.

That evening I got dinner with a DSA buddy from Portland who also made the pilgrimage. We hung with his friend, a popular drag king. While bar hopping we chatted everyone up about the election. When we hit a bar called Boobie Trap, we talked to a young couple who were making out all night. When they took a short break I interrupted to ask if they supported Zohran.The woman replied, “Do I look like I would vote for Cuomo?”

The last stop before bed was to hit the bodega. I chatted up three native Brooklynites about the election. One of them asked me, “So what exactly does it mean to freeze the rent?” Luckily, Zohran had been so detailed in explaining his platform, I felt I had the tools to explain. The guys said they would look into it. I don’t know if they did. But when I checked out, the shopkeeper confirmed he was voting for Zohran. Nice, bodega rose.

On Monday I had hopped over to New Jersey to canvas for Jake Ephros in his Jersey City city council race (he won). I hit the doors with a 22-year-old comrade named Mei. She wore a bluetooth boombox slung around her shoulder. For someone so young, she was quite insightful and dedicated. I did have to tell her not to play her boombox at the door though. 

A generous person, Mei drove me back into the city where we met up with my Portland comrade again and an old NYC friend. The four of us had a classic NYC Italian dining experience at Monte’s Trattoria and camaraderie was at an all-time high. Roses and “Fuggedaboutits” abounded.”

Tuesday, I had the surreal experience of canvassing in my old neighborhood, Bushwick. Last time I lived there Occupy Wall Street was happening. I did not participate at all. Times change. 

While waiting in line to get my precinct list, one of the volunteers wearing a red “DSA for Zohran” shirt pointed at me and insisted he knew me from somewhere. But how? As we shuffled through the line getting materials it dawned on both of us – we had attended some parties thrown by a mutual friend in San Francisco in 2023. Small world, big roses.

Beware shop talk
Once again, I was paired with a first-time volunteer. After we canvassed our last door, we ate lunch at a Palestinian restaurant called Ayat Bushwick. While sitting down, we ran into a handful of volunteers (including the one I had met in SF) and decided to all eat together. It didn’t take long before internal DSA politics took over the conversation. Finally, after a couple minutes of what was probably unintelligible shop talk, one of the volunteers bravely asked “So, what’s DSA?” Socialist record scratch.

This brave volunteer was a 28-year-old Dominican native New Yorker who had just been laid off. This ought to be our target demographic –— but she’s out here literally canvassing for Zohran and has no idea what DSA is. We’ve got so much work to do. A harsh reminder to not get lost in the red sauce. After lunch, those DSA members let me take a work call at their apartment. Rose and rose.

Finally, polls closed. There were big DSA election night parties scattered across the city. I couldn’t miss out. I went to 9 Bob Note, a wicked warehouse bar and club. Zohran felt larger than life at this point. When I finally got inside the energy was incredible. Will Menaker from Chapo Trap House was there and I got to say hello. Also there were Yung Chomsky and Brace Belden from the TrueAnon podcast: the DSA equivalent of a Hollywood after-party! Plus I kept running into people I had met on the trip. The drag king! My Portland comrade I didn’t even expect to be there! Ara, one of the NYC-DSA staff! It was like the end of Wizard of Oz: “And you were there, and you were there.”

The moment we were all waiting for was fast approaching. By then, many of us had crowded tightly into the dance floor area of the event space. There were a few hosts there to get us hyped up. And then it happens: Zohran is announced the winner. The mayor-elect sign flashes on the big screen. The building erupts. Incredible. 

This felt like a peak in my socialist career. Crammed in with hundreds of other comrades, most of whom I am sure worked a lot more on this campaign than I did, cheering, crying, hugging strangers. No kidding, I did a 360° and the makeout couple from Boobie Trap was standing behind me! We high fived. Roses could have fallen from the ceiling.

Eventually a group of us moseyed over to another Zohran party at Starr Bar where more comrades abounded. It really felt like you couldn’t go anywhere to escape the specter of “Mammunism”. We laughed, we drank, we danced and a 25-year-old told me I was “Old as fuck.” That rose was a little wilted but I still liked it.

Different world
During my final day I made an emotional visit to my old apartment from fifteen years prior. The street itself wasn’t that different, but my understanding of the world was. I sat down in a pizza shop and reflected on my experience and how far I have come.

I am fortunate I have the means for a trip like this. Most do not. Traveling introduced me to so many wonderful people all struggling for their bread and their roses. So many were generous and kind. Their faces lit up when I told them I had come all the way from California to help. And I have so many lessons to bring back to apply in Silicon Valley. 

And now I think about how far we have all come. DSA, the Left and the working-people living in this era of capitalism. More and more are waking up. More and more are hungry for change, hungry for the bread we deserve. The socialist future is ahead of us. Maybe you can’t see it yet. But close your eyes. Breathe it in. Do you smell that? That’s the rose.