To err is human, to be a union organizer is to make mistakes. We all do it, so don't sweat it. Here are some tips to try to avoid the next one.

The post Common Mistakes New Union Organizers Make—and How to Avoid Them appeared first on EWOC.

Nearly one in six workers is an independent contractor. Learn how you can organize for better conditions.

The post Can freelancers unionize? appeared first on EWOC.

The Mask off Maersk campaign has successfully pressured the company and made it harder for them to deliver arms to Israel. The project can be a blueprint for how to win an arms embargo. 

The post Mask off Maersk Shows How to Win an Arms Embargo appeared first on Democratic Left.

Concerted activity refers to actions taken by one or more workers to improve their wages, hours, or working conditions.

The post What is concerted activity? appeared first on EWOC.

Chaz Howard, Chaplain at University of Pennsylvania, joins the podcast to talk about purpose and vocation, Black Liberation Theology as a needed remedy for American religion, and the necessity of spirituality in our activist work. We also discuss his new book, Uncovering Your Path, which you can purchase here: https://www.charleslattimorehoward.com

DSA member Zohran Mamdani’s victory in NYC’s mayoral Democratic Party primary is a case study in effective coalition-building. How did Zohran accomplish the impossible, going from 2% support in early polling to a decisive victory just 6 months later? Mamdani’s Obama-esque ability to resonate with voters across demographic and political lines played a part, as did the campaign’s strong field and communications operations. But another decisive factor came early in the campaign, at an endorsement forum hosted in February by DC 37, New York City’s largest union of public sector workers. Mamdani was received by the audience with rapturous applause throughout. Zohran’s campaign manager, Elle Bisgaard-Church, cited this forum as the moment she began to believe Zohran could win. “The energy in that room when he was on the stage was absolutely remarkable,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “I remember sitting in the front row and feeling completely overwhelmed by it. That was a major sign to me of the breadth of this campaign’s resonance.”

DC 37 endorsed and joined the coalition for Zohran, but their support was far from guaranteed. In 2021, the union endorsed New York City’s current mayor Eric Adams, a scandal-ridden establishment politician who looks to face off with Mamdani in November’s general election. DC 37’s historic decision to endorse a ranked slate for mayor, including Zohran Mamdani, was the product of sustained rank-and-file organizing cohered through “DC 37 for Zohran,” a group of Zohran supporters who work for the city. As DSA considers interventions in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election, the story of “DC 37 for Zohran” contains lessons DSA can take away to successfully build a movement, organization, and consciousness in support of our program at the largest stages of US politics. Delegates to DSA’s 2025 convention who are inspired by this story should vote in support of the two “A DSA Presidential Platform” amendments to ensure our organization helps create rank-and-file formations, like DC 37 for Zohran, that can organize activists and the politically disengaged, moving the labor-liberal Democratic Party establishment towards support for DSA’s slate of candidates and building the durable mass organizations necessary for the long-term political struggle for revolutionary democratic socialism. 

How We Win

Just like the Zohran campaign, DC 37 for Zohran is a coalition in its own right. The group was formed from a cadre of long-time activists in the public sector union movement. I was a member of this initial group. In addition to being city workers, some of us are DSA members, some are members of other socialist organizations, and some are unaffiliated. We share programmatic goals: transforming DC 37 from an ossified, disengaged business union into a democratic, member-driven and politically progressive union. But what really united us was the trust we built through years of organizing together. Activist city workers who formed DC 37 for Zohran struggled together on the shop floor and in our locals. And we had experience organizing city-wide political interventions together, around COVID-19 working conditions, 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, and most recently around Palestinian liberation and the divestment of our pension from Israel. For this campaign, DC 37 for Zohran’s specific goals were to organize public sector workers in support of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, and push DC 37 to endorse Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy and invest media and field resources to support the campaign.

To build public sector union member support, DC 37 for Zohran hosted a public town hall with the campaign. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from Zohran Mamdani and other city workers. They also had the opportunity to ask about issues important to city workers, like underfunding, understaffing, privatization, and threats to retiree healthcare, and push the Zohran campaign to consider these issues seriously. We also organized regular “city worker” canvassing shifts and held regular organizing meetings where supporters could join and “level up” their participation by getting involved in the group’s strategy development, event planning, and execution. These efforts helped cohere a strong, active, and organized city worker support base for Zohran, which extended far beyond the initial reach of the core organizing group. We were creative and organized in building a list of supporters, reaching out to city worker activists organizing in our workplaces and for Palestinian solidarity, coworkers who may have been previously politically inactive, and identifying leads using publicly available data on Zohran campaign contributors. This effective list-work expanded our reach and allowed us to mobilize a large number of supporters and identify new organizing leaders to support the Zohran campaign and our long-term union reform efforts. Our ability to collaborate with the campaign while retaining the political independence to build our own organization and advocate for our own political goals was key to building trust with coworkers and nimbly scaling up our organizing.

One of the first ways we tested the strength of our group was through a campaign calling on the union’s leaders to include Mamdani in the union’s endorsement slate and not to rank Mamdani’s primary competitor, Andrew Cuomo, another scandal-ridden establishment figure in New York. We turned out a sizable contingent to the mayoral forum hosted by DC 37 to demonstrate members’ support for the campaign, and followed that up with countless emails, phone calls, and texts to union leaders asking them to endorse Zohran. This campaign was a success, and DC 37 leadership voted to include Zohran second on their mayoral endorsement slate. While DC 37’s field and media efforts in the primary were focused on the union’s number-one-ranking candidate, Adrienne Adams, Zohran supporters joined DC 37’s field operation and pushed from within to focus the union’s efforts on Zohran, the more exciting and viable candidate (Adams won under 5% of the first-round primary votes). Duncan Freeman wrote in the Chief Leader, “the union showed up for Mamdani in other ways,” adding, “The union’s president, Shaun Francois, who heads Board of Education Employees Local 372, spoke in support of Mamdani at a campaign rally inside of a Brooklyn concert venue in May, and Maf Misbah Uddin, the union’s treasurer, spoke enthusiastically in support of Mamdani… [h]e was also a presence at rallies for the candidate with South Asian labor leaders.” Even the presence of DC 37’s logo on campaign literature helped legitimize Zohran outside the activist left. 

Let’s be crystal clear: DC 37’s support for the Zohran campaign was a victory of rank-and-file organizing. It shows that we can dislodge the power of the Democratic Party’s powerbrokers and start the process of shifting the labor unions and political non-profits towards a more progressive agenda. It shows that, when merged through an exciting popular campaign, base-building and electoral campaigning, areas of work often counterposed on the left, can complement one another and help us accomplish our shorter and longer-term objectives. As we shall see, the long-term success of this work hinges on DSA and the broader left organizing with the political independence necessary to promote its platform and organize its base. This is why the amendment calls for DSA to organize autonomous rank-and-file initiatives, put forward its own presidential platform, establish some standards for a DSA-endorsed candidate’s alignment with our organization and our presidential platform, and ensure DSA’s ability to criticize a campaign’s shortcomings and organize for change within the campaign apparatus.

Looking Forward

Of course, winning the mayoral race is one thing: governing and delivering on campaign promises is another. DC 37 for Zohran finds itself in the peculiar predicament of having successfully campaigned for the election of our next boss. Conversations within the group have already started about how to organize in this brave new world, where a democratic socialist is the mayor of our city. We have begun drafting a platform for the future of city work under Zohran’s administration and plan to host a town hall on this topic. We certainly hope to fight with Zohran on shared priorities, like investing more in staffing and public services for New Yorkers, fighting against outsourcing, and protecting retiree healthcare. However, we will also have to negotiate with the Zohran administration for our next contract, and all the political alignment in the world does not change the fact that every New York City mayor has to choose how to staff their administration and where to invest limited resources. The mayor can try to appoint political allies to key administrative positions, but faces pressure to rely on experts whose leadership abilities come with the status quo political beliefs one obtains after a career going through the city’s revolving door of executives in the private and non profit sectors (one key example: current NYPD police commissioner and billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch, who Zohran is considering retaining for his administration). The mayor can try to raise taxes, but will need political support from the council to do so. Further, while the city’s largest revenue source, property taxes, is controlled locally, much of the city’s additional revenue comes from state and federal sources, putting them out of the mayor’s or the council’s control. 

Here, Zohran’s city worker supporters have no illusions. We do not support Zohran because we believe he will wave a magic wand and solve all our problems, or because he represents a full program for the socialist movement. We support him because we believe he is the candidate most conducive to our organizing goals: building an organized, independent, militant workers’ movement that fights for city workers, the working class New Yorkers we serve, and workers all over the world.  After Mamdani wins the general election in November, we will continue the fight for wages that keep up with inflation, for an end to the wasteful practice of farming out public sector work to private contractors, for fully funded city agencies that are responsive to community needs, and for divesting our pension to end the city’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.  

On some of these issues, Zohran is a clear ally. For example, he has already expressed an interest in fully funding city agencies and auditing the city’s private contractors. On some issues, like more maximalist DC 37 contract demands or abolitionist demands around the NYPD, the Mamdani administration may side with city leadership in calling for moderation. Ultimately, we will work with the mayor’s office when we can, but against them when we must. This is a key insight: independent rank-and-file organizing can power leftist politicians to victory, but it is the only vehicle to ensure that, after taking power and facing heavy institutional pressures to compromise, politicians continue to support the program of DSA and the worker’s movement, from fast and free buses to divesting city workers’ pension from Israel all the way to a democratic socialist society. The purpose of such independent political entities like DC37 for Zohran is not just to help candidates win campaigns but to keep them politically sharp and honest, as we continue to build consciousness and support for our own political program and organization. 

Looking to 2028, it is worth asking: what coalition could potential presidential nominees – AOC, Shawn Fain, Sara Nelson, or Rashida Tlaib – build around themselves? What coalition does DSA want to build in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential elections, and how can we help cohere that coalition? As we answer these questions, DC 37 for Zohran is a model we can take inspiration from. It shows us that through the rank-and-file organization DSA helps cohere, we can organize activists and the politically disengaged to move the labor-liberal coalition towards our goals. Most importantly, it shows us that we can use these campaigns to raise consciousness, grow our lists, and build durable mass organizations for the political battles that occur after every election, win or lose. Delegates to DSA’s 2025 convention who resonate with this vision should vote in support of the “A DSA Presidential Platform” amendments and ensure our organization helps create these powerful rank-and-file formations.

Image: Zohran Mamdani speaking at a New York City DSA fundraiser in 2023. Photo by Alexandra Chan.

Another convention season is here, and yet, the demand for a hybrid convention— a key focus for the Disability Working Group (DWG)— has failed to meet the requirements for  consideration by the convention committee. As a candidate for the National Political Committee, I included this sentence in my responses to the requisite questionnaire: “In DWG, we confront DSA’s institutional ableism, from inaccessible events to token accommodations.” This is something that every disabled organizer in DSA confronts every day. This institutional form of ableism can range from having to remind staff two conventions in a row to book more accessible rooms for the DSA block, to dealing with statements like “We don’t know where the accessible entrances are; this has never been an issue before.” Frustrations among members of our community have been mounting over the years. Frustrations that can cause more alienation, and fellow disabled comrades leaving the organization at a critical juncture. My comrades in the DWG have asked me why this consistently happens to us. I have to admit that I did not have a good answer.  This piece is my attempt to give voice to my own frustrations and theirs.

A focus on disability and accessibility is critical to developing a DSA that’s growing in strength and one that’s effective in winning broader demands. Without us, there is no revolutionary horizon to be achieved. 

A History of the Disability Working Group

In 2019, there was a mass resignation of the Steering Committee of the Disability Working Group. The text of their resignation can be found here and is worth reading in its entirety. However, unmentioned in this text is that prominent leftist writer and co-host of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House Amber A’Lee Frost was a key player in the harassment that the DWG Steering Committee faced. Given Amber’s turn towards advocating for an “anti-woke” left and masculine working class fetishism, it’s hard not to see the historic parallels in how attacks on disabled people are often harbingers of latent right-wing tendencies. Years later, and ableist slurs and ableist rhetoric has once again proliferated in the broader society. 

I strongly believe that the DWG went dormant for a time after this due to a lack of people willing to subject themselves to the ableism that the previous group experienced. At the end of the 2019 convention, an anti-identity politics caucus formed, announcing their formation with the ableist article “Let Them Clap,” published in Class Unity. Thankfully, like many things founded in opposition to other people’s existence and rights, this caucus has since split from DSA to focus on a podcast. Many of its former members are still active in DSA, however, and while they may no longer be part of a caucus that openly presents such divisiveness, I’m sure their influence is still playing a part in DSA’s orientation towards disability justice.

In 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the national convention was held online. Advocates of a hybrid convention or an online convention finally had proof that it was feasible. However, a group of delegates dropped a harassment complaint against a slate of NPC candidates in the middle of the convention and exacerbated the vicious interpersonal conduct that sometimes plagues DSA’s organizational culture. This incident and the online fallout thereafter are now used by a significant section of our membership to argue that we need an in-person-only convention. But the logic of this argument is one that chooses to accommodate toxic behavior and papers over the serious issues at the expense of people with accessibility needs. To put it bluntly, this line of reasoning is more invested in prioritizing avoiding holding bad-faith actors accountable rather than making convention a more welcoming space for disabled comrades, a significant part of our socialist base. The 2023 National Convention had uneven adherence to supporting disabled members. Masking and vaccination were mandatory. Yet,the Disability Working Group worked on several resolutions, including the first hybrid convention resolution, but it did not meet the requirements to be considered. Many disabled delegates also experienced in-person ableism, such as a quiet room that was too close to the convention hall  for those experiencing sensory overload. A delegate was left in tears after a request for the chair to ask other delegates to stop clapping and yelling was denied. In the aftermath of the 2023 convention, the bulk of the Disability Working Group has left DSA yet again.

This history is only a fraction of the issues that affect the wider organization. I have not spoken of the personal incidents that occur throughout chapters because I can’t possibly know them all, but I do know that they occur with alarming frequency. This has led to an organization that is less reflective of the working class that we claim to represent—in just one of many ways it fails to do so. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 1 in 4 people in the U.S. have a disability. About 78 percent of all disabled adults participate in the country’s labor force, with nearly 27 percent, twice the rate of able adults, languishing in poverty. If anything, as much as the DSA has become the leading socialist organization in the U.S., it’s regressed terribly when it comes to issues of basic accessibility and respect for its disabled members. 

The Dilemma of Disability Rights Persists

In 2025, the issues of accessibility and ableism persist. Currently, the major focus of opposition to disability justice has to do with masking, transmissible infections, and the cost of accessibility. For many, masking after the initial outbreak became a way of life, and I currently mask on public transit and in enclosed spaces. Members of the DWG have asked me to push for more chapters to have mandatory masking policies, and I have tried advocating for that in various DSA spaces, such as in online discords and the DSA national forums. The opposition to this has crystallized in the optional masking policy adopted by the NPC for the 2025 convention. As a member of the Accessibility Committee for convention, I had pushed for stronger standards, but the committee deadlocked on the final vote and then never met again. Already, some delegates who were democratically elected to their seats have dropped out from attending because of this failure to protect their health. The organization makes explicit institutional commitments to fighting racism, transphobia, and homophobia, yet when it comes to disability, we remain stuck debating whether inclusion is worth the effort. I am not raising this point to pit race, transness, or disability justice against one another, as I know this is not a zero-sum game. I am pointing out that DSA can successfully welcome people into our organization and make them a priority, but it selectively chooses when to do so, and oftentimes, falls short on such commitments.

Many DSA members who are able-bodied perpetuate the ableism present in our society, and many of the arguments that they make are the same arguments that disabled people encounter in their day-to-day life as to why society cannot adjust or accommodate us. Members, including those in the top-most positions of leadership, couch these arguments in concerns about cost but have no problem booking convention at an expensive complex or asking delegates to pay their way to and from convention, even with the cost of living increasing exponentially every year, which also deeply impacts many of us who are disabled and living precarious lives financially. I find it incoherent to say that the cost of a hybrid convention would be somehow more than the cost being passed on to individual delegates in order for us to have our face-to-face time.

Setting aside convention, far too many chapters continue to have events at inaccessible locations and fail to prepare for the possibility of having a disabled member participate fully in chapter activities that some others may take for granted. Every chapter and every working group actively asks members to use pronouns. Why can’t this same level of effort be made for disabled people who are part of a working class feeling squeezed in a neoliberal ableist America? Instead, the issues and concerns of disabled people in the organization are dismissed, and members of the community are made to feel like a burden instead of comrades in this common struggle against oppression and class exploitation. 

I want to think the best of my more able-bodied comrades (although that line between abled and disabled are always blurring), and, while I don’t think any of this is based in explicit forms of eugenics, I do think, like the rest of able-bodied society, there is some kind of squeamishness about what disabled people represent: an otherness that goes unspoken but nonetheless screams with visibility. At some point in their lives, all able-bodied people will need the accommodations that disabled people so fiercely advocate for. Maybe this possibility, this equalization by time and the stress of capitalist life, makes some deeply uncomfortable in ways that they can’t express or don’t know how to. Either way, we are all left with an organization that is weaker for it, with fewer and fewer disabled members who are willing to endure this implicit hostility. We are left with disabled comrades leaving the organization, oftentimes alienated by politics overall, disenchanted and ever more isolated. We are left with policy demands that do not in fact, take seriously accommodations and health issues that all people, abled and disabled alike, shall face, like having facilities that are well ventilated and a healthcare system that cares about our basic health. Such things should be the bedrock of a socialist agenda and yet, such ideas are barely mentioned, along with those of us who need these policies the most. 

The eternal question is always: What is to be done? I don’t know the specific answer to that. I do know that I cannot guilt my comrades into doing better. I cannot simply ask nicely, for I have done that repeatedly and gotten nowhere. I can organize a resolution or proposal that doesn’t gather enough signatures. I can buy my chapter portable wheelchair ramps which will then get lost in the shuffle. As a leader in the National Disability Working Group and DSA, I choose to stay, but I feel it keenly every time a comrade chooses not to. I constantly ask myself: Is there more I could have done? Could I have supported them more? Could I have talked to their chapter leaders? But ultimately if the organization as a whole is unwilling to act, even my substantial efforts won’t be enough. We are all members of DSA because we recognize the limits of the individual. I recognize my limits more and more, and I am proactive about asking my comrades to respect and accommodate them. I wish that the organization would reciprocate and recognize its responsibility in managing and choosing its own limits rather than reinforcing an individualist and anti-socialist culture when it comes to accessibility and inclusion for members of our community, whose lives are often at the frontlines of capitalist decay and class war

I leave with my most recent encounter with how the organization erases disability from within our ranks. While in the process of writing this piece, I filled out my delegate registration form, which asked a variety of demographic questions, but did not include a general question displaying a similar interest in gathering the demographic data related to disability. The only question regarding whether or not our members are disabled and what disabilities they may have was what accommodations they need. Based on past experience, I am not hopeful that these accommodations will be present. This theater of inclusion will play out every convention and in every chapter until it matters to DSA. It’s only a question of how many disabled members we’ll lose before DSA starts to care, and maybe then, for the broader movement, it might be too late.

Image: Handicap parking spots in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 29, 2024. Photo by Tony Webster. Photo distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Co-Chairs Megan and Ashik Review Their Terms 1. Reflect on the project of paid co-chair position Megan:  I was skeptical of paid co-chairs as a necessary position. I’m pretty sure I voted against it. But, convention mandated it, so I was excited to get started. We ended up doing more admin work than would have […]

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[[{“value”:”Nurses on strike at Butler Hospital (Carlos B)

Butler Workers Lead a Historic Fight for Mental Health and Dignity

By Amanda A and Carlos B

PROVIDENCE, RI – On May 15, 2025, nearly 800 healthcare workers at Butler Hospital, a major psychiatric hospital serving the region, launched an open-ended unfair labor practice (ULP) strike. Represented by SEIU 1199 New England, these workers include mental health staff, food service workers, nurses, call center staff, therapists, clerical staff, and more. The strike was authorized by an overwhelming majority: 91% of the workers at Butler participated in the strike authorization vote. 99% of the voting membership voted in favor to authorize the strike. 

Butler Hospital is owned by Care New England. Care New England employs over 8,000 health care workers across Rhode Island. They own several major healthcare institutions including Women and Infants Hospital and Kent Hospital. 

A major demand of the striking workers is that all Butler workers should be making a living wage. According to SEIU 1199 New England, “nearly 60% of Butler staff surveyed said they struggled to afford the cost of food and housing. A new report indicates that a Rhode Islander must earn $25.31 to afford a studio apartment, $27.25 for a one bedroom and $33.20 for a two bedroom apartment.” The lack of living wages has contributed to short staffing and high turn over, leading to a significant increase to workplace violence. 

The Union’s Defense Against Care New England’s Onslaught

Care New England CEOs have responded with provocations of all kinds—millions of dollars spent to hire scabs, threats to permanently replace workers, cancellation of health insurance for all striking workers, and lies and smears in the media. Care New England has spent well above the amount that it would cost to meet the Butler worker’s demands in union-busting efforts, even hiring Littler Mendelson, a major union-busting firm, to assist them in negotiations.

Ben D, a member of the bargaining committee, spoke with Working Mass about the response from Care New England. “Management told us right off the bat that they have the money to agree to the initial contract proposals, they just don’t think it’s in their interest,” Ben reported. He continued:

So then, why are they doing this? They are trying to break the union. They think the union is too strong, we are too united, we are too powerful, we had too much of a say in trying to make our hospital better – and they don’t want it to be like that. They want to be able to make top down decisions and that is it. They just want to break us and it’s had the opposite effect.

Each attack has been defended against by rank-and-file organizing. When Care New England cancelled health insurance, the union assisted members in signing up for state health insurance. When Care New England declared they were seeking to permanently replace Butler workers, the striking workers became eligible for unemployment benefits – which plays a crucial role for workers surviving, paying for essentials like groceries and rent, when full-time workers lose their jobs. 

When Care New England started to spread lies about negotiations, the union opened up bargaining sessions so that all members are invited to attend and see for themselves what the negotiations were. Ben D described the strategy:

The hospital put out there that the bargaining committee was not being transparent with negotiations so that was the point when we said, well everyone can come for themselves and be part of the bargaining committee and see for themselves that we are a transparent organization, we are a democratic organization, this is how it works, so we invited everyone to come in.

Butler workers have kept the pressure up throughout the strike. They have done informational pickets at other Care New England facilities, picketed board members, a “Tax the Rich” rally on May 29, and a 30-hour occupation outside Care New England headquarters 30 days into the strike.

Patients, Organizers, and Other Unions

The workers’ march on the Capitol made the demand for a fair contract visible. Labor unions, politicians and the larger Providence community have responded with firm support to the union. SEIU 1199 workers have opened a microphone to the community. Patients and former patients continue to speak out in support of the strike, emphasizing the vital role these workers play in their recovery and community well-being.

The strike has received strong solidarity on the picket line from other unions and community organizations. These include the Rhode Island Democratic Socialists of America, Providence General Assembly, and Food Not Bombs. Teamsters and the UFCW have also supported the strike, with UFCW union workers at Seven Stars Bakery organizing donations of bread loaves and pastries in solidarity with their fellow workers. Striking Butler workers returned that solidarity by mobilizing in support of Seven Stars café workers organizing around workplace safety. 

Rhode Island DSA, in particular, has helped to raise morale by showing up to the picket line, hosting karaoke on the line, preparing and cooking food, and uplifting the strike through social media and neighborhood flyering. And in response to mass community support, the Providence City Council invited Butler workers and SEIU 1199 RI to lead the Providence Pride Parade on June 21, 2025. Hundreds of healthcare workers in purple kicked off the parade and thousands lining the streets met them with cheers.

The Strike as Teacher

The strike is unfolding in the broader context of the Trump administration’s sweeping reforms to government spending—targeting public health and education—to slash expenses wherever possible, particularly in areas supporting workers’ well-being. Most notably, the Trump Administration has decimated Medicaid with a “Big Beautiful Bill” that threatens the closure of over 300 hospitals nationwide, including one rural hospital in Massachusetts, while providing free ammunition to hospital bosses to squeeze their workers for more capital. While hospital executives increase their own bloated salaries, SEIU 1199 RI members march and demand adequate state funding for healthcare in Rhode Island.

Striking healthcare workers at Butler Hospital show us what fighting back against profit-driven attacks on the mental health services can look like. The strike is, as always, worker education. Strikes expose the real power of workers not just as individuals completing tasks, but as the engine that keeps entire industries running. That’s the real “damage” this strike delivers—not to patients, but to the power of bosses who rely on undervalued, underpaid labor to generate profits.

The ripple effects are already being felt. Nurses at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital voted in June 2025 to authorize a strike and reached a tentative agreement days after delivering the threat; The nurses, represented by the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) Local 5098, were able to push Rhode Island to increase wages from Brown University Health’s original “final offer.” 

Nurses aren’t alone; over 900 Providence-based interns, residents, and fellows joined the Committee of Residents and Interns (CIR), joining 43,000 other workers across the country organized in their union, in January 2025. The newly unionized workers work at several different hospitals in the city and just began bargaining for their first contract. 

As socialists, we understand that the example set by the Butler workers is contagious. This has already become one of the longest strikes in New England’s recent history and its outcome will have lasting consequences—for workers in the same industry and far beyond Rhode Island. 

To support the strike, join their picket line which runs daily from 6am-7pm outside Butler Hospital at 345 Blackstone Blvd, Providence, RI 02906. Follow and share their social media coverage, with a focus on Facebook and Instagram.

Amanda A is a rank and file member of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) and member of Rhode Island DSA. 

Carlos B is an immigrant kitchen worker and socialist militant in the New England labor movement.

The post Rhode Island’s Longest Healthcare Strike appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

GNDCC Committee Updates

DSA Convention season in full swing. In our Campaign Huddles, we strategized for the next two years and outlined why Organizing for a Green New Deal under Trump 2.0 is crucial for DSA in Democratic Left. Read our resolution that would mandate us to focused on Buiding for Power for two more years.

Missed our mass call with socialist electeds, ecosocialist leaders, and campaign organizers? Watch a recording on why the Fight for a Socialist Green New Deal continues, featuring Thea Riofrancos, Ashik Siddique, Sarahana Shrestha, Kelsea Bond, Alex Brower, Michael B, and Sam Z.

Building for Power campaign updates

New Campaigns

We welcomed a new B4P campaign into our universe: Houston DSA launched Our Vote, Our METRO, pressuring Mayor Whitmore to deliver transit improvements voters already approved. The revitalized ecosocialist working group is mobilizing for 2026 METRO budget hearings, driving turnout and shaping the narrative.

Keeping the Pressure On

In New York, Sarahana Shrestha’s Public Renewables Transparency Act passed unanimously in the State Assembly, ensuring democratic oversight of NYPA’s renewables expansion. The push continues for 15 GW of public renewables by 2030—creating 25,000 union jobs, cutting bills, and retiring peaker plants.

If you missed it, check out our latest Campaign Q&A: Building Public Renewables in New York. The Build Public Renewables Act provides a model for a successful chapter campaign within the Building for Power framework, and the fight continues to see it fully implemented. This interview is brimming with insights for chapters running their own strategic campaigns.

The summer months are great for canvassing: We Power DC hosted their first canvasses for their public power pledge, while the canvassing pros in Milwaukee continue their weekly efforts to gather signatures to replace WE Energies.

Louisville DSA’s Get on the Bus campaign to fund TARC continues gaining momentum, with nearly 1,200 signatures on their demand letter and support from 31 organizations—including 9 unions/labor councils. This summer they delivered over 300 postcards to city council and launched a street team wheatpasting bold “Let TARC Grow” posters across the city, taking inspiration from Metro DC’s B4P campaigns model.

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If you’re at the 2025 DSA convention, stop by our table and say hi! We will be there championing the  power of organizing at the intersection of climate, labor, and public goods. As more chapters take on strategic, place-based campaigns, we’re building toward a future where ecosocialism is not just a vision—but a material force in the everyday lives of working-class people. See you in Chicago!

The post 2025 April-June Recap appeared first on Building for Power.