by Elizabeth Henderson

If you haven’t gardened before, there are tons of resources and local workshops to help you. Growing food is a millennial project – human beings have perfected their know-how over thousands of years.  No need to try to invent it yourself! The best way to learn is to find a mentor – many of the community gardens in Rochester have gardeners with roots that connect back to those millennial practices.  At the Magnolia Street Children’s Garden where I help out, there are three elders who together have over 200 years of experience! They may have trouble bending over – but that’s where you swoop in to help them and learn.

The basics of producing healthy food are simple – as my friend Joe (80 years of experience) says – SWANS: Sunshine, Water, Air, Nutrients and Soil – in other words, an ecological system. In organic farming, there is one orthodoxy: healthy soils give you healthy plants and then the critters who eat those plants are healthy. Organic practices and permaculture derive from millennial peasant wisdom in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Beware of silver bullets – substances that are advertised as eliminating all pests will probably kill you too, if not all at once, then slowly. Once you have healthy soil, you will not need to add fertilizers, only organic matter to feed the gazillions of microorganisms and members of the soil food web that feed the crops.  Pests and diseases will be fewer in a healthy system. Google Ruth Stout for ideas about how to use as little energy as possible.

Here is a quick guide:

• Keep the soil covered in green plants for as many months as possible – Maximize photosynthesis –
• Keep the fungi happy! Fungi go deep with their hyphae for all the best plant food. Tillage disrupts their delicate network of hyphae.
• Keep a diversity of species above ground to enhance species diversity below ground
• Support microbes, fungi and bacteria, to keep them working – feed them with compost, vermicompost
• Minimize tillage – bare soil loses carbon – use permanent vegetable bed systems
• Over the winter plant cover crops or mulch

The post Getting Grounded: Advice to Garden Newbies first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

Below is a speech made by Green Mountain DSA labor chair, Andy Blanchet, on June 10th, 2025 at the Burlington, VT ICE OUT protest. The protest brought together people across the Vermont community - from union & migrant workers to retirees and community organizers - to stand in solidarity with the community of Los Angeles, CA in their resistance to government repression. 

GMDSA’s Labor Committee recently worked with rank and file union members in putting on a Union Power organizing training in April 2024, and was a key organization in coordinating and organizing the May Day 2025 March in Williston, VT where 2,500 people came out to celebrate international workers’ day and stand in solidarity with Vermont migrant farm workers in their Milk with Dignity picket line at Hannaford Supermarket. 

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Repeat after me:  An Injury to One, is an Injury to all! (x3)

Hello! My name is Andy Blanchet and I am a full-time worker at Howard Center, and speak today as president of our labor union, AFSCME Local 1674, and as chair of the Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America Chapter’s Labor Committee. I come with an urgent message for fellow working class people and our role in combating Trump’s Authoritarian cruelty as witnessed in LA and beyond. I first want to state clearly: AFSCME Local 1674 stands in solidarity with all who have been kidnapped by ICE and DHS and we demand the immediate release of those currently detained. We stand in solidarity with every Union member on the streets exercising our right to freedom of speech in calling for an end to the cruel ICE raids. These unacceptable state sponsored acts of kidnapping are both horrific and unsurprising from this administration. Unsurprising, considering capitalism’s fundamentally authoritarian nature. 

We currently live in a world where bosses who run corporations have full authority over workers. This is an ugly dictatorship of capital - where those who make profits from the blood, sweat, and tears of workers can decide exactly what kind of lives we are allowed to live by exploiting our time and energy for the sake of profit. Not only that, but the capitalist landlords, who pay for their new pools and 2nd homes with our meager wages we break our backs for, decide exactly how much to extort from us in exchange for shelter. Workers have historically worked to combat this dictatorship of the bosses by forming our own labor and tenant unions.

And with that collective organizing, working class people have tried to exercise our natural rights to free speech, organizing, freedom of association, and collective bargaining to win both better wages and working conditions, as well as political change. However, every step of the way, the rich have fought us tooth and nail for even the most meager of wins. They hire union busting lawyers from an industry that reaps profits by convincing employers to keep them on retainer in order to fight their own workers simply pursuing dignity and respect in the workplace. They call the police on striking workers, like they did to Starbucks Workers’ United members during their sit-down strike earlier this year. The rich have even gone so far as to OUTLAW the ability to strike, to withhold our labor, in different industries. That didn’t stop unions like the Newton Teachers’ Association of Newton Massachusetts from organizing a successful, and illegal, strike to win their demands. 

But now, it seems, the rich bosses want more. They criminalize working people from speaking out in support of Palestine through the critique of our own country’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people. ICE beat & detained the President of SEIU California, David Huerta, while he exercised his freedom of speech. The rich are willing to target unions, union workers & leaders, and immigrant workers to maintain their full control over our economic, political, and social lives. And it is essential that every union, be they local or international, answer the question: Which side are you on?

The time for fence-sitting apolitical unionism must come to an end. There are numerous examples of unions trying to play-nice with overtly hostile political administrations, thinking this would save them, and it never has. All this does is allow those in power to exercise their will over organized labor and know they can get away with it. Worse than that, the do-nothing Democratic party has used the plight of working class people as their political platform for decades. Workers are not pawns to be used in rhetoric and then discarded when it’s time to make good on policy promises - working people are who have built and sustained society and we deserve money for healthcare, prenatal & child care, education, housing, and food, not money for bombs and deportation! It is well past time for unions, big and small, to recognize these trends and organize to win the future we all deserve.

We can win these demands, and more, if we recognize and internalize that when we are divided, and alone, we are at risk. But when we practice safety through solidarity, we are unstoppable! Look at what organized labor did to energize the working class of South Korea in 2024. By organizing workers in huge companies into strike-ready unions and collaborating with farm workers, Korean workers were able to mobilize and fight back against President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law in a fight for democracy. We, the workers and organized labor, must find the political will to commit to this version of organizing for the common good in order to have a lasting impact. We deserve lives of dignity, honor, love, and justice!

The workers, united, will never be defeated! (x3)

Thank you! Solidarity Forever!

Columbus DSA condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the actions of President Trump and his administration, the United States armed forces, ICE, and the LAPD in their relentless brutality against peaceful protestors fighting to protect their communities from the thugs abducting their friends, family, and neighbors. We condemn the violence of ICE and their campaign of mass deportations that has come to our city of Columbus. On June 3rd ICE arrested Leonardo Fausto at a court hearing for a dismissed misdemeanor traffic violation. Fausto has lived in Columbus legally for 4 years while waiting to be granted asylum. Ohio senators have also passed a bill that will require public officials to allow the arrest of suspected undocumented immigrants with or without warrants, while other Ohio lawmakers have proposed the “America First Act”, making it a felony to be in Ohio undocumented. We stand in unshakable solidarity with our undocumented neighbors: no one’s existence is illegal.

The recent protests in Los Angeles and other cities demonstrate that the American people are aware of the cruelty that this administration inflicts upon our families, our neighbors, and people in our communities, and we demand that these abuses stop.

Left unchecked, this administration, alongside ICE and local law enforcement, will continue to hide what the ‘land of the free’ has become from the world. They obscure their names and faces so that no one knows who to hold accountable for their crimes, all while they vanish our neighbors, family, and friends. ICE has only existed since 2003 but is being used like the Gestapo of Nazi Germany to create terror among us. We have lived without their presence for most of our existence, and we don’t need them now. To that end, we demand the following from our own community of Columbus:

We demand ICE be abolished. We demand that undocumented citizens be given amnesty and a swift path to citizenship. And we call for the immediate release of every person that ICE has arrested in LA and across the nation.

We demand that Columbus City Council end their contracts with ICE, make Columbus a sanctuary city, and protect its residents from these illegal abductions.

Columbus DSA will continue to fight for the power of the working class and the freedoms of people all over the world, immigrants or not. We will not stand by as the people of our community are abused by state violence. An injury to one is an injury to all. Free the prisoners, abolish ICE, and end the authoritarian regime currently in power.

On Thursday, June 19, we celebrate what began as Jubilee Day, and what we now recognize as Juneteenth. This year, it marks 160 years since Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to finally enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and deliver the word of freedom to some of the last enslaved Black Americans.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 19 2025

Info@portlanddsa.org

Update: sign our petition to tell Gov. Kotek hands off!

In an article published on June 18 by Willamette Week, Governor Tina Kotek is quoted as suggesting to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pedersen a restructure of the Preschool for All tax, a levy on Oregon’s top 5% which funds universal preschool for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. This is an unacceptable capitulation to the demands of Oregon’s rich and super-rich, whose feelings have been hurt by being required to contribute to the society that made it possible for them to get so very rich.

Portland DSA led the fight for universal preschool in Multnomah County, and we count its adoption as one of our largest victories. The law levies a very small tax on Portland’s very highest incomes, and the programs funded by that small tax have broad and powerful impact. In the Willamette Week article, Kotek is described as making the argument that the tax is causing Portland’s wealthy “job-creators” to flee the city. This assessment couldn’t be further from the truth.

Kotek’s argument is based on spurious data: in a chart created by economist Mary King and posted on Bluesky by DSA City Councilor Mitch Green, the data clearly show that the percentage of high-income earners in Multnomah County is dramatically increasing. 

Kotek’s fear-mongering about the loss of the city’s tax base because of a tax which funds a universal program for every resident of the county is a great disappointment, but not unexpected. It shows how subservient our political class is to the moneyed elite, who pay high prices to get access to them and their political power.

It also hinges on the tired myth that Portland is a city in decline, burnt out after so much conflict. The reality is that Portland is a vibrant, thriving city that the rich want to live in, along with the rest of us. In part because of its social programs, not in spite of them. Working-class voters won this social program and will defend it — and Portland DSA is proud to be a part of that fight.

In Solidarity,

Portland DSA

The post Defend Preschool For All! appeared first on Portland DSA.

Boston DSA is proud to endorse Willie Burnley Jr. for Mayor of Somerville! Willie has been a voice for working people, tenants, and marginalized communities — and we’re ready to fight alongside him for a Somerville that works for all!

We are experiencing the most sustained and broad attacks on US democracy since the McCarthy period. MAGA has put together a fascist coalition of white supremacist, reactionary nationalists, Christian fundamentalists, libertarians, and techno-authoritarians, and they are on an offensive against the 20^th century. All the gains of labor, civil rights, women, and the LGBTQ community are under assault. The fascists intend to fundamentally restructure institutional democracy and to impose a straitjacket on civil society. This closely parallels the McCarthy period, and there are important similarities and differences between now and then, and lessons we can draw.

My uncle (Fred Fine) was on the leading committee of the Communist Party (CP) and closely involved in discussions about organizing an underground apparatus of safe houses for Party leaders. Fine himself was assigned to the underground, and was there for four years. During that time, he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, and never once spoke with his wife or young son. My father, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, was threatened with deportation, and the FBI threatened to declare my mother “unfit” and told her they would have her children (ages 6 and 11) put into foster homes without visitation rights. Thousands suffered similar threats and intimidation, key leaders were jailed, some cadre turned informant, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed.

When the Party leadership discussed how to respond to McCarthy, there were two key assumptions: fascism was imminent and war with the Soviet Union inevitable. The similarities to today are striking. Many people feel fascism is imminent and war with China inevitable. The CP drew a number of conclusions from these assumptions that had drastic consequences for its members and mass organizing.

First, they purged members they considered untrustworthy or politically weak. And perhaps more damagingly, the Party concluded repression would be worst in the South, and so shut down all its southern districts and withdrew its organizers after 25 years of outstanding work organizing the South. When my parents divorced, my mother left Chicago and went to Florida with my brother and me to join a close friend—a woman who had been a nurse in the Spanish Civil War, working with the world famous doctor Norman Bethune. My mother was kicked out of the Party for moving to the South, and was only let back in when we moved to California. That didn’t stop the FBI from following her to Florida and getting her fired from several jobs.

My mother kept a journal of her time in Florida. Here is one short excerpt of her experience:

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY…35 years. Nobody knows except the FBI. My gift from them
was once again being fired. This time from a job short lasted.
But I truly enjoyed working as proofreader on the St. Petersburg Times.
Well, at least I was let go early in the day. So now I’m home with enough time to
change into my waitress uniform. And time enough left to wait for Paulie to come home
from school. Young Jerry is only 4 and Paulie 9. The best birthday.
We’ll be playing a few games of baseball before I take off for my night shift.
There sits the limousine of the FBI. Another obstacle of fears,
confusion of what the future holds. This is the time for courage and bold adventures.
For it is now, I have come to understand, and someday so will my sons.
Of that I’m confident. For my mother’s heart tells me so.

The author’s mother, Rose Fine, (center) at a protest in Chicago (c. 1955)

The Party went to great lengths to set up an underground apparatus. This had at least two levels: the most secure, in which eight national leaders were sent into hiding, and a less secure state and city underground into which hundreds of local leaders were assigned. This eliminated many of the best organizers from doing mass work. Moreover, local underground networks were largely penetrated by the FBI. Even at my uncle’s level, four of the eight leaders were captured by the FBI. Although he had a number of close calls at different safe houses, he held out until the Party decided to come out of hiding and he eventually stood trial with several other leaders in New York.

When the Party’s first line of leadership (William Foster, Eugene Dennis, and others) went on trial, they tried to defend themselves by educating the jury about the true meaning of Marxism-Leninism. The result was prison time for all. On my uncle’s wanted poster (up in post offices throughout the country) was the following charge: “unlawfully conspiring with other persons to knowingly teach and advocate the duty and necessity of overthrowing and destroying the government of the United States by force and violence.” Of course, the Party never told members to arm themselves, they never organized armed cells, nor did they have plans for an armed insurrection. They did teach about the armed revolution in Russia, the history of capitalist violence, and the ultimate need to defend any socialist electoral victory from a reactionary counterrevolution.

FBI “Most Wanted” Poster for the author’s uncle, Fred Morris Fine

By the time my uncle stood trial, the Party had switched its defense strategy to asserting the freedoms of speech, association, and assembly. There is a difference between speech and advocacy and actively organizing acts of violence. This focus on civil liberties proved more successful with the courts. In 1957 the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected radical speech, overturning the conviction of 14 Communist Party officials and effectively ending the use of the Smith Act to target leftists for their political beliefs. A series of subsequent rulings forbade the use of blacklists and other methods of political persecution, which helped bring about the end of the Second Red Scare. However, the proceeding period of internal debates and bitter feelings resulted in about half the remaining members leaving the Party by 1957.

Lessons for Today

During the McCarthy period the ruling class was united in its efforts to destroy the left. From conservatives to liberals, Republicans to Democrats, a united front was made impossible. Even the ACLU purged Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from its board for being in the CP. Furthermore, social democratic union leaders like Walter Reuther were more than happy to rid labor of Communists. Loyalty oaths were demanded at universities, public schools, unions, Hollywood, and various industries. Public show trials were held by the House Un-American Activities Committee in cities across the country. Many former friends of the Party were running scared.

But while the persecution the Party faced was real, “the almost fatal blow,” as Party leader Peggy Dennis later wrote in her Autobiography of an American Communist, “was self-inflicted.” The decision to shutter its Southern districts and take the Party leadership underground anticipated a level of repression far greater than that which materialized. Designed to protect the Party from the advent of fascism and world war, it instead deprived mass struggles of thousands of their most militant organizers and activists, weakened the labor movement, cut off key linkages with the Black freedom struggle, and contributed to a decline of CPUSA membership from 80,000 in 1945 to less than 15,000 by 1957.

Today, conditions are in some important ways more favorable for us than during the McCarthy era. The ruling class is split. Already we see mass rallies and protests. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, Hands Off, and May Day marches have already gathered millions in opposition to fascism. Courts as of yet have often ruled against Trump. A united front is not only possible, but is in early formation.

In this moment, many leftists are concerned about safety and security – understandably. The harms caused by Trump’s repressive regime are real. But a key lesson from the McCarthy Era is that we must not let our fear of persecution isolate us from the masses and from mass movements. We can and must continue to organize, even as we take measures to help keep ourselves and each-other safe. The following are some suggestions for this period:

• Stay rooted to mass work, defend our friends and allies, and ask them to defend us.
• Defend the Bill of Rights, civil society, civil liberties, and civil rights for all.
• Stay calm but be aware of security.
• Make sure your financial records—particularly organizational finances—are in order.
• Organizations should have a house counsel, and individuals should always keep the number of a lawyer with you.
• Never write on social media or in email what you don’t want read back to you in court.
• Vocally reject all proposed violent acts at public meetings
• NEVER TALK TO THE FBI. Legally you don’t have to, but if you lie, you’re committing a federal crime. So, NEVER TALK TO THE FBI.

This is the time for courage and bold adventures. Collectively, our actions now will help determine what the future holds.

The post Lessons from the McCarthy Red Scare appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

As part of our 2025 Migrant Rights Campaign, DSA San Diego is pressuring Grossmont Union High School District to defend students against ICE raids. Read more. [...]

Read More... from Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Summer 2025 Update

The post Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Summer 2025 Update appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America | San Diego Chapter.

[[{“value”:”Fenway Park on the week of workers’ strike authorization. (Working Mass)

By: Andrew S

FENWAY PARK, MA – Concessions workers at the world’s oldest baseball stadium have decided resoundingly to strike for the first time in their 113-year history. On Sunday, June 15, 2025, Fenway Park concessions workers and MGM Music Hall workers across the street officially voted to authorize a strike against their employer, Aramark. The membership of UNITE HERE Local 26 passed authorized the strike with an overwhelming majority of over 95% workers in favor. In their press conference, Local 26 President Carlos Aramayo declared that management “has been nothing but disrespectful” and the “union could go on strike as early as this afternoon.”

On May 15, 2025, UNITE HERE Local 26 officially decided to hold a strike authorization vote a month later if the bargaining committee and Aramark were not able to come to any agreement on wages or technology. They didn’t, forcing workers to strike as a result.

Aramayo cited low wages as one primary reason for authorizing a strike: “The wage structure here is embarrassingly low, not just compared to other jobs in the region but also in comparison to other stadiums in the United States.” Organizers passed around flyers showing that cashiers at the Miami Marlins stadium made $21.25 an hour while beers there only cost $5.19. In contrast, beers at Fenway are sold for $10.79 a pop while workers are only paid $18.51 an hour. Aramark charges fans at Fenway more than any other ballpark in the country, and their workers still make less despite higher costs of living. 

The Red Sox are worth $4.8 billion and Fenway was the most expensive stadium to attend a ballgame in 2024. So, you’ve got to wonder – why are workers paid peanuts?

Automating Fenway

Part of it is a broader anti-worker strategy also involving automation. Workers have also noted that a source of tension with Aramark has been with technological changes forced on the workplace at the expense of workers. Aramayo claimed that Aramark had replaced some of Fenway’s highest paying jobs with automatic computer-based systems that recorded sales. 

That had two consequences. The first was that a significant amount of opportunities for promotion were eliminated or nullified, which directly impacted workers’ ability to survive rising rent and cost of living. That affected not only their ability to stay on the job, but also embedded in their communities around Boston. 

There is another consequence, though – poorer service. During the June 15 press conference, Local 26 member Natalie Green described the labor done by the thousand-strong workforce. On a daily basis, workers perform a variety of tasks that automated technology cannot:  

A computer cannot check if you are over-served or underage drinking. The reason why we stay here is that we are good at our jobs and we want to protect the community. 

Fenway Park: A Community-Rooted Workforce

Protecting the community is one dimension of Fenway work that comes alive in the hands of the workers. Many workers’ own ties to the park and to each other run deep. Fenway Park concessions workers share a remarkable legacy of working for many years at the park, season after season, bonds that have made labor organizing more effective. 

Laura Crystal and Richard Moffat are a couple who work concessions at Fenway, mentioning to Working Mass that both have been working at Fenway since they were in high school. Crystal’s and Moffat’s lives have revolved around the park. They emphasized that this is normal for Fenway workers: 

We got married here, we got engaged on the field, and we’re pregnant…this place becomes a part of your DNA. How do we not love this place? It’s so fundamental to us on top of being a job.

Fenway Park on the week of workers’ strike authorization. (Working Mass)

Mass Bargaining and Solidaristic Bonds

Fenway Park employees have used close familial networks as leverage for labor organizing in spite of Aramark’s disdain. President Aramayo noted that there were 75-80 people on the negotiating and organizing committee that spearheaded the campaign amongst workers in Fenway. In other words, a little less than 10% of the entire workforce was represented on the bargaining committee – ensuring that bargaining committee members and workplace leaders could convey and mobilize their networks directly.

Beer-seller Richard Moffat noted that, as a collective with UNITE HERE, Fenway Park workers used their close relationships to bring people on board for the strike vote and stand up to management. “Everyone has a larger network of friends here, and they try to use that to connect us as a large group,” Moffat said.  “We all help each other to vote, do actions. We have huddles during check-in to show that we can do this in front of management, and that you’re going to be okay. You’re not going to get into trouble, or sent home, or fired. It’s all about gaining momentum.” 

Crystal also chimed in to describe how Fenway’s high-pressure work created ideal conditions to build friendship and, thus, solidarity: “Everyone knows that you don’t know somebody better than when they’re your coworker on their worst day at the job. In there, it’s a hundred degrees, you’re behind a steamer making hot dogs, or running around with drunk fans. It’s a high-pressure situation, and we have strong friendships because of that. Local 26 used those strong friendships to push the message out and hold each other accountable.” 

The strong network built among coworkers at Fenway emboldened one another to organize on the shop floor, because workers knew they had each other’s backs – both as individuals and as a union.

Nonetheless, Aramark tipping workers to a boiling point with low wages and automation still leaves a bad taste in his mouth – just like many of his coworkers who have been fixtures of the park for decades. “A lot of us have had to sacrifice a lot to keep up with the high demands and to maintain seniority…it means a lot to us.” Moffat sighed.

We feel like [Aramark is] destroying the sanctity of America’s most beloved ballpark.

Andrew S is a member of Boston DSA and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

Fenway Park on the week of workers’ strike authorization. (Working Mass)

The post 1000 Fenway Park Concessions Workers To Strike For First Time in 113 Years appeared first on Working Mass.

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